The Everyman Polyphasic Sleep Journal #1
Wednesday I started a sleep routine called The Everyman. The idea is that you have a core sleep each night that is 3–3.5 hours and then you take three 20-minute naps during the day.
In hindsight, it probably would have made sense to start to journal every day to explain how I was doing.
I didn’t do that, though, so starting now. Probably will write every few days and recap what has been going on.
Why Everyman?
For a bit of context on The Everyman:
The idea is that during the 3 hour core sleep each night, we are supposed to experience SWS sleep, which rests our body. Then for each nap, we’re supposed to have REM sleep that rests our mind. I’m including a few articles/forums below if you’re interested in learning more since they’re much more coherent than I could be.
In short, though, once your body adjusts, you’re supposed to have the same (or more) energy under this sleep cycle. Plus you have a bunch of extra time each day.
A few articles:
First four days
I’m writing this at around midnight on day and night #4. So I have gone 4 nights and days doing this sleep schedule.
The time that you take your core and your naps can be different for everyone, but for the purposes of adjustment, it’s important to stay consistent. I’m basically training my body to be able to fall asleep at 5:30 PM for 20 minute and do it super efficiently. So if I deviate a lot from that time, the adjustment becomes hard.
My routine:
Core sleep: 2:30–5:30/6 AM
Nap #1: 9:35–9:55 AM
Nap #2: 5:35–5:55 PM
Nap #3: 9:35–9:55 PM
I’m leaving such a large gap between nap 1 and 2 because I have classes between 10–5:30 between my Mon/Weds and Tues/Thurs schedules.
Regardless, sitting here at midnight, I’m feeling pretty high in energy. To reflect on the first four days, I would, in short, say it has been an extremely positive experience.
The Cons
There have been times when I have been very tired. Waking up in the morning is a bit difficult, but I’m doing this with a friend and each morning (we’re on the same core schedule) we text each other to make sure we’re both awake. Knowing that he’s going through the same thing, on top of my motivation to try this thing out has made it not too bad to get up in the mornings. The readings show that you’re supposed to sleep between 3 and 3.5 hours for the core. So I have been setting an alarm at 3 hours and then another at 3.5. Almost each day, I barely remember the first alarm and then have gotten up at or close to before the second one.
The rationale here is that you want to go through 2 full sleep cycles, so giving yourself that window allows you to wake up alert.
That being said, the mornings have definitely been the most difficult part. I have been waking up and been very low energy. I am not one to typically wake up very early, and being up at 6 is a big struggle. I find myself to be very inefficient in the mornings. I don’t want to do anything. Am slow to actually get out of bed, and so on. By the time it’s about 8, I have been getting some energy and between 8 and my first nap at 9:30 I’ve been able to do work (or whatever else I want) at a pretty high energy level.
Then between 10 and my nap at 5:30, I have been a lot more functional than I thought. The idea is not to use caffeine in this process so it doesn’t mess up your naps, but given that I have that 7.5 hour break, I am considering trying some coffee in that span. Haven’t yet, though, and have been able to function pretty normally.
There are moments each day during that time when my brain turns a bit to mush, but I haven’t really struggled with being able to keep my eyes open, and I have been overwhelmingly productive. Being in the middle of the day when there’s a lot going on definitely helps.
I have been hitting a decent sized wall around 4 PM most days and powering through until 5:30 has been a bit difficult. But I have been able to do so relatively well. Then the nap has been great, and from there getting to 9:30 hasn’t been too bad. I think around 8 I hit another small wall, but not to the point where I can’t do anything. Then after the nap at 9:30 I am pretty good until around 1 AM at which point I hit another sort of mental block that I get out of around 2 AM.
These walls/mental blocks that I’m hitting are where I feel low energy and have a hard time focusing. I couldn’t do work that requires high levels of cognitive awareness. But, I’m not sitting there falling asleep either.
Food
I have found myself to be eating more food over the past few days. Being awake for more hours, and having less self control makes it harder to not eat. I have had the mindset that’s like “oh well, it’s just temporary” so I haven’t tried to fight my urges much. But, I did more of that today and had my best day in terms of eating since I have started.
Exercising
I went for a 15-minute run on Friday and played in a soccer game today. Other than that I haven’t worked out since I started because I want all of my reserve energy to go towards my body being able to function and not towards muscle recovery. I’m hoping as I adjust more that I’ll be able to get back into my workouts. I’m someone who loves to workout, so not being able to do so makes me a bit more sad and less energized each day.
The pros
I’ve had a lot more energy than I expected I would. Waking up from the core sleep and naps isn’t necessarily easy, but it’s bearable. And during the day I’ve been able to have conversations, do work, be around people, be active, even party a little bit.
I’ve also felt a lot less stress or anxiety since I started. This one is kind of weird, but I tend to be someone that thinks about the next thing or the other things that I have to do when I’m in a given scenario. So maybe it’s the fact that I know I have more hours in the day to do what I need, maybe that I just haven’t had that much to do, or maybe that I’m subconsciously too tired to be anxious, but regardless, I have found myself happier in that respect since I started.
Everyone wants to talk about it.
It’s easy to tell people that I’m taking on this challenge and it’s a good conversation starter, but now everyone that I have told that I see wants to talk about it. So having the same conversations over and over is getting a bit old. Maybe I’ll redirect people to this blog post ;)
Caveats
I’m not convinced that the amount energy that I have is a result of whatever I had in some weird storage and not the fact that this type of sleep cycle is sort of working. It’s only been 4 days, so it’s unclear. I think today and yesterday were about the same difficulty so I couldn’t allude to whether it is getting easier or harder. Hopefully tomorrow will be a better indicator.
My first day of this was on Thursday when I had class, but I don’t really have classes Friday, so the other three days have been the weekend, which has also most likely made it easier.
Final Thoughts
The naps have been getting easier to take. I’m definitely not falling into REM for each nap, but they are very rejuvenating.
Doing this with someone else has also been crucial. On my own, it would be quite a bit more difficult.
How is it affecting me long term? Of course it’s been just 4 days, but if I were to continue, who knows.
I see the sustainability of this
I could be totally disillusioned, but the way that my schedule is set up, I see a way in which I would be able to sustain this type of routine and for it to become better. My naps have been awesome and I’m not even sleeping that deeply. If I can overcome my struggles in the morning, and then improve the naps, I’m pretty optimistic about being able to make this thing work.
This has been fun :) more journals to come.
For reference
