Below are the 20 most recent journal entries recorded in ubermanatee's LiveJournal:

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Wednesday, November 30th, 2005
8:25 pm	Getting a bit disenchanted... I'm beginning to lose interest in this sleep system. Let me start out by saying that at this point, I pretty much believe that what I've been doing (the 20-minute naps, and then core sleep from 4-8AM) can be done indefinitely. However, I'm still sleeping for nearly 6 hours per day, which isn't a big improvement over my old sleeping habits. Moreover, I have found these naps difficult to schedule around classes/parties/outings/etc. Finally, I've been avoiding chemicals that affect sleep habits (read: caffeine and alcohol), and parties aren't nearly as fun when you have to take your cup to the drinking fountain to fill it up. I'm about to go take another nap, but I"m seriously thinking of quitting this soon. Another thing: I've kind of had trouble waking up from these past few naps. It's not that I was particularly tired, and I got up from every one feeling fine and awake and alert. but my bed is so warm, and outside it is so cold, and I didn't have anywhere I needed to be. So I've already taken something like 7 naps today, in the form of 2 naps at 8AM, 3 naps at noon, and 2 at 4PM. (Comment on this)
Tuesday, November 29th, 2005
9:36 am	It happened again I went to bed at 3:30 AM, and woke up at 8:00. However, I feel better getting ~6 hours of sleep per day on this schedule than my previous schedule in which I probably got around 7 (in the form of 12hr/day on the weekends, an all-nighter on Thursday and sometimes Tuesday, and about 7 hours of sleep on Sunday, Monday, and Wednesday). I suppose that in a way, this is the core sleep that I was thinking about trying, so I shouldn't be disappointed that I didn't wake up at 3:50. As I said on day 3, I'm not going to try to force my body to wake up when it really can't (except if I actually have something I need to go to). (Comment on this)
1:11 am	Day 6 - A pleasant anticlimax I had a nice nap at 7:30, and another at midnight. I also haven't felt annoyed or irritated since this morning. Things seem to be working out, except the 4AM naps. Well, I'll try again soon... (Comment on this)
Monday, November 28th, 2005
4:55 pm	This really can't be good... Again, I overslept last night at 4AM, and woke up at 8:30 before frisbee. Consequently, I didn't sleep during my noon "nap." Also, I had class until 4:00 and had to run a couple errands in the area, so I didn't actually get to bed until about 4:30. However, I slept OK for that one. However, this evening I have plans at 8:15 or so, so I'm probably going to have to go to sleep around 7:30 or 7:45. I fear that there's not enough time between the naps, and I might not sleep during that one either. It's weird: during classes this afternoon, there were several times when I felt so exhausted that I could have just gone to sleep right then and there. However, when naptime came, it took a while to fall asleep. I wonder what needs to happen for you to fall asleep? I seem to have trouble falling asleep when I get preoccupied with listening to my breathing, or when there is a song in my head, or I'm thinking really hard (the last one is obvious). What can I do to alleviate this? I'll have to look into that. For the most part, I don't feel irritated at people (that is to say, I won't feel annoyed at you if you're just hanging out). However, I seem to get annoyed more easily (if you are doing something that's bugging me, I am more likely to be peeved). I've been keeping this in check, though, and I don't think my behaviour has changed at all. I've decided that my typing speed is really the same as it has always been. I played frisbee fine today, so I don't seem to have any coordination issues. I can still skateboard, so I don't have balance problems. My handwriting might still be worse than before, but it's not nearly as bad as I thought it was on Saturday, and it might even be as good as it normally is. I don't think the quality of my work has changed at all. The main issues at this point are the problems going to sleep during naps (at least partly caused by issues adapting my academic/social schedule to this sleep schedule), my inability to wake up at 4:20 AM, and possibly this irritability. Aside from that, I feel pretty good, I'm much less stressed than I was before I started this (I had been just not getting much sleep during the week and pulling all-nighters, then crashing on the weekends). (Comment on this)
12:26 am	Day 5 - No real change Earlier this evening, I felt a bit irritable as well. We shall see if this continues. As expected, my 8PM nap was fantastic. I just "woke up" from my midnight nap, but I don't think I actually slept. I feel alright, but I'm pretty sure I just lay there the whole time. Actually, I feel a bit tired now, but certainly not bad at all. How I feel at 4 AM might be a different story, though... All in all, I don't think there have been any significant changes in my health, my ability to sleep, or indeed anything else since about Day 2. Every day, I have felt fine during the day, gotten sleep in most but not all of the naps, and messed up at the 4 AM nap. Perhaps I can break that last streak tonight? (Comment on this)
Sunday, November 27th, 2005
7:02 pm	I think it's starting to work... Due to my oversleeping earlier today, I didn't sleep at all for my 4 PM nap. However, I am now feeling rather tired, so I suspect that my body is adapting to these naps as well as I had hoped it would. In the meantime, though, I anticipate that my 8 PM nap is going to be wonderful. Only an hour until then... This afternoon, I felt rather irritable. I know that irritability is a symptom of sleep disorders (particularly sleep apnea, which I don't have), but after dinner (during which I wasn't irritable at all), I've decided that this was likely just because I came into contact with several annoying people all at the same time. I shall watch to see if this occurs again soon. I guess I should write down, for the record, the expectations I had before starting this: I figured that the first week would be quite productive, and after that the quality of my work would decline, I would be grumpy and irritable, and I would have trouble staying focused. So far, I believe I am doing the same quality work that I've been doing previously, but I'm still in the first week. Except for this afternoon, I haven't felt irritable at all. Finally, I haven't really had trouble staying focused on whatever I was doing, though I have had trouble getting motivated to do work and chores (I don't think this was caused by anything sleep-related). (Comment on this)
12:21 pm	So close, yet so far... I tried taking a 20 minute nap at 4 AM last night, and woke up from it feeling OK but not great. I then decided that I should try doing the core sleep, and go back to bed for another two and a half hours. You know what? My alarm didn't go off! I woke up around 12:15. A bit more investigation reveals that the shell script gets killed if it tries to sleep for too long, though I don't understand why that would happen. The worst thing is, had I just stayed awake, I would have been a bit groggy early this morning, but by tomorrow I probably would have been fully on the Uberman schedule. Argh! Now, I will likely have trouble falling asleep at 4 PM, and be set back a couple days. This is very frustrating. (Comment on this)
12:24 am	Day 4 - feeling pretty good right now I just woke up from my midnight nap, and I think all is a go for core sleep tonight. If 4:00 rolls around and I'm not that tired, I might just take a nap, but that seems unlikely, in light of the previous days. I must admit that despite all this extra time, I seem to lack the motivation to actually get more stuff done. This extra time is certainly not going to waste: I am less stressed than I have been in weeks, and I generally feel more rested. I've been able to keep up with all the news stories I want to. I've been able to play more bridge than before. However, I haven't accomplished the chores and work I had planned to do. Again, however, I doubt this is due to fatigue, since I really don't feel tired or fatigued. We'll see how much I get accomplished in the next day. (Comment on this)
Saturday, November 26th, 2005
11:52 am	Fingers Don't Fail Me Now I'm not a big fan of Dale Miller, but the title of this post fit perfectly. Today at the bank, my handwriting was significantly worse than usual - still readable, but rather sloppy. It looked quite similar to my handwriting after pulling an all-nighter. I will investigate this more tomorrow, when I have several classes that require notetaking. I also suspect that my typing is a bit slower than usual, but it's not slow enough for me to say for certain. From yesterday's videogames, I believe that this is a motor control issue, instead than a reaction time thing. We'll see if it also affects larger movements when I play frisbee tomorrow. (2 Comments |Comment on this)
6:50 am	I suspect that part of the reason I messed up last night was that I wasn't really following the schedule as well as I should have been. Yesterday afternoon, I moved my 4:00 nap up to 3:30. Then, Travis invited me to his suite to hang out around 9:00, and I wasn't sure whether to push my 8:00 nap back to 8:30 or not. As a result, I took a 15 minute nap at 7:45, and a 20 minute nap at 8:30. This might have given me too much sleep at once, which might explain why I had trouble last night at midnight. I then tried to force myself to actually sleep at midnight, which only lead to more problems. From now on, I'm not going to force myself to sleep when I think I should; I'll just let stuff happen. Moreover, I'm not going to try to add in extra naps unless I really need them. (Comment on this)
6:32 am	Nope; not there yet Since I felt really funny when I woke up from my midnight nap, I tried taking another around 1:00. When that had about the same response, I tried taking a 3 hour nap (starting around 1:30). For reasons that escape me right now, when I woke up from that I apparently decided to take another short nap, and then another 3 hour one. Consequently, I have really just woken up, and I have slept nearly constantly for the past 6 hours. Oops! At least it seems that I only oversleep at night. This will come in handy when Monday rolls around and I have stuff to do during the day again. (Comment on this)
12:44 am	Day 3 I just had a rather worrisome nap. This is kinda scary, but I don't actually know if I slept or not. All the other naps (with one exception, in which I know I didn't sleep), I remember waking up surprisingly rested. This one, I don't really remember waking up at all, though I don't think I stayed awake for the whole 20 minutes either. During the middle, on a couple occasions, I remember breathing normally, but not being able to move my body. I might have been imagining this, but during one of these times, I felt like my eyes were moving quickly. I really doubt that you can be awake during REM sleep, and I don't feel particularly rested, so I suspect it was my imagination. However, it was really weird! and a little scary. Earlier today I realized that, like any good Computer Science major, I started counting the days at 0 when I created this blog. When I title this post "Day 3," that means that the third day is done, and I'm starting the fourth. I just thought I should clear that up. Mac and I were talking at dinner tonight, and agreed that I was pretty confused and out of it on the first day I did this, but I seem to be mostly normal at this point. We then played some Smash Brothers, and I can still narrowly beat him. From this, I deduce that my reaction time has not slowed as a result of my sleep schedule. The more I write, the more tired I feel. Perhaps I didn't sleep during that nap. I'm going to try to take another one now. We'll see if I still do a 3 hour core nap later. (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Friday, November 25th, 2005
5:02 pm	Almost There? The days are actually pretty good at this point. I woke up from another nap. I actually woke up early, as usual, but realized this, didn't get out of bed or even open my eyes, and went back to sleep for a little longer. I feel fine during the days, and I suspect that if I just allow myself to sleep for a few hours at night, I'm pretty much adjusted already (I'll try to phase this out, but I'm gonna stick with it tonight, for instance). In fact, I feel mostly normal all the time except from about 3 AM until 8 AM, give or take a bit. Here's another tip, though: sleep with a couple lights on. If you wake up and it's pitch black, it seems harder to get up than if it appears to be daybreak. I suspect this is the usual circadian rhythm going off, but it really helps. Assuming that the worst is over, polyphasic sleep is surprisingly easy to adjust to. If you need an extra few hours per day, I'd recommend going for it! Start cutting back on sleep early on, like on a Monday. Go into this Thursday night, so that Friday you have some problems, but not many. The weekend will be tricky, but at least you'll have time to take emergency naps, and be mostly on the schedule when Monday rolls around again. I suspect that my experiences might not be typical - it seems like it took Liam and Tiffany longer to get into this, and Moana never really made it all the way. Consequently, it feels like I'm missing some big challenge. However, things seem to be on the up-and-up right now. Then again, it could just be that it's the middle of the day and I just had another nap. (Comment on this)
1:42 pm	I don't get it. I really don't. When I'm awake, I can get quite tired, and really want to take a nap. That makes perfect sense. When I'm asleep, however, I seem to wake up about 5 minutes before the alarm goes off. This has happened 3 times so far. When I'm awake I want to be asleep, but when I'm asleep I apparently want to be awake. Perhaps I would be more suited to 15-minute naps every 3 hours? I'm not going to mess around with that yet, however, since tonight I think I'm gonna try getting a 3-hour nap in around 4:00 AM. I just got up again, and I'm actually feeling pretty good. Mind you, I took this nap in the first place because I wasn't feeling so hot 20 minutes ago. On the whole, though, I expected this to be worse. (Comment on this)
7:20 am	Day 2 - Addendum Right. So, I think I spoke too soon before. I was awake from 4:00 until about 4:45, when I decided I needed another nap. I just awoke now at 7:15 or so. If this happens again tomorrow, I might just roll with the punches and and introduce some kind of "core sleep" nap from a bit before 4:00 until maybe 7:00-ish. This wouldn't be a full-blown Uberman schedule, but something that seems pretty common among people trying this out for the first time. Apparently, people on the Uberman schedule, since they're only really getting REM sleep, have dreams at pretty much every nap. Moreover, these dreams are supposedly quite vivid and easy to remember, and many of them are lucid dreams. Although I don't yet remember any of my dreams, I vaguely recall dreaming during pretty much every nap, except yesterday at 4:00 PM. We shall see. (1 Comment |Comment on this)
3:53 am	Day 2 I just woke up, and I'm certainly bleary-eyed, but I feel OK. I was worried that I'd have a repeat of yesterday, and not be able to hack it when my 4:00 nap was over. This turned out not to be the case: I actually woke up about 5 minutes ago and panicked, assuming that if I woke up on my own, I must have overslept. I got up, noticed that my computer was silent, and went to investigate. It was a littel weird discovering that the alarm hadn't gone off, and I tried to go back to bed. I was just drifting off as it "woke me up." I still haven't been very productive, but I suspect this is more a motivation issue than a sleep deprivation thing. I've played a bunch of online bridge, read a bunch of articles both online and off, and some other stuff like that. Hopefully, I'll get more done soon. (Comment on this)
Thursday, November 24th, 2005
4:17 pm	Some other points of view Here is information from everything2. Here are tips from another person who did this. I just woke up from a less successful nap. I got up fine, but I didn't really sleep much while I was down. This is probably because I slept in this morning and it's still daylight. I think I'm going to write a shell script to handle my naps, instead of the one-liner I mentioned last post. At the moment, the main improvement I'm thinking of making is to have the computer mute itself at the start of my nap, and then unmute itself to play the music. This way, if someone IMs me while I'm asleep, I won't hear it (this hasn't happened yet, but I suspect it would be rather troublesome). Here's a tip I didn't take seriously at first, but one that now seems definitely worth it: keep a list of stuff you want to accomplish. I have found that I remind myself that I have lots of time later on do to important things, so I can fritter away my time playing bridge and reading stuff on the internet. So far, however, I've accomplished very little that actually has some substance to it: a couple coding problems for the Programming Practicum class I'm taking, and that's about it. I'm gonna go start that list... (Comment on this)
12:05 pm	Day 1 - my first real fall When people told me it's hard to get up after a nap during this first week, I had totally underestimated them! This morning, if you can call it that, I woke up from my 3:30 nap (I'd bumped it back from 4:00 because I'm still trying to adjust) in the usual way. Before I go to sleep, I turn the volume on my computer up a little and run the command "sleep 1200; xmms --play" which tells the computer to wait 20 minutes and then turn on some music. Isn't Linux great? Anyway, when I woke up, I was feeling absolutely awful, and set it to give me another 10 minutes of sleep. When I woke up from that, I did it again. I don't remember anything after setting it for a second 10-minute extension, until I woke up at 11:30 to the music still playing. Once I'm up and going, I seem to be fine, but getting up this week is going to be pretty difficult. If I can remember that it's really important to actually get up, I suspect I can do it, but that sounds pretty hard to remember whan I'm barely conscious. I've heard that the second day is the worst, but with this slip-up, I fear tomorrow or the next day might be like this too. (Comment on this)
1:32 am	Day 0.5 Perhaps I am not as coherent as I think. My circadian rhythm is still trying to do its thing, so I am again quite tired at night, and have already taken 3 naps in the past 6 hours. I was just talking to Mac out in the hallway, and it became apparent that my conversation skills were not up to their usual par. However, I could carry on alright, and did not drift off at all while we were watching Jeeves and Wooster, even though I had already seen the episode. I suspect that right now I can manage being awake pretty well, but acting awake is a completely different matter. However, this first week is going much better than I expected (what little of the week I have seen so far). (2 Comments |Comment on this)
Wednesday, November 23rd, 2005
7:56 pm	Day 0 I began last night. I was already rather sleep deprived from staying up far too late for several nights in a row, which was both a blessing and a curse. It made last night really hard, because whenever I went to bed, I wanted to sleep a really long time, and when I woke up, I was tired and groggy. However, this afternoon I had an absolutely fantastic nap - it was apparently exactly one sleep cycle, and I woke up refreshed and invigorated. Now, two hours later, I'm definitely feeling the effects, and wearing out. However, it just feels like I've been pulling another all-nighter, so it's certainly bearable. Here's what I've heard: The first week and a half is hell, but after that everything works out ok. I can't comment on this yet. At the beginning, it's alright to take longer naps, and to take naps more often. I haven't found this to be the case so far, but it's still too early to come to any conclusions. Perhaps this was part of my problem last night: I tried 30-minute naps, and was in the middle of a sleep cycle when I woke up, and then tried going back to bed an hour later, so I stayed groggy all night. You're going to mess up and sleep in towards the beginning. It seems like everyone messes up at the beginning, so don't let it get to you; just pick yourself up and keep going. Start this in a sleep deprived state. This is one I've added myself. The others I know who started this couldn't nap the first day because they had recently gotten a good night's sleep. I didn't, and had a lovely nap on my first day. More to come soon! (Comment on this)