As of today it has been 13 days since I finished the HSC. The first week of holidays felt so slow, like a month, and now the second has felt like a day. I’ve been away in the past few days and will be away in the next few days, so I’m expecting to do pretty poorly in the CH LAN on Sunday (I’ll be coming back home Saturday afternoon). But it’s okay. After that, no real commitments so I can play a ton of games. Well, I have to get my L’s eventually and probably go find a job but … I’ll worry about those later. Plenty of time for that.
I feel like my mechanics are kind of back to where they were before I took the break from SC2, but I’m still doing stupid things like forgetting my second pylon every now and then. But it’s okay. Just need more games.
I’m not really posting much on SC2SEA anymore, maybe because there hasn’t been much going on in the replay feedback thread. But rest assured, I’m still lurking, following the silly dramas that have been going on and other SEA news. I have a long way to go before I can catch up.
I'm yet to play in any online tournament, somehow managed to miss them all. But I'm looking forward to playing in the next few wT weekly's and whatever else comes up.
Anyway, I’ve been trying out biphasic sleep and it’s working (4.5 hours major sleep episode + 1.5 hour nap later in the day, 6 hours of sleep every day). I honestly thought it would be pretty hard to transition into a new sleeping pattern, but I haven’t really had any major problems at all. The main reason I wouldn’t recommend it would be that it’s kind of boring when you’re the only one awake and there’s nothing to do. Or maybe being awake really really late might disturb other monophasic sleepers in the house.
So I’ve been staying up to 4am most nights, sometimes streaming sc2, and waking up before 9am. It’s cool. There's just something really awesome going to sleep later than other people but still waking up before them.
I’ve been keeping a log.
Day 1
6 hour sleep was fine. in fact, i actually ended up waking naturally after 4.5 hours but decided to go back to sleep for one more 90min cycle. alarm went off at the right time and it was easy to get up.
People were saying that the 4.5 / 1.5 cycle is better so I’m going to be doing that. 4.5 hours tonight. I had a 1.5 hour nap today and it took me too long to drift into sleep, so the alarm ended up going off before the sleep cycle ended. Felt so tired and decided to sleep overtime a little.
I realise that I should ease the transition into biphasic sleep a little, so what I’ll be doing is alternating 4.5/6 hours every night for now. Once I get used to that, I’ll start sleeping 4.5 every night only, and that will be another transition period.
Summary: 6 hours + 1.75 hours, feeling exceptionally normal.
Day 2
Got exactly 4.5 hours sleep. Not easy to get up, but not impossible. Took a minute. Feels kind of normal at the moment, probably going to get pretty bad later in the day. But I’m not expecting this to be easy, otherwise everyone would be doing it.
I think waking up at around 9 as opposed to past 12 might even be better for me, since I can maintain some resemblance of breakfast-lunch-dinner.
//
Still feeling ordinary later in the day, but I think it’s time to nap. If this all works out maybe I’ll try one of the more extreme sleeping patterns.
//
Cat wakes me up a few minutes before alarm. But the sleep cycle was finished anyway and I feel completely normal anyway. Thanks, cat.
I was expecting to be tired. I think I’ll sleep 4.5 again tonight instead of 6.
Summary: 4.5 hours + 1.5 hours
Day 3
Got 4.5 hours of sleep. Then didn’t get up and overslept 2 hours. Oops.
I’m feeling really awake, I might just skip the 1.5 hour nap today.
//
Didn’t have the 1.5 hour nap. Still feels normal. Might be the coke. We’ll see if I crash and burn tomorrow. Going to get 4.5 hours tonight for real this time.
So yeah. It works. I was expecting more of a transition period.
Summary: 6.5 hours + 0 hours. Normal.
Day 4
Cat woke me up about 2/3 into my third cycle. I didn’t like that. Ended up oversleeping about 20 mins to compensate. Feeling a bit tired. But awake. My eyes are a bit red.
After the first hour of waking up, felt just like normal. Took a while to start feeling alert, though.
Overslept the 1.5h nap because alarm failed. That’s okay.
Sleeping is a lot more enjoyable when you need it. Instead of going to sleep while still feeling awake and taking a while to drift off, I can go to sleep feeling tired and it’s nice.
Summary: 4.8 hours + 2 hours. Kind of tired. Maybe I needed the nap yesterday.
Day 5
4.5 hours. No difficulty getting up. Probably easier getting up now than when I got 8 hours because I have a reason to get up.
Didn’t feel too tired for the whole day. It didn’t take too long to start the 1.5 hour nap, which went perfectly.
Summary: 4.5 hours + 1.5 hours. Good.
Day 6
Slept a little bit after 6am, but still had 4.5 hours. Had a little bit of a headache when I got up but that went away after about 5 minutes.
Had nap early at like 3:30 and overslept about 30 mins. I think I read something before that people doing the uberman sleeping pattern (20 mins every 4 hours, 2 hours sleep total per day) shouldn’t be having big meals because it messes around with sleep. Maybe this kind of applies to biphasic sleep as well and I shouldn’t be eating more and lighter meals, instead of fewer and heavier meals.
Summary: 4.5 hours + 2 hours.
Day 7
Slept a little bit after 2am and had 4.5 hours (had to sleep and wake up earlier because today was sign-out day. Good bye, high school. You’ve shaped me into who I am today and I’m proud). I’ve noticed that in the mornings my eyes are a bit red. I guess this is the first drawback of biphasic sleep for me. But this might also be because I spend so much time on the computer. We’ll see if it stops.
Tonight I will sleep 8 hours because tomorrow is the year 12 formal.
Overslept the 1.5 hour nap again. I’ve been using online alarm clocks because I don’t want to keep resetting my real life alarm twice a day. The online alarm clocks don’t work as well as my real life one.
Summary: 4.5 hours + 2 hours
Day 8
Got my 8 hours. Was pleased that I actually woke up naturally after 4.5, but went back to sleep. About an hour ago I made the spontaneous decision to go to schoolies from tomorrow (Saturday) to Tuesday, and there’s probably no reason to biphasic sleep during this period because being the only one awake is only fun if you have a computer. So just going to natural sleep it for Day9 to 11. Might ruin the transition period, but seriously it doesn’t feel like there was even a transition period. I just jumped straight into biphasic sleep and everything was fine.
Summary: 8 hours + 0 hours
Day 9-11
8 hours every day. It was fun. I think I might be going back for a couple of days until Saturday. So that means it will be like one whole week without consistent biphasic sleep. I guess it’s going to mess up the whole sleep transition, but it’s okay. Maybe this is one of those things I can just do on and off since the transition period seemed almost non-existent for the first week.
Day 12
Finding it pretty hard to remember how many days of biphasic sleep it has been. Maybe it’s time to start doing these things updates every week instead of every day.
Waking up after 4.5 hours of sleep was pretty hard after skipping it for 4 days. Felt pretty tired and had my nap pretty early. Overslept like an hour but it's okay. I’m not going to be biphasic sleeping the next few days anyway.
Sounds real interesting
Just finished my last uni exam yesterday which I promptly left very quickly without filling much in because I just couldn't take it anymore.
Woke up in a house I'm not familiar with, dog sleeping at my feet with 4.5 hours sleep, may catch up on that nap later to fix me right up. I think there's gonna be some good old changes around my parts of town now that uni is gone.
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The Chad is great!
whats the goal behind only having 4.5 hours sleep every night?
i can't see that being a positive thing in the long run but would love to hear from you regarding what the benefits are and some of the science involved.
Furthermore are you doing any excercise whislt maintaining this sleep pattern? Can you remain focusd throughout the day?
More time to.... Sit around and do nothing?
I couldn't see anything like this being anywhere near healthy in the long run, but I guess trying it out doesn't hurt. :P
Good luck getting back into sc2! You've already beaten me like the day after you came back to sc2, so you're obviously much better than I am xD
I think that this will only work if you don't have anything to do when it comes to your nap time. When is your nap happening? I mean if it is early afternoon, why nap then when you could be doing lots of other stuff. One advantage of sleeping in one go for 6 hours, say from 00:30 to 06h30 is that you get it done in one go and it leaves the rest of the day for getting ready for work, going to work, coming home from work, eating, doing chores in the late afternoon, having fun up to midnight (including hobbies or whatever) and then going to sleep again. If you are a shift worker or something, or maybe you just love/ need to be awake at 4am but hate being awake at say 3pm, then this makes sense because you are asleep when you have nothing else to do and awake when you want to do stuff.
I guess my question is why you wouldn't rather just sleep for 6 hours in one go and get it over and done with in one step? Your sleep is likely to be deeper with one longer sleep anyway, rather than 2 more superficial sleep cycles. The fact that your body is naturally taking you out of that other cycle already tells me it is not really working for you.
not sure if anyone is going to read this because it's a late reply, but:
@Delraich, if it's in one go I have to sleep for 8 hours per day. Biphasic sleep makes it possible to sleep 6 hours per day, just not all at once. Since school is over, the times that I am awake doesn't really matter anymore, so I'm just doing it for the extra two hours in a day. When I said that my body naturally took me out of sleep I meant that when I tried to sleep for 8 hours like a normal person I woke up after 4.5 hours without an alarm as if I was biphasic sleeping. This means my body is kind of used to it, and that biphasic sleep is working for me.
@Malice, more time to play sc2!
@Rossi, I don't know exactly how it works, but it's essentially splitting sleep into two phases per day and sleeping for less hours overall. 4.5 hours at night is enough to last me for a bit over half of the day, and then the 1.5 hour nap is enough for the rest. The main benefit is time I guess. I'm not doing any heavy exercise, just a jog around the street every day. I can remain focused during the day, it feels the same as normal sleep except sometimes I get tired in the mornings for an hour or so.
*****
I haven't actually been biphasic sleeping at the right times in the last week, but I'm planning to do it consistently for as long as I can starting from today.
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