Inevitable Patterns
September 30th, 2009(Yeah, sleep again. Didn’t I say I’d write about something else for a change?)
I highly recommend writing down your exact sleep times and level of tiredness every day. It will help you see patterns and prepare for tight spots in advance. However, occasionally, it will also show you when things are not working.
Like with my sleep. For the last 3 months, there is always the same pattern. I adopt a strict sleep pattern. It works great for exactly 6 days, with maybe a slight amount of tiredness here and there. Then, on day 7, I suddenly get hit with all that missing tiredness at once. Once, I was still able to go another day, but most of the time, I just crash on the spot and sleep at least 8 hours. Of course, this is anything but practical. There is nothing I can do to avoid the crash. I have done uberman and it was easier.
I noticed this patterns before, but I’m now confident it will always be there. So it’s not my own incompetence of adapting, but something my brain just does. I never read about another polyphasic sleeper noticing that, though chronically undersleeping and then catching up on the weekend is pretty common. Yet I don’t feel like I’m getting too little sleep – I can function perfectly fine for 20 hours a day, with no caffeine and no concentration problems at all. It’s as if constantly delaying sleep during school made my brain unable to not crash once a week.
So, solutions. I mentioned 2 a few weeks ago, namely incorporating the crash into the schedule or trying to get more sleep per day. I know of several polyphasic sleepers how do crash regularly, generally on the weekend, but they do this once a month, not once a week. So I don’t think this is a good solution. I’m pretty sure crashing that often is a sign of deeper problems. Also, when doing uberman and uberman with a core, I didn’t notice this pattern. Those two worked just fine.
I also get vivid dreams everytime I sleep and feel refreshed afterwards. I make sure it’s dark, avoid sugar or anything else that screws with your awareness and so on. Really, if sleep quality is the problem than it is beyond my powers anyway.
Conclusion? It is possible to be severely sleep deprived without noticing it at all for about a week. Do not feel safe after you had several good days – you might still be doing it wrong. Reassuring, isn’t it? :) Anyway, I’ll try to make the core longer again, hoping to average it out.