Who will replace Paula Abdul as American Idol Judge?
Posted on August 11, 2009, under August: Celebrity Gossiping.
Who will replace Paula Abdul?!?! After eight long years, Paula Abdul announced her decision to quit her job as American Idol judge. This changes things! The classic line up was – Paula “always has a good thing to say” Abdul; former Journey bass player and over-user of the word ‘dawg’ – Randy “lava bomb” Jackson; and of course Simon “the organ grinder” Cowell. Later Kara “who the hell are you?” DioGuardi would join the line up.
With Paula gone, we’re down to three, and Posh Spice took over for a guest appearance apparently with a view to a full-time job. However, the Daily Mail suggest that Posh failed to impress on her Idol debut, saying she seemed too hard to please.
So for the benefit of everyone involved…. This, is my my top five suggestions for the next American Idol Judge.
Potential Paula Abdul Replacements…
David Hasselhoff
David Hasselhoff is great. I grew up watching Knight Rider and even a little bit of Baywatch, so it’s impossible for me to dislike the guy. But think about it: he’s obviously crazy, says the strangest things, and isn’t as famous for his singing career as he is for other stuff. Damn! If Paula Abdul had chest hair, it’d practically be a straight swap!
Megan Fox
I love women with accurate surnames. Fox, rumoured to be playing a young Lara Croft in a Tomb Raider prequel movie, and also the She-Hulk, would be a great Idol judge. Well, I can think of two good reasons, at least! ( 1- she’ll bring more viewers to the show, and 2- she’s actually quite funny in interviews. Why, what two things were you thinking of?)
Barack Obama
Bear with me, OK? Paula Abdul was known for sitting on the fence, and only saying nice things. Well this guys a politician! He’d be awesome at making a bad singer feel like they were incredible, and what’s more, we’d probably believe him! Plus, this could be a great way for him to connect with the younger generation. Come on Barack, it’s only two evenings a week you can fit it in!
Darth Vader
Let’s be honest, Simon Cowell isn’t going to keep judging forever. He’s even mentioned his desire to eventually move ‘backstage’ and work from there. So we need to groom in a replacement Mr Nasty. I think Darth Vader is the man for the job. He’s honest, ruthless, and can do that neck-crushing move whenever someone has a bad audition (it’s often what we’re hoping to see anyway…).
Optimus Prime
I know what you're thinking. Don't be silly, how could Optimus Prime be an Idol judge - he'll never fit in the chairs! And you're right, of course they'll have to rebuild the studio slightly to accommodate Optimus, or kick out half the audience, but I can't see a problem with that. Plus he can give Ryan Seacrest a lift to work every morning. Optimus would be a great judge; if you could drag him away from Twitter long enough…
Brad Pitt Smoked Weed
Posted on August 6, 2009, under August: Celebrity Gossiping.
In an upcoming interview in Parade magazine, Brad Pitt talks of his stoner years, back when he was a recent arrival to Hollywood.
 Brad Pitt with Angelina Jolie. I resisted the temptation to paintbrush a joint into Brad’s mouth… |
“I liked to smoke a bit of grass,” Pitt said.
But there’s more!
“…I became very sheltered. Then I got bored. I was turning into a damn doughnut, really. So I moved as far away from that as I could. I was done. In Missouri, where I come from, we don’t talk about what we do, we just do it. If we talk about it, it’s seen as bragging.”
That’s awesome Brad! See kids; once you get to the point that your a doughnut, it’s time to stop smoking grass!
But…is it just me, or does Brad’s comment above about Missouri seem to come out of nowhere? I’m not sure if Parade just hasn’t posted the whole quote, but doesn’t it seem like the ol’ Pittster just got bored of talking about weed mid-sentence, and started talking about life in Missouri? I wonder if this is some interesting trait of his…
Pitt: “Yes, I’ll have the Cocktail di Gamberetti, followed by the Risotto ai Frutti di Mare, please. Missouri generally has a humid continental climate.”
Waiter: “What? ….. ahh, OK….. and for dessert?”
Pitt: “The Missouri River is a tributary of the Mississippi River”
Waiter: “Very good sir. But would you like to order a dessert?”
Pitt: “It’s the longest river in the US.”
Waiter: “I’ll take that as a no then….”
That quote again:
“In Missouri, where I come from, we don’t talk about what we do, we just do it. If we talk about it, it’s seen as bragging.”
If this is true, I’m moving!
Anyway, there you have it; Brad Pitt used to smoke weed. You heard it here third. Check parade.com on August 7th 2009 for the full interview.
Kelly Brook spotted walking on a red carpet
Posted on August 4, 2009, under August: Celebrity Gossiping.
Some photographers have all the luck. I’m not sure if this was good planning, or just a case of being at the right place at the right time, but some lucky paparazzi managed to get a few shots of Kelly Brook, on the red carpet outside the premier of “The Ugly Truth.”
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Damn!
Kelly, neglecting to take her shoes off, apparently walked for some time along the red carpet, stopping at certain points to turn towards the cameras. Do it for a month is not sure whether these turns were a full 90 degrees or not – more details on that as I get them.
The premier was in London, in Leicester Square no doubt. I went to a premier there once. Well, when I say “went to a premier”, I mean “stood outside watching other people go to the premier.” Casino Royale it was. Saw Zoe Ball. Saw Peter Kay, he shouted something. Best of all, saw STING!
Anyway, it appears that The Ugly Truth is a new movie, some kind of romantic comedy. It starts, Katherine Heigl and Gerard Butler, two names I had never heard until today. I just watched a clip of it and it showed a man giving a girl advice on dealing with guys when they’re blowing her off. Sounds just like that other film, what’s it called? He’s not that into you (*cough* which I’ve never seen of course, just heard about *cough*).
But then again, there are only a fair few storylines for romcoms:
- Guy is too good for girl, but eventually realises “she’s the one”
- Girl is too good for guy, but somehow the bumbling idiot manages to pull her
- Guy and girl are made for each other, but a succession of improbable yet humorous events consistently conspire to prevent them getting together, which they eventually do anyway because it’s “meant to be”
Jesus. Give me a break. I want to see a realistic romcom. Guy meets girl, guy fancies girl, girl wants guy to be the one, guy just wants to get laid, guy and girl get laid, girl gets pregnant, guy and girl end up in marriage neither really want, girl watches rom coms to dream about “how it should have been”, guy becomes alcoholic. Kind of a cynical comedy. A cyncom.*
I want Kelly Brook to play Girl, and, what the hell, let’s have this Gerard Butler character to play Guy. Any screenwriters up for this?
*Storyline and the term ‘Cyncom’ copyright Doitforamonth.com 2009; all rights reserved.
Who the hell ARE these people?
Posted on August 4, 2009, under August: Celebrity Gossiping.
I’m not going to be very good at this!
I have recently been scouring newspapers and websites, looking for valuable gossip to pass on to you, my loyal readers. As I read story after story on these strange people known as ‘celebrities’, one question kept springing to mind….
Who the hell ARE these people?
Now, I don’t watch TV. I don’t read newspapers. And I don’t read magazines. I find all three depressing. So I appear to have gotten a little out of touch.
Oh well, maybe after this month I’ll know exactly who is who, and likewise, loyal reader, so will you.
Do it for a month is back!
Posted on August 1, 2009, under August: Celebrity Gossiping.
You’ll be pleased to know that I’m going to start doing things for a month again!
If you’ve never been here before, here’s a quick overview: I (Warren Davies) was doing a psychology degree, and planned to start a blog about psychology (this idea eventually became Generally Thinking). I started a test blog, to learn about blogging, and just needed something to blog about while I figured out how to use Wordpress, social media sites, carnivals, and so on.
Just before this, I had been temporarily tee-total – I stopped drinking for one month as I’d been drinking a lot up to then, and also was just curious. The month after, I took part in Movember, which I was introduced to by Joel Brazil of Tipped. In Movember, you grow a moustache for a month, and you’re not allowed to shave it until the end of the month.
Realising I was doing things for a month, I wrote about that.I stopped updating this site once I was used to blogging, but it was pretty good fun so I’m going to start doing it again. Maybe not every month though.
The first thing I’m going to do for a month is celebrity gossiping. I hate celebrity gossip. I understand that it’s human nature to want to know what the high-status people are doing, but I don’t think it’s good for you to be interested. You’re sort of telling yourself that other lives are more important that your own. Plus, it’s not always fair on celebrities to have their private lives plastered all over the world. Some probably like the attention though.
So I’m doing what I hate. Could be interesting.
March – Lucid Dreaming
Posted on March 2, 2008, under March - Lucid Dreaming.
I told you I was not going to stray far from the pillow.In March, I will learn how to have lucid dreams. If you are dreaming, and then suddenly you realise that you are in a dream, all of a sudden things change a bit. The dream becomes more vivid and realistic, almost to the amount of realism you experience when awake. But most importantly, you become conscious. That is, you are able to control your actions in your dream just as you would in real life. Because the dream is a product of your own mind, you are also able to dictate where you are, who you are, what you can do, the laws of physics, and so on. You can be Spider-Man, the King or Queen of dreamland, a sports star, rock star, or even spend some ‘quality time’ with anyone you choose. You can interact with your subconscious and ask it questions. You can spend time working through problems you might need to solve in your waking life, revise for an exam, or practice a skill – there are literally no limits.One thing that interested me about this is that it is apparently possible to learn things that carry over into waking life. When you move around in the dream, the part of the brain that controls the body parts you move is activated. So you could practice some physical skill like martial arts or darts maybe, to see how that translates to real world skill development.The main resource I will be using to learn this is Stephen LaBerge’s “Exlopring the World of Lucid Dreaming”. LaBerge has a Phd in psycho-physiology, and his book is a pretty straightforward how-to guide rather than an in-depth analysis of what and why lucid dreaming is (though he covers this a little). As it’s written by a scientist and is backed up by research throughout, and as it is instructional rather than informative primarily, this is perfect for a month’s experimenting. I’ll be looking online for other resources, as I understand that immersion into the topic is very helpful in triggering a lucid dream. If you know of any good (free) online resources on lucid dreaming, let me know: warren@doitforamonth.com or post a comment.I tried to learn this a while back, but stopped as I got too busy with other things. At that time, I managed to have one lucid dream, and I remember being shocked at how real it seemed. I was sat on a field, and I could feel the wind and see the grass swaying. It seemed as real to me as sitting here typing this does. This apparently takes a few weeks to get started in, and a few months before you start getting good at triggering lucid dreams, but since I have tried this a little in the past, some of the ground work has been done and I should be able to do it at least a few times throughout this month. It is kind of weird that last month I reclaimed time by sleeping significantly less, and this month I am reclaiming time again, this time by actually being awake while I’m asleep.I will update with the techniques and methods I am trying, and the results they bring. So at the very least I’ll end up with a series of posts which offer a basic ‘how-to’ guide so people can try this out themselves without having to buy anything, along some recommendations of more in depth material for those interested. But hopefully I’ll be able to experience a few lucid dreams myself and try some things out. Some things I want to try are chatting to my subconscious, and weight training (I wonder what effect dream training will have on actual workouts?). Mainly though, I just want to be Spider-Man.
The end of polyphasic sleep
Posted on February 29, 2008, under February: Polyphasic Sleep.
Today is the final day of my month-long experiment with polyphasic sleep. It has been very interesting and novel; I have felt most of the time like I have had an advantage of the rest of the population, who get only a sluggish 16 waking hours, pah. But having said that, I wouldn’t want to do this long term, for reasons I will go into later. First of all, a few more notes I have made since the last post I made, which seems like a long time ago because I’ve had various problems with internet connections, servers, and at one point I accidentally deleted this whole blog (oops!). Luckily I had a backup on the previous incarnation of the site.
• Get up straight away
When your alarm goes off, get out of bed immediately, don’t wait around and relax. Doing so is a good way to extend a nap by accidentally falling asleep. I did this a few times, and it left me more tired, groggy and unable to function than missing a nap did. I believe the term for it is sleep inertia.
• Exercise
I’ve been exercising regularly by jogging and weight lifting throughout the polyphasic period, and have not noticed any negative effects on recovery or fatigue, or anything like that. I noticed that other people who have blogged about polyphasic sleep have noted the same thing.
• Energy levels
Certain times of the day are sometimes tough; the first hour on a morning, and the last hour at night are often quite difficult, particularly if I’ve had a few alcoholic drinks. But this is not really any different than a monophasic schedule. Then again, there are days when I feel fully alert throughout the whole day. I have not noticed anything in particular that might cause this, unfortunately. Mental energy is a slightly different story; in the last few days I’ve found it hard to concentrate in the early hours of the morning, however this is almost certainly due to some missed naps over the last few days.
• Missing naps
There have been a couple of times where I’ve been immersed in something, and totally forgotten to take a nap. This is frustrating because the general wisdom (which I have found to be correct) states you should continue as if nothing had happened, and wait until the next nap to sleep. If I miss two naps in a row, then I get really sleepy and this has happened occasionally. Probably should have set a reminder on my phone to tell me when naptime is…
• Adapting to nap times
One thing that I have recently started doing, is waking up sometime between a few seconds and a minute before a nap ends. So my body seems to be used to the 25-minute nap period. I wake up with a very strong feeling that the alarm is about to go off; not in a “ah there must be a few seconds to go” kind of way, but more like a “aww that awful noise is coming” way…
The thought of sleeping just once a day is a little bit weird. What do you do? Wake up, and then just stay awake all day until night again?? Strange. One thing I’m looking forward to is being able to drink coffee at any time I want! In fact I might just make one now. Also, I’ll be able to leave the house for longer than 4 hours at a time. I’ll be able to get a job (my attempts to get a work-from-home job failed miserably!).
Pros and Cons
What are the benefits of this weird experiment? I got a LOT of stuff done (doesn’t this website look nice now?) and I’m actually quite impressed with that. I’m able to fall asleep within a maximum of 5 minutes, assuming I need to sleep and I’m not wide awake, of course. Previously, I would roll around for literally hours before getting to sleep. This is something you’re just forced to learn when sleeping polyphasically, like being thrown in at the deep end. You get four times the amount of practice, and there are severe consequences if you fail, which are probably good conditions for learning almost anything! More benefits: it was interesting and novel, a new way of experiencing life, which is always good. I’ve learned a lot about sleep and how much I actually need, which turns out to be far less than I thought. I’m much better at waking up and getting out of bed, and as a result I expect I’ll be an early riser from now on.
Downsides? The first week was tough at times. The schedule is extremely restrictive, and although missing the odd nap here and there is not a major problem, missing two in a row IS a major problem, and you still have to fit everything around a nap schedule. You can’t start watching a film close to a nap, you can’t go out for longer than four hours, and you can’t get a job with longer than four hour shifts, or do overtime.
Concluding Thoughts
At the start of the month I wondered whether I’d continue after this month. At the time, I thought I would, but the schedule is too restrictive to do so. If I did a polyphasic routine again, it would be when I had a work-from-home business, and I would do the uberman schedule – a 20 minute nap, every 4 hours. As it is though, I will definitely not be returning to a ‘normal’ 8 hours per day schedule. I plan to start with 5 hours per night, an increase from my usual 3, and keep the 6pm nap. I will try this for a while. It seems that many have functioned fine on 5 hours alone, and I will see if I need the nap or need to extend the core sleep. I’ll mess around with it, what I want is a schedule where the nap is optional; it can give a bit more alertness (probably most relevant towards the end of the day), but isn’t absolutely necessary if I have things to do.
Tomorrow I will start March’s experiment. I will explain all tomorrow, but I will say that I am not straying too far from the pillow…
Is reducing the amount of sleep you get harmful?
Posted on February 29, 2008, under February: Polyphasic Sleep.
I decided to look into some of the research on sleep and sleep deprivation when I started this polyphasic experiment, and some of the findings I came across are very, very surprising, and the opposite to what you might expect, based on common wisdom. This is a quick review of what I learned. I’ve tried to keep this readable and yet I have been forced to keep some jargon in. I’d really appreciate any feedback on the writing style here…if it’s too jargony, dry or boring let me know by posting a comment. Likewise if it is readable, I’d like to hear that too. Also, to keep this readable I have not added any references in, but post a comment if you wish to know the reference for a study I mention and I’ll tell you.Common ConcernsMost of the concerns I have come across regarding polyphasic sleep have been based implicitly on what is called the recuperation theory of sleep. This theory proposes that during our waking hours, the stability of the body is affected by our activities, and that going to sleep is what restores the body and mind to a fit state and a normal balance. This is what most people think sleep is for. Surprisingly though, the research evidence does not suggest that this is the purpose of sleep. For instance, if this was true, we would expect a person who had not slept for many days to stay asleep for a long time when they eventually did sleep, since the body would be well out of balance and would require major recuperation. But this is not the case; such people actually tend to oversleep for just one night and then return to their normal schedule, as was the case with Randy Gardner, who broke the world record for wakefulness in 1965. After over 11 days awake, Randy slept for 14 hours, before returning to a normal eight-hour schedule.So theoretically, we do not use sleep to rejuvenate, at least not primarily. So theoretically, sleep-deprivation should not necessarily cause many ill effects. But that’s theory, what about in practice? Some studies have been done on sleep-deprivation in humans. With only 3-4 hours of sleep-deprivation, we are sleepier, our mood is a little off, and we perform poorly on tests of vigilance and concentration. After a few days of sleep-deprivation, we experience microsleeps – short periods of sleep lasting a couple of seconds, that can occur when standing, or even driving. However there is controversy over the physiological effects of sleep-deprivation, some researchers say there is no convincing evidence of adverse changes, and although there are some studies that report adverse effects, there are many more showing no negative effects to a range of tests, including on tests of IQ and even physical strength.What about reducing sleep, not removing it altogether?So there are some problems associated with sleep deprivation, but perhaps they are not as harmful as you may have thought. This is full sleep deprivation though. What do we know about people who simply sleep less, polyphasically or monophasically?Starting with monophasic sleep reduction, there have only been two studies published. This is because they take a lot of time and money to do, being long-term, and it is no doubt hard to recruit participants for them. The first saw participants reduce sleep to 5.5 hours per night, for 60 days, and suffer only a slight reduction in auditory vigilance when they were given an extensive series of mood, medical and performance tests. So 5.5 hours a night seems to be quite acceptable. In the second study, people reduced their sleep gradually to either 4.5, 5, or 5.5 hours per night, for one year. Although they experienced daytime sleepiness, there were again no detriments found on mood, medical or performance tests throughout. Perhaps a daytime nap would have removed even the sleepiness?In terms of polyphasic sleep, I have not managed to get hold of Stampi’s book “Why we nap” which describes the research on polyphasic sleep. It is out of print now, I can’t access the online versions of it with my ATHENS account, and it is not in my university’s library. However I understand it is available at the British Library, so I may yet get it out and review it at a later time. I hear that polyphasic sleep was replicated in several experiments, which suggests random assignment to me (to prevent just testing people who might be naturally more able to adjust to new sleep patterns). They found no detriments on performance tests, however I do not know how long the experiments ran for.Why isn’t reduced sleep harmful?This is a valid question, and the answer seems to lie in the adaptiveness of the human brain. The suggestion is not that eight hours is normal and we are able to adapt to other patterns, but that a shorter amount of sleep is optimal, and that we have adapted to an eight-hour monophasic schedule through modern living. When we sleep, there are different stages that we cycle in and out of. I won’t go into too much detail, but there are four stages, the first is where you experience REM sleep and dreams, and the third and fourth are where the majority of the recuperative effects of sleep occur. REM sleep is also of great importance, and your body will not tolerate a lack of it; in such a case you will immediately enter REM sleep the next time you fall asleep.When sleeping we move from the first stage to the second, to the third, then the fourth, then back through the third, second, and to the first again, and repeat. When the overall sleep time is reduced, the efficiency of the sleep that does occur improves. We experience more of the rejuvenating stage three and stage four sleep, up to around the same level as when sleeping for longer. This is most pronounced when reducing sleep gradually, which suggests it might be best to ease into a reduced sleep or polyphasic schedule, to allow the sleep cycles to adapt. During polyphasic sleep, most of the sleep is in the important stages three and four to begin with, then the cycles adapt to include a more ‘normal’ proportion of REM to stage three and four sleep – however, the different stages are reported to occur in separate naps.So how much do we actually need then?After reading this research, and living for a month on a mere four hours of sleep per day, I am pretty much convinced that on average, modern humans sleep too much. I’m sure there’s variation between people on how much time we each need to sleep for, and that some people might need their eight hours. I heard this a lot when talking about my polyphasic sleep schedule “I couldn’t do that, I need my eight hours”, people often said. I expect their evidence for this were a few occasions where they were forced to sleep less because of a night out, work hours, or some deadline. I doubt they have systematically experimented with different amounts of sleep for long periods of time, knowing that they might initially experience extra sleepiness as they adapt to their new schedule. But why would they? Ask anyone how much is a healthy about of sleep, and invariably, they will respond “eight hours”, and probably give you a strange look for questioning such an accepted piece of knowledge. But this bit of folk wisdom is a fallacy, like the idea that we need to drink eight glasses of water each day, or that wisdom positively correlates with age: people sleep too much.When I say ‘too much’, surely I mean ‘more than optimal’, right? I mean, you can waste some of your day by oversleeping, but it can’t actually be BAD, can it?In two long-term studies involving a large amount of participants (over 100,000 men and women in the first, and over 82,000 women in the second), the mortality rate was investigated alongside the average sleep time after a 10-year and 14-year period respectively. The researchers controlled for various factors including age, smoking, snoring, illness, and others. In both studies, they found that sleeping for seven hours was associated with the lowest death rates, and the other sleep-times were then compared to that. I’ve drawn up two graphs so you can see the results. On the bottom axis is number of sleep hours per night, and from there you can see the death rate for that amount of sleep. With seven hours being the lowest, all the other scores are shown as percentages of that.
The first graph shows that the mortality rate was lowest for people sleeping seven hours per night, closely followed by five and six hours per night. Four hours or less, or eight hours or more, were associated with the highest mortality rate, and people sleeping 10 hours or more per night showed a mortality rate that was DOUBLE that of people sleeping seven hours.
The second graph shows similar results. Only women took part in this study, and those sleeping six or seven hours per night showed the lowest mortality rate. Next were five and eight hours, and even higher was nine or more hours, which showed an increase in mortality of over 50%!When I started this experiment, I would often disclaim my actions when talking about it, saying “I’m aware that it’s a bit insane and probably unhealthy, I just want to try it, and anyway, it’s only for a month”. But now, maybe it’s a little closer to sanity than I first thought. Of course, it’s impossible to say anything about polyphasic sleep schedules from these studies, as the people in them were all monophasic, but they at least say something about our common ‘knowledge’ about sleeping eight hours per night, and especially to the people we all know who get 10 or more hours per night – maybe they should cut down.Anyway, far be it from me to suggest something that might increase human longevity. Maybe I shouldn’t mention this – we’re overcrowded enough on this planet as it is. Instead, maybe we should lionise these people who sleep in for long periods – buy them sedatives, comfortable beds, take them to Sigur Ros concerts, and celebrate them as they heroically sacrifice themselves in order to free up resources for the rest of us.Sleep tight!
More hints, tips and thoughts on Polyphasic Sleep
Posted on February 19, 2008, under February: Polyphasic Sleep.
Well I’m 19 days into the everyman schedule, and all is well. I’m still getting a lot done, and still enjoying this novel way of experiencing life. It is training me to make more use and better use of my time, because what’s the point of extra time if it’s not spent being productive?. I’m also getting so much better at getting up straight after an alarm goes off; I was previously a habitual ’snoozer’ but such behaviour is punished on this routine, not on the core nap, but if I oversleep on a 20 minute nap I’m groggy for a couple of hours. I’ve had a few thoughts on my experiences so far, and a few tips for people who might want to try this:
- Days = Blocks
I hear that on the hardcore uberman schedule people tend to lose track of days. I have experienced this to a degree on the everyman schedule. I find that I usually know what day it is (or I should say, I don’t lose track anymore than usual), but I lose track of what day I did things on. There is definitely a certain weirdness about time on this schedule. I don’t think of days as much as I do of ‘blocks’ between naps that last around 5 hours. It’s easier for me to know I did something 2 or 3 blocks ago than to know what day I did it on, probably because the 20 minute naps seem a lot longer than they actually are. So days are sort of less relevant, and I need to make use of a calendar much more often throughout a period of time that you might call a ‘day’. If I did something 2 blocks ago, it feels like what you would call ‘yesterday’, regardless of what ‘day’ I did it on. Also, I have to plan things so that what I do does not cross over into another block, which can be restrictive.
- It’s not perfect (at this stage)
I previously stated that I had not experienced an ‘adaptation phase’ as such, due perhaps to occasional oversleeping allowing me to ‘catch up’. Well since then I’ve overslept only once, and that was for a mere 40 minutes (set my alarm incorrectly again, damnit!), and I can clearly see that I’m not adapted to this routine. I can function normally for the extra hours – I am still over-productive, and I do a lot of exercise too – but there’s an intuitive sense that I’m not at 100%. Maybe I’m at 80% of normal energy levels. Even if this did not change, and I came off the routine before adapting, I would easily call this an acceptable trade-off.
- Gravity
Another weird thought I had: Would a polyphasic sleep routine tend to make a person shorter? Think about it, I’m spending an extra 4 hours a day in the upright position, with gravity pushing down upon my spine. Ubermanners spend 22 hours under such pressure, for the most part. If you’re monophasic this time is spent in a prone position, and so the gravity would not affect your height at all. I wonder if other people on polyphasic sleep routines for long periods have measured their heights, or if they might find hanging upside down a pleasant experience as the spine is stretched out?
- Phone and text messages
I use my phone as my alarm when I nap. One perhaps obvious tip if you plan to do the same is to NOT send a few text messages before you nap! I usually can’t sleep if I have an un-replied-to text, as it’s like an open loop in my mind. You really have to deal with that if you don’t want to be woken up by your message alert tone, which in my case is Dexter’s Sgt Doakes proclaiming “That’s a good call Morgan….it’s a tough call…but that’s a good call, man”.
- Eat more
If you’re awake extra hours, you need more food. It would be like driving your car an extra four hours each day; you need extra fuel. I think a danger here might be that people start polyphasic sleep routines, and neglect to eat more than they usually do. Then they naturally feel more tired than they normally would, and perhaps a little faint with it. Then because they are focused on the sleep pattern, they blame this on the routine, call it a bust and return to monophasic prematurely.
February – Polyphasic Sleep
Posted on February 15, 2008, under February: Polyphasic Sleep.
It’s been a long time since I updated this site, as you can see there was no entry made in December (which was going to be random acts of kindness) or January. This is because I had exams in January, and revision took up 98% of my waking time.
In the month of February, I have been doing Polyphasic sleep. This is a somewhat insane process whereby one reduces their hours of sleep considerably, and spreads the remaining amount across the day in short naps. The program I have been following is called the ‘everyman schedule’, and looks as follows for me:
5:00am-8:00am – Core sleep period
12:30pm – 20 minute nap
6:00pm – 20 minute nap
11:30pm – 20 minute nap
So, a total of 4 hours sleep each day. When starting a polyphasic sleep schedule, it is reported that an ‘adaptation period’ occurs before you experience life without sleep deprivation again, and that you must stick strictly to this schedule during the adaptation period, or else it will last longer. During adaptation, you are slightly more tired than usual while your body adjust to the new routine.In my experience, I only experience this kind of tiredness after the core sleep and sometimes late at night (duh).
I am not doing this in a hardcore way, nor in a particularly strict way. I have missed naps often, and occasionally overslept (usually when alcohol is involved). It’s not that I’m doing this to see if it works, or because I’m emotionally attached to wanting polyphasic sleep to be a real and valid thing, I just want some extra time for a while, and the detriments of sleep deprivation are not really that bad, especially short term. This is well known to my fellow students; one of whom told me she would cut sleep down to four hours at night during revision periods. She even said there’s a period of a week or so where it’s pretty bad, then she adapts to it. Myself, when I used to work a lot of hours, I would often be left with less sleep. You just get used to it, and as long as it isn’t long term, it’s not so bad.
So as I say, I do oversleep sometimes. Only in the first week was this because I was literally too sleepy to get up. In the first week, I was strict with this, as I did not really go out that week. Since then my life has interrupted my sleep schedules. I work around this as much as possible, but sometimes you’re round at a friends house and you’re all staying up talking and you forget about naps. Other times you’re just too drunk to get up after 3 hours sleep, polyphasic or not! I expected this, and it’s OK.
There was one occasion, this morning, that I was genuinely gutted about. Went for my last nap a little later than usual, and it was set to finish at 00:17. Accidentally, I set my alarm to 12:17 – twelve hours after I wanted to wake! I woke up at around 8:00am, a nice round 8 hours’ sleep. Although I was annoyed at this (the bottle of wine may have played a part), I realised that I had gone to bed at midnight, and got up at 8am, which for a student is still pretty damn good going!
Experientally, it’s pretty cool following this sleep schedule. I do not experience anything like an ‘adaptation period’, ostensibly because I oversleep occasionally. This cuts my waking hours down, but still puts me above normal, and it doesn’t matter because as soon as I get a few days straight without any commitments or plans, I can get straight back into the 4 hours a day routine with no problems. Except immediately after the core sleep period as I have mentioned, during which I sit up in bed, put lights on, and (slowly) make my way through The Bhagavad Gita, an ancient Hindu text written around 500BC. It is weird because one of the characters is Krishna, so in effect I have this Hindu God ranting at me while I’m half asleep for 45 minutes or so every morning. Seriously, these Hindu Gods can rant. Reminds me of Galt’s massive rant in Atlas Shrugged, though the topic is almost exactly the opposite.
Another benefit of this, is that it is slowly fixing a problem I’ve always had. I’ve never been able to get to sleep quickly when I lie down on the bed. Usually takes me quite a while actually. With polyphasic sleep, I’ve been forced to learn to get to sleep immediately. Early in this experiment I thought that the 20 minute time period was the important part of the nap. It isn’t. It’s the timing. I used to put my alarm 5 minutes back if I hadn’t fallen asleep yet, and again and again until I fell asleep. This made things much worse because now the nap is out of schedule, not to mention the time wasted lying there. Just made me more tired. So I decided to set my alarm (I set it for 25 minutes now), and lie down for that period and try not to be awake. If I don’t sleep, I get up straight away. This worked much better even if I didn’t manage to sleep, but it also forced the development of a new skill – getting to sleep.
I tried all kinds of things, but what I have found works best so far is relaxing all the muscles, and repeating something in my head at the same rate as breathing. Then eventually I get the urge to shift into the position I usually sleep in, I do that, then I wake up sometime later. Often (but not always) with these naps, I feel like I’ve been sleeping for ages. Sometimes I wake up a few minutes before the alarm, and think I’ve overslept considerably. So I’ve found it unnecessary to be as strict with the schedule as is often suggested, though to be fair I’m doing the tamer of the polyphasic routines; the most hardcore involves a 20 minute nap every 4 hours, and no core sleep. I couldn’t do that one as my life is not flexible enough (ie., I don’t have a successful online business which is the sole source of my income).
They also say that missing a nap is like missing a night’s sleep, I’d say missing 2 is like that, and missing 1 just makes me pretty tired. I really hope I get a chance to do a good week’s stretch where I stick fully to the schedule. As for the extra hours… Did they translate into productive behaviour? Well in two weeks I’m completely up to date with uni work, have completely gone through and organised everything I own here in London (my room is actually tidy!), have made a lot of progress on my dissertation, got stuff on ebay which I’d been planning to do for ages, and still had time to go out a few times. So yes it does seem to work!