Krakadorn Revisited

Every day, in every part of the world, a miracle rises in the east. This mundane miracle still has the power to inspire feelings of reverential awe, whether witnessed in Croydon or in the Kalahari, by truck drivers or by coyotes.

The power of this miracle isn’t diminished by its reliable regularity; the subtleties of light and reflection, and seasonal astrological variation, project a new show every day. This show costs nothing, only a brief moment of our time. This show starts every day: dawn.

Awe is readily provided by such mundane miracles of nature, but the abundant miracles of nature are rarely sought out. We spend more time snoring than sitting up and watching the sun rise over the river. We are more likely to squabble over the cereal or elbow each other for sparse train seats, than we are to shut our eyes and allow the morning sun to burn the inside of our eyelids crimson.

Such awe is good for you. According to a 2012 Stanford University study, an experience of awe makes us less impatient, more altruistic and less materialistic. By expanding our perception of time, and confronting us with infinity, awe brings us sharply into the present moment and that mindfulness makes life more satisfying.

The miracle of the dawn has been thrown into the shade by the invention of the electrical light. We have no need to revere the sun like our ancestors did. But, as practical as the electrical light is for those works of drudgery that define human life, it does not inspire awe like the dawn.

That is why, last night, I set my alarm for 4:46. That is why, when that alarm awoke me, I stumbled out into the glimmering half-waked world.

I walked for ten quiet minutes and found my awe.

On the banks of the Thames, I filled my lungs with this morning’s new air, cleaned and refreshed by the cool nighttime. I watched the river flow past on its journey from the beginning of time to the end of infinity, while a star ninety-three million miles away danced its dawn over the water’s peaks.

A fox snuck by and then I snuck to bed once more.

End Notes:

My original 2008 Krakadorn experiment: 40 days of getting up at the crack o’ dawn.

Rudd, Vohs, Aaker (2012) Awe Expands People’s Perception of Time,  Alters Decision Making, and Enhances Well-Being

Sleep Long: Be Awesome

Sleep 10 hours or more every night and you will reap huge benefits on your physical and mental performance and, not surprisingly, you’ll feel great! (You’ll also be less likely to get fat and die…)

Now, I’m not just making this up – science told me. Volume 34, Issue 7 of Sleep, in fact. More precisely, a snappily titled article, “The Effects of Sleep Extension on the Athletic Performance of Collegiate Basketball Players”.

A-ha. Basketball players, you notice. Yes, the fact that their free throw and 3-point field goal percentages both increased by 9%, might seem to be rather sport-specific, but they were also faster in sprints and had faster reaction times. Not only that, but their mood was also elevated, with increased vigour and decreased fatigue and the players reported increased physical and mental well-being.

That’s the carrot, anyway. So why not try to sleep a couple of hours longer at night for a couple of weeks and see what happens? It might be hard at first, but persevere.

And if you prefer the stick to the carrot:

  • Short sleep duration is associated with obesity
  • Short sleep duration is associated with greater risk of death

Off you go now – to bed with you!


You can access the articles here:
Sleep extension benefits: http://www.journalsleep.org/ViewAbstract.aspx?pid=28194
Sleep and obesity: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18239586
Sleep and mortality: http://www.journalsleep.org/ViewAbstract.aspx?pid=27780

How to Prevent Jet Lag

I love the logic of this trick!

The brain has two body clocks: one in the “old” and one in the “new” brain.

  • The new brain body clock works on natural light patterns. This clock can only shift about 2 hours a day. That’s why it gets thoroughly confused when we cross the planet and the sun is rising at half past midnight.
  • The old brain body clock, however, works to make sure you are awake when food is around. If we were always asleep at dinner time, we wouldn’t live very long.

Normally, the new brain is in charge, but there is a way to switch over to the old brain: by throwing our bodies into survival mode.

How do we do that? By starving ourselves.

Okay, that’s a bit dramatic, but apparently it takes about 16 hours of fasting before the old brain body clock will take over, believing food to be scarce.

So if you’re flying from San Francisco to London, take a meal at the usual time in San Francisco, say, breakfast at 8.00am, then don’t eat anything at all until the next appropriate meal time in London, say, breakfast the next day at 8.00pm. Your body will switch onto the old brain and register the body clock time as “breakfast”: exactly what you want.

Sleep, Meditation and Dreaming

The Rise of Meditation in the West

Meditation in the West has seen a burst of popularity since the 1960s. An Australian survey in 2002 found that 11% of people in Western Australia have practised meditation at least once in their lives. A 2007 government study in the United States found that 9.4% of people there had practised meditation at some time.

The positive medical benefits for meditation have also recently been documented. The BBC (all hail!) have reported that meditation can reduce blood pressure and ease heart disease as well as actually changing the physical structure of the brain. Cool.

So why is meditation not more a part of Western life? Why is it still seen as an Eastern technique, most often associated with India? Could it be something to do with our sleeping patterns?

What?

Yes, our sleeping patterns. Specifically, our sleeping patterns since the Industrial Revolution.

Before the Light Bulb

In Britain (in the south, so the best case scenario) we spend over half our time without the sun. Roughly 51% of our hours are night. 250 years ago that meant almost total darkness.

Of course there were candles and we could light fires, but open fires were dangerous in our expanding wood-built towns and candles were expensive for most people. Gas lighting was still to be developed.

In the summer, we have about 8 hours of darkness, if we put sunset at about 9.00pm and sunrise at about 5.00am. In the winter, however, we have about 16 hours of darkness, with sunset around 4.00pm and sunrise at 8.00am.

If you can imagine this time 250 years ago, you would be in darkness from the mid-afternoon to the morning. What could you do? You couldn’t read or write, you couldn’t watch television, you couldn’t go outside for a walk to the pub. You couldn’t really do much at all (unless you were a thief) except go to bed or sit around in the dark and chat. For 16 hours a day.

Industrial Sleep

Since the industrial revolution and the explosion in light bulb usage, sleeping patterns in Britain have changed. Sleeping seven or eight hours a night all year round is the norm now – but it never used to be.

When the sun went down, it used to get dark. Now we have lights in our houses, on our streets, we like to relax in the evening with a film. And all this light has done something a little funny: we think it’s summer all year round.

Remember the 8 hours of darkness we get in summer? Isn’t that suspiciously similar to the hours most people sleep? You could call it the minimum that humans have evolved to live with; and that’s what we regulate ourselves to have by using electric lighting in the evenings.

As the chronobiologist Charles A. Czeisler says:

“Every time we turn on a light we are inadvertently taking a drug that affects how we will sleep.”

Pre-Industrial Sleep

Without the miracles of electric lighting, our ancestors spent 51% of their lives in darkness. They couldn’t do much, but they could at least sleep properly.

In fact, there was so much time to kill, that people would have two sleeps: first sleep and second sleep. The first sleep might be from evening until after midnight and then second sleep from the early morning until sunrise – or when the farmer came a-knocking.

But what happened between first and second sleeps? Well, that’s where the meditation comes in. There wasn’t any reason to be fully awake (except to go to the toilet or have sex) so people drifted into this twilight zone of “meditation”. I put it in quotation marks because no one deliberately induced this state: it happened naturally.

First sleep was deep, restful sleep with a burst of dreaming before waking for the first time. Then it was followed by a period of quiet “meditation” before second sleep, which was characterised by more dreaming.

And that was natural.

Can We Still Do This?

Yes we can. Even today, if we are deprived of light for fourteen hours a day, we start to sleep in two shifts. Dr Thomas Wehr did an experiment to test this. After four weeks of acclimatisation to the regime, this is the sleep pattern his subjects showed:

  1. Lie awake in bed for two hours.
  2. Sleep for four.
  3. Awake again for two to three hours of quiet rest and reflection.
  4. Fall back asleep for four more hours.
  5. Wake for good.

The question now is: why would we want to do this? Who’s got fourteen hours to waste on sleep?

The Power of Dreams and Meditation

That middle segment of wakefulness is not just sitting around in bed. It is characterised by an altered state of consciousness, neither awake nor asleep, where confused thoughts wander at will, like dreams, and people feel content. This brain-state is very similar to the state reported by people who meditate regularly.

That period of “meditation” allows the sleeper to examine their dreams without the pressures of the day to worry about. How many people these days lounge around in bed, pondering their dreams – if they can remember them at all? No, most people have to get up and go to work, which breaks the spell.

But dreams and quiet meditation are powerful tools. Half-controlled, half-random, dreams offer easy access to suppressed emotions and unexpected thoughts. We can visit old friends, talk to dead relatives, travel in foreign lands, have new experiences and remember old ones.

This period of quiet meditation allows new thoughts to come to the surface, it allows our minds to shuffle through the events of the previous day and to put everything into perspective. “I’ll sleep on it,” is a common saying that reflects this.

The night-time also has a reputation as the “mother of thoughts”. Many artists and creative thinkers report that dreams or sleep in general is the best time for generating new ideas. With a double shift sleep pattern, dreaming, waking and meditation is built in to the system. Twice over.

A Experiment in Double Shift Sleep Patterns

So I tried it (of course). I know that Dr Wehr’s subjects needed four weeks to get into this pattern, but that didn’t stop me trying. The idea that our sleep is supposed to be broken also takes the pressure off. If you wake up in the middle of the night, it’s no bad thing. It’s natural.

So last night I tried it. I went to bed at about half eight in the evening and didn’t get out of bed until about nine in the morning. A good solid twelve hours of rest.

And I did sleep in two shifts. The first was until about three in the morning. Then I simply lay in bed (after checking the cricket score…) pondering the dreams I’d just had. Then I fell asleep again after a while and woke at about half past eight. I then stayed in bed just thinking about the night’s dreaming and got out of bed at nine.

I won’t bore you with my dreams, but suffice to say that I remember them still, twelve hours later. They were dramatic and exciting and perhaps even revealing. I’m going to try again tonight.

Conclusion

On average, we spend 10% of our lives dreaming between 100,000 and 200,000 dreams. That’s an awful lot. I can’t remember too many. One reason for that is that I sleep through too many of them. If I start sleeping in two shifts, like my ancestors used to, then I’ll remember way more. I really appreciate my dreams and the alternate reality that they allow me. Maybe I’ll understand them better, maybe I’ll understand myself better. Maybe I’ll just get a few more stories out of it.

“Let the Night teach us what we are, and the Day what we should be.”

Thomas Tryon, Wisdom’s Dictates (London, 1691)

References

Sleep We Have Lost: Pre-industrial Slumber in the British Isles by A. Roger Ekirch:
http://www.historycooperative.org/journals/ahr/106.2/ah000343.html

Modern Life Suppresses An Ancient Body Rhythm By Natalie Angier, March 14, 1995:
http://www.nytimes.com/1995/03/14/science/modern-life-suppresses-an-ancient-body-rhythm.html?pagewanted=print&src=pm

Various BBC reports on meditation:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/1847442.stm
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/410003.stm
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/7319043.stm
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/8363302.stm

How to be Amazingly Happy!

Here’s a list of the most pleasurable (legal) things humans can do:

  • Have sex.
  • Suck on a piece of dark chocolate (minimum 60% cocoa).
  • Have a relaxed lunch with a friend.
  • Learn something new.
  • Go shopping!
  • Use your sense of smell – really sniff that flower!
  • Do some gardening.
  • Cook.
  • Sit in silence.
  • Go fishing (aka sit in silence).
  • Play or listen to music.
  • Go for a walk (or any form of exercise).
  • Trust others.
  • Have a nap.
  • Dream (including lucid dreams).

Just for the sake of completion: yes, certain drugs are also extremely pleasurable, but remember how harmful they can be – and just because something is less harmful than heroin doesn’t mean it’s safe!

Also realise that your use of drugs could give you such a massive high that real life just doesn’t seem that great any more. I’m being serious: a cocaine high can increase dopamine levels by 300-700%, compared to the 100% dopamine increase during sex – and you don’t even want to think about what amphetamines can do. Just remember that dopamine is involved in the wanting (i.e. addiction) rather than the liking (i.e. pleasure).

Cool, now I sound like your dad.

This list is compiled from Sex, Drugs and Chocolate: The Science of Pleasure by Paul Martin.

Hypnagogia: How to Dream like Thomas Edison

As I mentioned in yesterday’s article on How to Sleep, Thomas Edison used Stage 1 of the natural sleep cycle – AKA hypnagogia –  to come up with insanely creative ideas for new inventions.

He would take a cat-nap in a chair with steel balls in his hands and, as he drifted off and relaxed, the balls would drop (as it were), waking him and more often than not he’d have a new idea for research.

Edison had attained what is known as the hypnagogic state. Hypnagogia is just a fancy Greek word for the transition from wakefulness to sleep: Stage 1 of the sleep cycle. Please note that hypnagogia is NOT sleep: it is precisely the point between sleep and wakefulness. This is important.

The hypnagogic state is characterised by alpha-theta brainwaves and can lead to lucid dreaming, out-of-body experiences, hallucinations and sleep paralysis. Normally we would not recall any of these experiences because normally our body continues in the sleep cycle and we pass into Stage 2 and so on through the cycle.

If we recall dreams, they are usually from the REM stage of sleep. If, however, we are woken, like Edison, during this first phase then we are very likely to recall our dreams or hallucinations.

With practice we can learn to balance on the edge of sleep and wakefulness and even to control our hallucinations to a certain degree. We can use the hypnagogic state to boost our creativity, to reduce stress and to energise our mind and body.

How to Induce a Hypnagogic State

You’ve probably already experienced a hypnagogic state. Think of times when you’ve been drifting off and had some vivid dreams or hallucinations – but not fallen asleep.

Try to remember the details of where you were, what you were doing and what time of day it was when you had the experience.

Then simply set up those conditions again and this time try to induce the state deliberately. Perhaps it was after a meal at lunchtime, perhaps it was in the library, leaning back on a chair in the sunshine, perhaps it was listening to the radio in the early morning.

I find public transport is good: you can’t fall asleep totally and there is plenty of background noise to provide stimulus.

Here are some more tips:

  • Hypnagogia is about observing the mind as it descends into Stage 1 sleep. Therefore, the two prerequisites are drowsiness AND an effort to think. Just drowsiness and you risk falling asleep; just an effort to think and your mind will stay awake. It is the effort to think that makes it possible to ‘observe’ the consciousness of your subconscious mind.
  • Therefore, don’t try it when you are tired. Late night hypnagogia will probably just lead to full-on sleep.
  • If you think that sleep is a risk, don’t use your bed. If you do use your bed, perhaps prop yourself up with a pillow to avoid sleep.
  • Follow Thomas Edison’s guide. Get yourself some steel balls and an armchair. Another one I’ve heard is a teaspoon and a plate. Hold the teaspoon in your hand and put the plate on the floor underneath. You’ll wake when you muscles relax and the teaspoon drops onto the plate.
  • Try setting your alarm for 30 minutes earlier in the morning and then try to ‘doze’, try to balance between sleep and wakefulness until it is time for you to get up.
  • You can use the snooze alarm on your clock to make sure you don’t go into sleep.
  • The afternoon nap is another classic opportunity for hypnagogia.
  • The brain works in roughly 90 minute high activity cycles, each followed by a 20 minute low activity cycle. If you can, work for 90 minutes and then try a burst of hypnagogia.
  • Stage 1 of sleep only lasts about five minutes. If you wake up after twenty, you’ve probably been asleep.
  • Relax, close your eyes, but stay watchful, observe yourself drifting off.
  • Try concentrating on the changing patterns of your mind as you drop off. Don’t think about what you are thinking about (i.e. work, the kids, etc.), but just observe the way in which your thinking is changing, a change in consciousness perhaps.
  • For me, there’s a point where I feel the body go numb (sleep paralysis) and then I know that in a few seconds my mind will dip into subconscious activity. If I don’t fall asleep, I know that I will be able to observe this state.
  • Be patient. At first this will seem like an odd thing to be doing and you will probably struggle to enter a hypnagogic state. Keep trying, but don’t force it.

See Jennifer Dumpert’s Liminal Dreaming for more hypnagogic dreaming exercises.

Using Hypnagogia for Creativity

Many artists, writers, mystics, philosophers and scientists have used hypnagogia to break through creative brick walls. These have included Aristotle, the Greek philosopher; Robert Desnos, the French surrealist poet; Edgar Allan Poe, the American writer; Isaac Newton, the English scientist; and Beethoven, the German composer.

Observed hypnagogia can inspire not just images and sounds, but also present flashes of insight and, occasionally, genius. I’ll never forget the time my hypnagogic state constructed an entirely new way of presenting data, unlike anything else I’ve ever seen. Shame I don’t work with data, really!

Hypnagogic states are highly creative. They are extremely productive, packing a high density of ideas into a short period of time. They are extremely novel, throwing together ideas and thoughts that might never have occured to you otherwise. They express the incredible flexibility of the mind. They are more complex than you can grasp in a wakeful state. They transform existing objects into something totally new.

But the best part is that we all have access to this state. We can do it as much as we like without doing harm to ourselves and it will become more productive the more we use it.

Think again of Thomas Edison. Was he a particularly innovative inventor? Or was he just some guy who napped a lot? The two go hand in hand. Walk hand in hand with your unconscious, work together.

Control Your Experience

As you develop your ability to enter a hypnagogic state, you can start to try and do more with these experiences. You can’t directly control the hallucinations, but you can try to suggest things to the mind.

It is important that you remain relaxed. Just let it happen, whatever it is. Anxiety will provoke your alarm systems and you will wake up. The hallucination is in control just as much as you.

Record Your Experience

Of course, the hypnagogic experience is just an entertainment unless you make an attempt to record it. If you want to make something creative out of the hallucination then you must rehearse and write it down immediately afterwards, while you are still in the afterglow of the experience, otherwise it will fade quickly and vanish.

Another way to record the experience is to learn to verbally report the images as they are happening using a dictaphone. This is not easy to do in the beginning because it uses the analytical side of the brain, which is inherently wakeful, but it can be done.

Verbal reporting can take place as long as you don’t search for words, grammar or intellectual concern for the expression of abstract ideas. This means that you can record more directly the images and ideas, rather than scrabbling for a pen immediately afterwards.

Ease the Pressure to be ‘Creative’

Inspiration gained from hypnagogic states can also be used to ease creative pressure on an artist and to deflate ego and arrogance. Because they are ideas that have arrived from an unconscious state, it is hard to take full credit for them. The creative process becomes more of a partnership between you and your ‘muse’.

Tom Waits is among the many artists who have found this a useful way of reducing the stress of public acclamation of his ‘talent’. He puts in his shift and his muse puts in hers. When the ideas arrive, he is ready to receive and works them up into songs or words. If the ideas don’t arrive, then it’s not his fault; he did his job and his muse simply failed to show up, maybe she will tomorrow.

Other Uses for Hypnagogia and Alternatives

Hypnagogia is not just good for unlocking the creative power of the brain, it is also beneficial in other ways. The relaxation of a hypnagogic state refreshes your mind and body and diminishes the apparent unpleasantness of painful stimuli.

The practice of hypnagogic observation doesn’t just conserve energy, it produces it. It also lowers blood pressure and oxygen consumption and leads to a decrease in heart rate and respiration. All of which is good for beating stress and stress-related illness.

Inducing a hypnagogic state is not the only way to get the benefits of theta brain-waves. The following are other alternatives (my experiments in brackets):

I encourage experimentation – but hypnagogia is a great option that’s relatively easy, fun and safe.

Hypnopompia

Hypnagogia has a partner: hypnopompia, the transition from sleep to wakefulness. Hypnopompia is probably the more common experience.

Most people quite often have this sort of hallucination in the mornings, especially if your alarm goes off early and you use the snooze button. It seems to be identical in brain-activity to hypnagogia, but of course happens at the end of the sleep cycle, when you are half-awake.

The downside: you can only do it once a day! Nevertheless, you might as well indulge when you can.

Bonus: A Theory of Dreaming

We have two brains, not one. We have an ‘old’ brain and a, relatively-speaking, ‘new’ brain and they’ve evolved one on top of the other in us humans. The old brain is for use in survival mode: there is no ‘ego’, it is totally animal. The new brain is what makes us uniquely human, this is where the ‘ego’ sits, our self-conscious mind.

Dreaming is a product of the old brain; it subsumes the ego totally. Babies almost exclusively use the old brain; they have no self-consciousness and have no concept of inner and outer worlds. As the new brain starts to take over we develop our self-conscious mind.

What is Wakefulness?

Dreaming is an activity independent of sleep. Brain activity observed during the dreams of REM sleep is identical to that observed during our (so-called) waking hours. Therefore you could characterise our waking state as REM dreaming plus direct sensory stimulus.

It is only with the development of the new brain that we have also developed the distinction between sleeping and wakeful states. The new brain grabs that sensory stimulus and takes over. The old brain is still doing its thing, but at the subconscious level, which we don’t often notice or pay attention to except in meditative states, day-dreaming or hypnagogia.

What is Sleep?

If the waking state is simply the REM dreaming of sleep plus an exterior sensory stimulus, then what is sleep? People deprived of REM sleep dream more in the NREM phases, people deprived of sleep altogether hallucinate.

Hallucination in the real world is dangerous; believing you can fly off that cliff, believing you are invincible and so on. Therefore, we need to secure a safe place to give ourselves over to dreaming, to give ourselves over to the old brain. That safe place is sleep.

We can only sleep when our surroundings are secure; we can’t sleep if we don’t feel safe, our panic buttons are pushed and we stay awake. Therefore sleep is simply a safe place where we can dream.

This idea has remarkable conclusions. If the wakeful state is simply REM dreaming plus sensory stimulus and sleep is simply a safe place for us to dream, then what are we? Dreamers I suppose.

Creativity as Dreaming

This makes sense. Humans need less sleep than other mammals. This could be because we are able to ‘let go’ in a wakeful state as well – through creative arts or daydreaming, for example. This explains why we can survive REM deprivation, whereas animals, cats for example, go crazy and die.

Our ability to relax and engage in dreaming activities means that we need less sleep and less sleepdreams. This also explains why napping during the day can reduce your need for nocturnal sleep.

Now: Experiment!

This is all fascinating and highly theoretical. Sleep and dreaming, especially hypnagogia, is not well-understood by anyone – and I certainly don’t claim to have the answers! All I hope is that I have given you something to think about, to investigate further and to experiment with in your own life.


The primary source for this article, particularly the section, A Theory of Dreaming, is a book by Andreas Mavromatis, Hypnagogia, published in 1987 by Routledge. This is still the standard work on hypnagogia (as far as I know).

Further Reading:

How to Sleep

The Sleep Habit

Sleep is a habit. Get into a good habit and your sleep will be good.

This fact translates into just one hard and fast rule:

Get out of bed within 30 minutes of the same time everyday. Every day.

That includes the weekend. This will make your body rhythms consistent and you will get good at sleeping the whole time you are in bed because your body will know that that is the time allocated to it for sleeping.

Equally this will mean that you will begin to feel tired around 8 hours before your wake up time. So go to bed then. Don’t fight your body.

It is a scientific fact that most people get most benefit out of sleeping the hours between 11pm and 7am. Don’t blame me if you like staying up later, I’m just saying.

Sleep Hygeine

And that’s pretty much all there is to it. However, there are some things that contribute to sleep, some things you can do to facilitate it and some things that you should avoid. These tips are called Sleep Hygiene.

1. Don’t use your bed (or bedroom if possible) for anything other than sleep. Your body will then get used to the equation Bed = Sleep and respond accordingly.

2. Read fiction before sleeping. This activates the right side of the brain and helps you switch off the hyperactive, analytical left side. This will particularly help you if you spend hours lying in bed thinking over problems and worrying about things. Whatever you do, do not read non-fiction. This will have the reverse effect and you brain will churn over the ideas all night.

3. Don’t take caffeine after lunch. Caffeine is a stimulant and takes around five hours to leave the body. Caffeine includes coffee, coke and chocolate.

4. Don’t drink alcohol either. It badly damages sleep quality. Have a drink at lunch time instead!

5. Don’t smoke. Nicotine is a stimulant and smokers get withdrawal symptoms during the night, disrupting sleep.

6. Get a bigger bed. Sleep is an activity. During the night we twist and turn – as shown by the state of the bedsheets in the morning! If you sleep with someone else then consider a king size. Seriously, people who sleep together, sleep worse.

7. Sleep in silence. If noise is a problem, then use earplugs or a white noise recording (you can find them on the internet or just detune a radio). A fan works as well, although you might dream that you’re flying through the wind.

8. Keep cool. Body temperature is crucial for sleep and therefore so is room temperature. Slightly cool works best. Make sure there is sufficient ventilation as well.

9. Don’t eat a meal in the three hours before your sleep time. But you could have a small snack high in tryptophan, calcium and carbohydrate like a roast turkey sandwich with a small glass of warm milk. Tryptophan promotes sleepiness, calcium facilitates the absorption of tryptophan and carbohydrates slow and clear the mind. Avoid proteins at all costs.

10. Avoid bright lights in the run up to bed time. Your body clock is set by daylight, so you’re just confusing it with bright electric lights. Dim the lights, or read with just a soft table lamp. Equally, eliminate light in the room when you are actually trying to sleep. You might have to use blackout curtains or a eye mask.

11. Listen to an audio book to help soothe you to sleep. I know someone who listened to a recording of Marcel Proust’s ‘Swann’s Way’ for a whole week and never got past the first few pages. However, put the player on a timer so that it doesn’t wake you up a few hours later.

12. Take a warm bath before going to bed. Sleep onset is encouraged by a drop in temperature. A warm (but not hot) bath will simulate this drop as the water evaporates off your skin. However, this is artificial and not normally necessary. Bear in mind that this artificial drop is followed not long after by a gradual rise in body temperature as you warm up again. This is not conducive to sleep – so jump into bed within 20 minutes after taking the bath.

13. Slow down your heart rate. In other words, try meditation or focus on your breathing. Whatever you do, do not take exercise in the 3 hours before you intend to sleep. This could mean no after work gym sessions.

14. On the other hand, do exercise during the day. As little as 30 minutes exercise will help you sleep at night. Hit the gym in the morning.

15. Do not do any stimulating activities before sleeping. This means television, surfing the internet or card games.

16. Avoid sleeping medicines. There is no substitute for natural sleep. If you are still having problems then make doubly sure you are keeping good, regular sleeping habits and go and see your doctor. Be careful.

Now I shall dig a little deeper into what sleep is and what it does for us.

The Stages of Sleep

Sleep is made up of several different phases:

Stage 1
This lasts around 2-5 minutes. It is distinctive for its Quasi-REM (dreaming without the eye movements), which is not well understood. This is the condition that Thomas Edison induced to help him with breakthroughs in his inventions. He used to sit in an armchair with two steel balls in his hands, resting on the arm rests. When he moved from dozing into deeper sleep, the balls would fall onto the floor and he’d wake up from his dreaming, often with a new idea.

Stage 2
The first stage of ‘proper’ sleep is characterised by a slowing of your heart rate and a drop in body temperature. This explains why these two changes can be used to induce sleep. Stage 2 sleep is important for increasing alertness, promoting motor learning as well as reasoning, planning, language, reflexes and social interaction.

Stages 3 and 4 = Slow wave sleep (SWS)
This is the deepest sleep that we have. If we wake up during this phase (thanks to an alarm or an irate policeman) then we will feel groggy. This is known as sleep inertia and has three solutions: go back to sleep for 20 minutes or so, engage in a physical activity or splash water on your face. During slow wave sleep our bodies stop producing stress hormone and boost our levels of growth hormone. We also metabolise fats, cholesterol and carbohydrates during this phase and our mental neurons stop firing. This phase will clear your mind, repair your body and improve your declarative memory (e.g. “The Fire of London was in 1666”).

Rapid Eye Movement (REM)
REM is the most glamorous phase of sleep, it is the time when we dream most deeply and memorably. Our blood pressure and heart rate go up and we pump 50% more blood to the brain which is firing neurons as if we were fully awake. REM sleep enhances our memories as our brains transfer information from short to long term memory. REM sleep also enhances creativity.

Sleep Cycles
It is not necessarily helpful to give approximate time lengths for the various stages of sleep because they vary a lot according to the human. For example, a male aged 20-29 years will spend about 21% of his sleep time in Slow Wave Sleep, a male aged 40-49 years about 8% and those aged 60-69 will spend just 2% in SWS. However, the average duration of a sleep cycle is about 90-100 minutes. This explains why humans average about 8 hours sleep a night, that is 5 full cycles.

So that’s it. Sleep isn’t a terrifically well-understood area of human activity, given that we spend about a third of our time engaged in the activity, but the tips above are a good start to sleeping well.


This article first appeared on the (now defunct) website, How to be Human. I hope it finds an appreciative audience here.

Online Polyphasic Resources

Here are some useful online resources if you want to find out more about polyphasic sleeping patterns.

About Polyphasic Sleep

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polyphasic_sleep

Real life experiences

Steve Pavlina’s experiment in 2005: http://www.stevepavlina.com/blog/2005/10/polyphasic-sleep/
PureDoxyk’s ongoing polyphasic life: http://www.puredoxyk.com/index.php/about-polyphasic-sleep/
Buckminster Fuller’s Dymaxion sleep pattern: http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,774680,00.html

The Science

Take a Nap! Change Your Life by Sara C. Mednick – Very interesting and accessible book about the joy of naps.

See Sara in this Google Author Talk in which she addresses the whole scope of the book and also a lot of very pertinent questions from the audience – including one about Uberman.

Community Resources

Polyphasic Google Group: http://groups.google.com/group/Polyphasic

Cognitive Testing Resources:
Reactions Test: http://cognitivelabs.com/alz_assoc_refertestpage2.htm
Simon Test: http://www.thepcmanwebsite.com/media/simon/
Typing Test: http://www.typingmaster.com.au/java/ttapplet.htm

Polyphasing Experiment: Conclusions

Things I achieved in the week:

  • Cleared out the loft.
  • Cleared out my bedroom – wardrobes, desk etc.
  • Threw out a load of clothes, books and general crap.
  • Sorted out my computer filing system.
  • Gave my website a complete overhaul.
  • Started a new money making venture.

Lessons learned:

  • I can sleep for 2 hours a day and still operate (more or less).
  • There are no serious side effects (I think!).
  • The limits of my endurance are much further than expected. I feel like I would be able to operate on 14 hours of sleep a week in extreme circumstances.
  • Sleep is something that can be trained and it can be modified to my own requirements: it’s not just a case of going to bed and waking up.
  • Naps are more important than I gave them credit for. The ability to nap every few hours to get through a night of work was a great feeling.
  • Without the habit of going to sleep for 8 hours straight I lost the sense of days passing. Time flowed constantly, not in fits and starts. It made me realise that every minute is sacred. 
  • With 22 hours in a day there’s far too much time to spend it on frivolity – that gets boring pretty quickly. I found that the more time I had, the more I wanted to spend it on something worthwhile.
  • It’s nice splitting the day up into more segments: it focusses the mind on achievement during the waking periods. Under this system of 20 minutes every four hours, however, I become something of a slave to the segments.
  • Beds are not necessary – and in fact I found it much nicer not to have a bed in my room. The bed, that huge piece of furniture, forced my room to be a BEDroom. This is counter productive both for working in that room and then for trying to sleep in that room after having worked there. It was really liberating to use a blow-up bed that I brought out only when required. It meant that I had a huge lump of space for other daytime activities. It meant I could put my rocking chair beside the window – I had never before realised how pleasant the sun was coming through there. The absence of a bed in my workspace lead to a healthy demarcation of day and night activities.
  • I like doing things that make me unique. I like to push myself into unusual situations that change my perception of the world – and then to encourage others to do the same. I like living with imagination and courage, not conformity and fear.

Positive aspects of polyphasia

  • Time for EVERYTHING – including complete and utter boredom!

I will have to let that time go on a monophasic schedule.

Negative aspects of a polyphasic pattern:

  • Socially it is difficult at best, antisocial at worst.
  • I found it difficult to perform creative work, in the adjustment phase at least. I got a lot of dross work done, but not much creative work – my novel suffered by about 2800 words over the 6 days of the experiment.

Negative side effects of polyphasia

These, I concede, could have disappeared if I had persisted through the adjustment period of about 30 days.

  • Hot flushes in the early phases.
  • Numbness in the extremities.
  • Cold sensitivity.
  • Digestive problems.
  • Brain freeze/fog.
  • Creativity blockages.

Action points to be taken away:

  • I don’t need a bed. Perhaps I should investigate buying a Japanese bed roll.
  • When I feel tired, I’ll sleep! I won’t feel guilty about sleeping or just ride through the rough period. I’ll take a nap. I know now that I don’t have to get undressed or brush my teeth or anything – I can just lie down and take 20 minutes out.
  • Evangelise the benefits of messing with your sleep to learn about yourself.

Finally, I exhort you: Experiment and Learn.

Thank you for reading.

Polyphasing Experiment: Day 6

01:51: Revenge of the Nap

I have had a change of tactics. Naptics you might say. Taking Pavlina’s idea and combining it with Buckminster Fuller’s technique: I’m just going to take a 20 minute nap every time (well, maybe not every time) I get too tired.

I just had one and it was unquestionably more successful than other naps. I am still scarcely able to keep my eyes open, but I did have vivid dreams and woke up before the end of the nap. These are good signs. I am still hunting the holy grail of refreshment, however. But at least I’m not tired!

Alertness rating: 4

03:20: Naptastic?

I’m not sure if I’m winning or losing. I think I feel better, although my eyes are having trouble adjusting to sight again.

Alertness rating: 4

06:40: Serial Napper

My schedule for this past night has been naps every 2 hours, rather than every 4. so that’s naps at 11pm, 1am, 3am, 5am and, coming up next, 7am. It has made it somewhat less painful to get through and I have achieved things, but I am still far from rested.

Alertness rating: 4

Disgusting: a 1 hour oversleep after initial wake up. Actually that’s not quite correct: I woke up an 20 minute intevals at 7:20, as planned, at 7:40 and then at 8:20.

18:34: Thoughts on Napping

There are some things that I have not been describing because I have not been sure. But I think now they are pertinent. A week ago I played cricket and did not stretch beforehand. Normally any strains would be gone in three days at most, but the pain in my back seems to have got worse.

Secondly, this sleeping pattern seems to have been playing havoc with my digestive system. This could be due to lack of an enzyme that is produced during deep sleep. Having said that, after two bike rides I am feeling pretty good – but that could just be thanks to watching Liverpool trounce Aston Villa 5-0!

Tonight is something of a test for the system: it is the first day that I have been able to socialise. Two of my friends are in town and we’ll probably go somewhere this evening. I obviously can’t go out until my 7pm nap, can’t drink and have to be back in bed by 11pm. I shall report back on the irritation this causes.

I have to confess that this experiment has been both easier and harder than I expected. I was expecting much more acute symptoms of sleep deprivation: hallucinations, narcolepsy and so on. I had none of these. But I have been really dragged down by the minor side effects: the dullness of thought, the hot flushes, the digestive problems, weakness when performing physical exercise. I have the time, but not the strength.

I do feel like today has been an improvement, however. Perhaps that is due to my oversleep earlier. Perhaps it is because my friends are here and I have someone to share it all with. Am I fed up with it though? Is it too much already?

Reading Dr Mednick’s book I am even more concerned with the long term effects – this was only meant to be an experiment, but is it worth the heartache just for an experiment? This 30 days could be spent productively – it’s not as though there aren’t a million things I need to be doing, but if I don’t have the strength then all the hours in the day won’t help me.

Alertness rating: 5.5

Still a thick head though, and that just kills me.

19:38: Sleep Inertia?

Seriously, waking up from a nap feels like waking up from a high speed encounter with the bull bars of a truck. I can barely focus my eyes, which is worrying – even after repeated shaking of the head etc. I wonder if this is because I am sinking quickly into short wave sleep and thus getting a load of sleep inertia on wake up. But once up and moving I feel fine again.

Alertness rating: 5.5

23:57: Nap to the Future

The evening with my friends was, predictably, terminated by me needing to nap. Post nap was the familiar feeling of being kicked in the face by a mule. As the clock ticks towards midnight I have trouble holding a conversation without feelings of great irritation and discomfort. This experiment is over.

Alertness rating: 4

Polyphasing Experiment: Day 5

3:00 Please let me recover!

Not the worst nap ever. But I’m still waiting to wake up refreshed. I’m lurching from nap to nap with my body just getting enough to keep going. It’s like I’m topping up to the level of sleep deprivation that I built up over the first night of not sleeping. Like the 20 minutes gives me just enough energy for the next 3 hours 40 minutes, no more, no less.

One other observation about this is that I really can’t read whilst in this phase. It makes me too sleepy. I can manage a few pages during the day, but even then I’m not really concentrating so I’m pretty sure it’s not very productive reading.

05:09: Testing

Cognitive tests:

  • Typing: 61 WPM
  • Simon: 9
  • Reactions: 82.38

Simon has taken a bit of a battering – concentration not great. But the others are fine.

Physical tests:

  • Weight: 65.2kg
  • Blood pressure: 112/72
  • Heart rate: 48 BPM

Absolutely normal physical tests.

08:56: Interdiurnal Nap?

I experimented with a nap between naps. I feel more rested, but have a feeling that it is only going to make things worse. I napped from 7:00 to 7:20 as normal, then got up and had a shower and napped again from 7:40 until 8:00. I then did a silly oversleep thing until 8:45. It really is odd that my sessions of oversleep are 40-45 minutes, not 90+. I wonder if this means that a 45 minutes Dymaxion would be possible for me?

Alertness rating: 4.5

17:34: Keep on napping

And hope it works out. I’m a little concerned that I don’t seem to be dreaming so much. Both the 11am and 3pm naps were more like falling into a faint and only rousing when the alarm goes off, what seems like hours later with a brain turned into oatmeal. My condition does seem to improve after waking, but I still struggle to read in my rocking chair. I feel dehydrated a lot of the time and exercise drains me. I’ve been for a long walk and a 15 minute bike ride and both left my head dense and craving sleep.

Alertness rating: 4.5

23:16:Torture?

Is this self-imposed torture? Sleep deprivation is a well-known technique and I have no gone five days without a decent deep sleep, always waking myself before the truly restorative phases of sleep.

Alertness rating: 3

Polyphasing Experiment: Day 4

02:21: Night Walking

I hope I develop a taste for dark, cold streets because I feel like I’m going to see them a lot over the next month. I find myself looking forward to the 7am nap because it seems like a true rest. When I wake up it is morning, just like for all the monophasers. It is a rare time of day when we are in sync, there is one other at 11pm when we all go to bed, ‘Good night!’ I say, knowing that I’ll be back up again in 20 minutes, but the others will slumber through the night, through to the morning.

Alertness rating: 4.5

04:16: Quiet Zone

That last nap wasn’t too restorative. Apparently night naps are harder than day naps. My body is still used to sleeping at night. But I have to say that I’ve been working on my cycling project quite productively in this quiet zone without too overwhelming feelings of tiredness. Still got two and a half hours to go though before the next nap!

Alertness rating: 4

07:22: Grogg

Dreaming again, but woke up to my alarm. When that happens I feel very groggy, especially if it was during a vivid dream, which it was this time. The dream took place on a film shoot. I was an extra and they needed me to eat a sandwich on camera. But they gave me the sandwich before the shot was ready and I ate it. So I felt bad and they had to make me another one. And I ate it again. Oops.

My eyes feel like they can’t focus, with heavy lids and a mist shading them from the world. Similar to yesterday morning actually. Not good.

Alertness rating: 2

09:20: Testing

Physical tests:

  • Weight: 64.1kg
  • Blood pressure: 121/61
  • Heart rate: 52 BPM

Absolutely normal physical tests.

12:12: Snoozeville

My 11am nap was the same story. Good long sleep with REM, but the alarm wakes me and I have no idea where I am, what the time is, whether I am just going to bed or should be getting up. I’m still feeling head fuzz.

Alertness rating: 3.5

16:12: Experimentation?

I’m not sure if this counts as valid experimentation, probably not, but I did oversleep again, like I did yesterday on my 3pm nap. Perhaps my excitement over adjusting was waaay too premature. Again, it wasn’t a problem of alarms. I clearly recall switching them all off this time, but I chose to stay in bed. It is interesting that, even after choosing to stay in bed, I am only oversleeping by 40 minutes. That makes my sleep time 20 minutes + 40 minutes. I also never remember dreams from this second 40 minutes so I am definitely indulging in the NREM bit. But what does it all mean?

I’ve just re-read Steve Pavlina’s blog about the adjustment period and he didn’t feel 100% until Day 6 and even then still used an extra 20 minute nap in the early hours before dawn. I’m pretty sure that my two 40 minute oversleeps are more damaging than his extra 20 minute sleeps for the reason that I am not going straight into REM sleep, which is the purpose of this initial training, adaptation period. Does that mean that my body is ‘reset’ and I have another 6 days of perfect scheduling to get through? Or are two relatively minor oversleeps permissible and my body will be on track for 100% on my day 6 equivalent (which would be next Monday)?

One thing that I did not do for this nap was to place the alarms out of reach – a policy I implemented after yesterday’s oversleep – the problem is I went to bed about 15 minutes before nap time to adjust and read and I needed a clock to see the correct time to close my eyes. I shall move another clock to viewing distance and keep my alarms out of arm’s reach!

Alertness rating: 3.5

20:03: Napping for Napping’s sake

Well that nap didn’t feel very restorative at all. I woke up about 10 minutes in worrying that I had over slept. It feels like I am getting all the right symptoms of polyphasic sleep, but none of the benefits (yet). I’m going to work tonight on clearing out Liz’s loft so that should keep me wide awake and make the hours of darkness pass.

Alertness rating: 3
But after a big meal, Alertness rating: 4

01:45: Another Day’s Nap

My 11pm nap was no more than functional. It’s amazing how easily I fall asleep and dream, but they are not restorative. I just get up and resume my zombie routines. I can’t remember the last time my brain felt engaged. Scary.

Polyphasing Experiment: Day 3

00:40: Midnight Creep

The ‘day’ begins with me dragging three huge bags of clothes down to the Salvation Army collection point in the centre of the village. As I stuff the dense black bin bags into the skip I feel guilty, as if they were chopped up bodies and I were a 1920s gangster.

Alertness rating: 5

Surprisingly alert.

02:28: Epiphany

This really is remarkable. Here I am at half past two in the morning and yeah I don’t feel 100%, but I can function quite well and I do have enough energy and concentration to do the sort of tasks that suck hours out of our days (or just don’t get done at all). And to think that this is the worst of the adjustment period; I can’t imagine what it must feel like to have energy at this time of night on just 20 minutes napping time. I do look forward to the naps now and I think my brain would really love me to forget to set the alarm but I’m on track and loving it.

03:22: Changes

I feel as if the nap length is increasing. Of course it isn’t, but that’s the way it feels. It seems like the naps are a few hours, not just 20 minutes. I’m still not awaking refreshed though. Exhausted.

Alertness rating: 2

07:59: OUCH

I feel sick, I can hardly keep my eyes open, I’m very sensitive to cold. This is the pain.

Alertness rating: 1

I hope that’s rock bottom, but there is still room for worse I fear.

08:15: Testing

Cognitive tests:

  • Typing: 64 WPM
  • Simon: 9
  • Reactions: 69.47

I’m getting better at the typing! The other worse scores better reflect the way I feel: rubbish!

Physical tests:

  • Weight: 63.5kg
  • Blood pressure: 108/62
  • Heart rate: 56 BPM

Absolutely normal physical tests.

11:27: Rushing Naps

They seem to be coming quicker. I don’t feel sick any longer: I just needed to eat breakfast. I am still whacked; this seems to be a hangover from each nap. I am groggy apparently. Also worth mentioning: I appear to have a cold, something happened yesterday about 6pm and my nose has been liquid ever since. Probably not making things any easier, but I don’t think it is affecting me too much.

Alertness rating: 3

16:00: Disaster?

I have no idea how, but I somehow managed to oversleep there. The alarms were all switched on and I woke up naturally 40 minutes late. I have a distant memory of possibly turning them off and just lying there for a moment… I’m a little groggy, but otherwise fine. I hope that has not put be back too far!

Alertness rating: 3.5

19:18: Back on Track

And I dreamed and woke up naturally for the first time! Woo-hoo! My dream was based in a middle eastern city (probably because I wrote 1000 words of my novel just before napping) – it could have been Cairo, it could have been Tunis – it was a melange. Anyway, I was there to learn Arabic and I was in a school room and there were two lesbians (I later assumed – but don’t worry, it’s not one of those dreams!) who came in and asked us if we wanted to watch some comedy sketches performed by two lesbians in French. I was surprised and pleased that they were so open about the homosexual content. I wondered if they were rebelling against the society or just determined to live their lives as they felt them, with no shame.

So: dreams, real dreams. I still don’t feel totally fresh, but this seems to be something of a break-through. And the fact that I woke ‘naturally’ – I use the quote marks because after the 16:00 nap I was worried about oversleeping and I woke in something of a shock thinking that I had overslept again. This also seems to be a constant in ubersleepers’ reports: the impression that sleep lasted much longer than 20 minutes.

Alertness rating: 4

And to celebrate my first successful polyphasic sleep:

White Hot Chocolate!

22:07: Testing

But first:
Alertness rating: 6 – I’m impressed.

Cognitive tests:

  • Typing: 62 WPM
  • Simon: 17
  • Reactions: 84.67

Typing speed was up, but accuracy was down. The other scores blown out of the water! If that is in any way indicative of the results of a good polyphasic nap then I’m in for a treat! Reaction speed up 22% from this morning – wow.

Physical tests:

  • Weight: 64.0kg
  • Blood pressure: 114/68
  • Heart rate: 61 BPM

Absolutely normal physical tests.

23:21: Good Night!

Or not. Dreamt again, but woke with the alarm. Feel very drowsy and just wish I could go back to sleep!

Alertness rating: 3.5

Polyphasing Experiment: Day 2

00:14: New Territory

This is the start of my first full day of polyphasic sleeping. Yesterday was great, but on the back of a full nights sleep it was no challenge. Today is a different kettle of fish altogether. Over the next 24 hours I will discover what it means to be sleep deprived. And it’s just the beginning.

Alertness rating: 6

03:00: Early Morning Nap

Got some light sleep in with a little para-dreaming: a marching band drummer with a big old drum strapped to his chest beating a marching rhythm. I woke up in surprise at this visit, only to realise that my brain was interpreting the music I had playing in the background.

I am napping on the floor with a duvet and a pillow, with a small lamp on and some soft music playing. I don’t want to make this harder than it already is by oversleeping! I am setting five different alarms, one on my phone which is fairly obnoxious and then four on this Salter Kitchen Timer I got off Amazon, each one set one minute later than the last. They all have different sounds and I haven’t needed more than one – so far…

I’m going to head out for a walk now to keep myself conscious – I’ll probably have a bite to eat as well. Only one more waking phase until I’ve done 24 hours. Steve Pavlina had to do three 24 hour polyphasic ‘days’ before he started feeling good again. There is no doubt that the hardest is ahead of me. So far I’m feeling alright.

Alertness rating: 4

Piano is an excellent tool for staying awake, as I thought. I only hope I didn’t wake the rest of the house up! Played for about an hour – Dos Gardenias and a bit of Gonzales. I’m quite hungry now actually – I haven’t eaten a full meal since about 5pm yesterday.

06:16: The Night Shift

The hardest part of the day is almost over. I got through the last hour by writing my 1000 words of novel for Tuesday. I did notice that it was harder to think straight, but once I got going it was fine. Dad is up already, dawn has broken. I have officially made it through the night.

Alertness rating: 4

7:20: Morning has broken

I’m yet to have a decent nap. This one was a kind of unconscious rest. Not particularly refreshing and I didn’t really dream, but I did sleep. This 7am nap will be akin to a monophasic sleep: I will now have a shower and breakfast.

Happy days! What a difference a good hot shower makes! Ready to face the day. Except every time I think that, I can’t help thinking that it’s not merely the day I have to face: it’s the next 30 days. I will never rest, not like I used to, and that simple fact is a mind bender.

Alertness rating: 5.5

08:52: Testing

Cognitive tests:

  • Typing: 60 WPM
  • Simon: 10
  • Reactions: 68.34

No change in typing accuracy or speed. Lower scores on both the concentration and reaction tests, however. I’m not surprised – I feel pretty slow.

Physical tests:

  • Weight: 63.8kg
  • Blood pressure: 113/56
  • Heart rate: 59 BPM

Absolutely normal physical tests.

11:00: Mid Morning Already?

Still no proper REM sleep. I am definitely sleeping though. It took about 8 minutes to fall asleep, about 2 minutes once I’d switched off the rather lively Cuban music…Feeling very fragile and sleepy.

Alertness rating: 4

14:32: A Walk in the Sun

It’s boiling out there! An hour long walk through the fog of brain fuzz and boy am I looking forward to the 3pm nap!

Alertness rating: 3.5

15:21: Afternoon Kip

Better, better. Slept the whole 20 minutes thanks to extending the alarm to about 25 minutes and doing a bit of reading before sinking into slumber.

Alertness rating: 4

Just fending off the zeds.

19:20: Evening Session

One really needs to prepare for one’s sleep about 10 minutes before the nap actually begins. I was clearing out the loft and didn’t lie down until 19:00 precisely so didn’t fall asleep for perhaps 8 minutes. This meant a shorter nap than I’m supposed to be getting and as a consequence I feel like death!

22:26: Testing

Cognitive tests:

  • Typing: 57 WPM
  • Simon: 10
  • Reactions: 78.41

Slightly worse accuracy in the typing test. Interestingly I was a lot quicker on the reaction test. Not sure what that means!

Physical tests:

  • Weight: 64.5kg
  • Blood pressure: 112/64
  • Heart rate: 64 BPM

Absolutely normal physical tests.

23:27: ZZZ

Wow. I just slept the whole 20 minutes, possibly a fraction more. Woke up in another dimension, not sure where I was. I’m really feeling the pull of sleep now.

Alertness rating: 2.5

My eye lids are being dragged down by an invisible force. I should get up out of this chair and do something before I fall under the spell.

Polyphasing Experiment: Day 1

Today is the day it all begins. Or ends. No more bed for a week. I have just got up from a very relaxing 8 hour sleep. I feel fully rested, but a little fuzzy in the head. I haven’t had a full 8 hours for a few days.

Alertness rating: 7

I shall be taking my naps at 11am, 3pm, 7pm and 11pm as scheduled.

10:00am: Testing

Cognitive tests:
I shall be taking three different types of cognitive tests every day. These are:

  • Typing test: The score is words per minute adjusted for errors over a two minute test. Test here.
  • Simon game: Test memory of colours and sounds. The score is the number of consecutive colours I can recall. Test here.
  • Reactions: The score is a weighted speed. Test here.

  • Typing: 56 WPM
  • Simon: 10
  • Reactions: 71.47

Physical tests:
I shall be taking three physical measurements every day as well. These are:

  • Weight (kilograms)
  • Blood pressure
  • Heart rate (beats per minute)

  • Weight: 63.8 kg
  • Blood pressure: 112/56
  • Heart rate: 60 BPM

11am: Nap time!

Well, not surprisingly I didn’t sleep, but I did get two interruptions. Someone rang the door bell about 8 minutes in (no one ever rings the door bell here), and the National Blood Service sent me a text message asking me to give blood (which I can’t do for medical reasons). So never mind, I wasn’t expecting to sleep anyway. I feel slightly groggy from lying down in the dark for 20 minutes, but otherwise fine.

Alertness rating: 6.5

12:15pm: I Lost A Bed!

Before

After!

15:00: Afternoon Kip

Half an hour before hand: feeling pretty tired. There is no reason for that. I slept a full night last night, but my head feels like cotton wool. Quite looking forward to a little lie down.

Alertness rating: 5

Had a little pseudo-sleep. Not sure if I was entirely under or not, but there were what I can only describe as para-dreams. Now rather foggy in my head.

Alertness rating: 5

19:00: Evening doze

I’m definitely resting more and more as the day goes on. No para-dreaming, but a heavier 20 winks.

Alertness rating: 4.5

Bleurgh. I’m tired and cold. And this is day 1? I shouldn’t even be sleep deprived yet! I feel as you feel when you have overslept perhaps. The next sleep will be the test: I normally go to bed around 11pm, so my body will be expecting something good, something like 8 hours. It’s gonna be in for a surprise.

23:00: Night nap

Well I survived. I didn’t sleep, just some imaginative drifting. Now I am tired, properly tired like you are after a long day’s travelling just before you sink into bed. I’m not going to bed for another 30 days. At least I’ve tidied up my desk.

Alertness rating: 4

23:59pm: Testing

Cognitive tests:

  • Typing: 60 WPM
  • Simon: 13
  • Reactions: 76.69

So I improved in all areas of mental acuity. I can only conclude that my performance hasn’t been affected by being awake for 17 hours straight. I can believe that. I guess the improvement is simply down to being used to the exercises and standard variation in performance.

Physical tests:

  • Weight: 65.1kg
  • Blood pressure: 123/68
  • Heart rate: 48 BPM

Everything pretty normal here still. The blood pressure is raised, but still within my normal daily range. The weight is higher, as you would expect after a meal and full hydration.

Alertness rating: 6

Actually I’m feeling alright! I wonder if doing the cognitive tests woke me up a bit.

Polyphasing Experiment: Testing, testing

Today I was analysed by my psychologist. One hour of intensive testing at the Starbucks in Covent Garden (Peppermint tea please). I’m not sure if I am normal, but at least we’ve put down a marker for the end of the experiment.

These tests assess attention, concentration, memory and my executive functions, i.e. problem solving and decision making. The theory is that sleep deprivation will make these processes sloooower.

The tests were:

  1. Visual memory: copy a complicated geometric drawing, then draw it from memory immediately, then draw it from memory again 30 minutes later.
  2. Trail making: point to numbers on a piece of paper in numerical order, then with the letters of the alphabet and numbers in alternation (1, A, 2, B etc)
  3. Zoo map: trace a route through the zoo following various rules and injunctions.
  4. Wechster memory scale: listen to a story and then repeat it back, marked for story details and themes. Then retell 20 minutes later.
  5. Verbal fluency: name as many animals as possible, then as many words beginning with ‘F’ in one minute.
  6. Verbal paired associates: given pairs of nouns, e.g. Elephant, Glasses, then have to produce the pair when given its other half immediately and then again after 45 minutes.
  7. Letter number sequencing: given numbers and letter jumbled up, then have to sort them and repeat back in numerical and alphabetical order.
  8. Digit span: given sequences of numbers, then have to repeat them back in the same order as given. Then more sequences of numbers, but repeated backwards.

My results were:

  1. Immediate reproduction with no mistakes; 30 minute delay with 4 mistakes.
  2. Numerical order: 16.24s; Numerical and alphabetical order: 33.65s
  3. Successfully completed in: 1:46.29s
  4. Logical memory test 1a: 13/25 story units; 6/7 thematic units. After a delay: 10/25 story units; 6/7 thematic units. Logical memory test 1b: 14/25 story units; 7/8 thematic units. With a second reading of the story: 19/25 story units; 7/8 thematic units. After a delay: 19/25 story units; 8/8 thematic units
  5. Animals: 40; F words: 23
  6. 100% recall immediately and after 45 minutes
  7. 13/21 sequences correct.
  8. 8/16 sequences correct; 7/14 backward sequences correct.

We will test these again at the end of the experiment to see how many of my brain cells have died.

Polyphasing Experiment: The Challenge

It was midnight and we were totally exhausted. We were sitting up late again, relaxing in the office at Makan, a cultural centre in Cairo. We’d spent the last two weeks working long days on my friend’s PhD fieldwork and now you couldn’t have kept our eyes open with matchsticks. Our heads were drooping into our beers and our metabolism was crashing after the sugar high that had fuelled the last few hours of frantic archaeology.

We wanted to celebrate finishing her research which had been a succession of progressively more intractable problems one after another. Our necks were stiff from bending over the microscope and our arms were aching from sieving endless archaeological samples. We just felt like we deserved to relax and enjoy ourselves, but with only hours to spare before our flight home our bodies weren’t willing.

Opposite us was Ahmed al-Maghrabi, the tireless manager of Makan. He was boasting that he hadn’t slept the previous night. Just what we needed to hear, this man in his fifties casually telling us that he’d spent all night at a film première and hadn’t slept a wink. We sat there, supposedly in the peak condition of our lives, flagging horribly and feeling rather pathetic opposite this insomniac. It didn’t seem fair and I told him so. What he said was to change my life. ‘Well you know Leonardo Da Vinci only slept 2 hours a day. Not that I’m comparing myself with him, but you know…’

That woke me up. I’m interested in what you might call lifestyle design. Last year I spent forty consecutive days getting up at dawn in an attempt to become less of a lazy bones. Turned out the reason I was so ‘lazy’ and sleeping an awful lot was because I had an underactive thyroid, but the experience was a real eye opener and great fun. I have been looking for something else to do ever since and here, with the warm night air of Cairo blowing through the curtains, I sensed an opportunity.

‘Really? Two hours a day? That’s impossible, surely?’
‘No, no. It’s all documented. Two hours a day, that’s all. He just slept for 20 minutes every four hours.’
‘That’s incredible. Just imagine – you’d have six more hours a day awake. That’s a quarter of a day! You could squeeze an extra 3 months into every year! No wonder Leonardo Da Vinci got so much work done.’

At this point my companion interjected, somewhat brusquely, that I was still an inveterate lazy bones and wouldn’t be able to find anything productive to do for that extra six hours anyway, so what was the point? Ah ha. A dual challenge: sort out my life so that I need six extra hours of work/play time a day and therefore need a sleep schedule to match the greatest genius that has ever lived. ‘I’m gonna do it!’

How to enjoy waking up at dawn

After waking up at the Krakadorn every day for forty days, I’ve become something of an expert in how to enjoy waking up early.

Here’s how I did it:

  1. Get a good alarm clock.
  2. Get excited about the novelty of getting up so early. It’s so ridiculous that it’s funny – now jump out of that bed!
  3. Imagine you are going somewhere really cool and exciting.
  4. Go somewhere really cool and exciting (use your imagination).
  5. Stare at the sun, wonder at the natural miracle of dawn. It does this every day, while you are normally snoring your head off. Think about how lucky you are to be watching this celestial event.
  6. Take pictures, draw pictures, write a paragraph. Use your creativity to get inside the morning.
  7. Find something or someone to laugh at. (This isn’t hard – even at this ungodly hour there are plenty of commuters) (But don’t be cruel. Maybe bake them some flapjacks.)
  8. Look closely at the world as it’s waking up. These are things you don’t see normally. The frost still on the ground, rubbish bags ripped open by rats overnight, the morning call of the birds, the soft hum of the milkman’s float. Appreciate.
  9. Return home and reward yourself with a breakfast fit for royalty. Make it a real feast of tasty goodness, none of this cold muesli rubbish. Why should breakfast be boring? Cook something you love, or copy something you once had at a fancy cafe. Make shakshuka or pancakes. Be creative.
  10. Forget the hasty shower: treat yourself to a long hot bath (with bubbles). Yeah!
  11. Then look at the clock and see it’s only half eight.

That is how you learn to love the dawn.