Good Sleep, Good Learning, Good Life

“…Myth: Since we feel rested after sleep, sleep must be for resting. Ask anyone, even a student of medicine: What is the role of sleep? Nearly everyone will tell you: Sleep is for rest. Fact: Sleep is for optimizing the structure of memories. If it was for rest or energy saving, we would cover the saving by consuming just one apple per night. To effectively encode memories, mammals, birds and even reptiles need to turn off the thinking and do some housekeeping in their brains. This is vital for survival. This is why the evolution produced a defense mechanisms against skipping sleep. If we do not get sleep, we feel miserable. We are not actually as wasted as we feel, the damage can be quickly repaired by getting a good night sleep. It is our brain dishing punishment for not sticking to the rules of intelligent life-form: let the memory do restructuring in its programmed time.”

Polyphasic Sleep: Facts and Myths

“It appears that polyphasic sleep encounters the precisely same problems as seen in jet lag or shift-work. Human body clock is not adapted to sleeping in patterns other than monophasic or biphasic sleep. In other words, the only known healthy alternatives are: (1) a single 6-8 hours sleep block in the night, or (2) a night sleep of 5-7 hours combined with a 15-90 min. siesta nap. Those numbers differ substantially across the population and there is no single recommended dose of sleep for everyone.”

The site these articles came from, www.supermemo.com, is called “Super Memory: Forget About Forgetting”. I’ll be looking more into it soon.

That’s an important consideration for anyone considering polyphasic sleep.  For a normal weekday, you pretty much need a nap before, during, and after work, or if you get up and go straight to work, two naps during work.  I can’t do the first  one because I have to drive, and I can’t do the second because I don’t feel comfortable stepping out twice.

For anyone interested in following my polyphasic sleep experiment (Aaron and others), sorry to disappoint.  However, I’ve got a mandatory polyphasic sleep period coming up sometime in the next month when my second daughter is born.  My wife is excited for me to go back to polyphasic then so I can take care of nighttime care and feeding.  Not exactly what I had in mind, but it’s easier to do when you’re already awake then if you have to wake up for it!

Until next time …zzzzzz…zzzz……zzzzzzzz.  (Me hibernating for 7 straight hours)

So with 5 fewer hours a day to work, what did I cut out and what did I keep? Well, I haven’t a) written quality blog material, b) done housework chores, c) programmed as much, or d) made all the great improvements people suggested to my SLIME/Emacs cheat sheet. I decided that if I only had a little time, I should spend it on what’s most important, which right now is sharpening my Lisp skills. I’m trying to get to a point where I can work on programming for my startup without referring to documentation for every single thing I try to do. That consists of 3 things:

1. get better at Lisp (currently working through Practical Common Lisp)
2. learn to use ASDF (so I don’t have to only use one file)
3. customize Emacs and learn more commands

#1 is going nicely. Unfortunately, #2 and #3 pose a bit of a problem. I’m currently using the Allegro-bundled LispBox for Windows from the PCL website. It’s been great for getting started, getting comfortable with basic commands, and getting familiar with SLIME and Emacs. However, it’s not conducive at all to customization. I’m not saying that it can’t be customized, just that it is a minor distribution for new users, so there’s not a lot of documentation out there for working with it. Three big strikes: (Windows, LispBox, Allegro) means that there are very few users, very few comments, and very little help.

For instance, ASDF is included and configured correctly, with the code from PCL already setup and easy to load. However, I tried for (too long) to get ASDF to load my code. I wrote my own packages.lisp and .asd files, I tried pushing values for my directory to the asdf:*central-registry* so I didn’t have to make a zillion shortcut files, etc. Long story short, it didn’t work and nowhere on the Google did anyone have specific advice for my setup. Ditto with .emacs customization with Lispbox (for anyone who’s wondering, I think it’s at C:\Program Files\acl81-express\misc\dot-emacs.el, but I couldn’t get the settings to load. YMMV). It’s just too obscure and I don’t have the time to figure out everything on my own, so I’m moving to a more mainstream setup.

So I put development and practice mostly on hold so I could get a more common setup that will make it easier to get help with when (not if) I have issues. I’m still working on the setup, becuase I spent a lot of time researching recommendations and best practices. I want to get it right (or at least mostly right) the first time so I don’t have to go back and re-do everything again. Tweaking is fine and I plan to keep doing that forever, but no more redos. I’ll put out another n00b type giude (along with rationales) when I get my own setup working, but here’s what I’ve come up with:

• Emacs 22.1
• SLIME 2.0
• CLisp
• Cygwin(?) – I’m trying to limit the number of tools I have to deal with so I wanted to leave out Cygwin. Can anyone give advice on whether it will make my life easier or harder in the short term?

Thanks to everyone who has expressed interest in the meantime. Keep your eyes out for more guides and an update to the cheat sheet. That’s my motto, helping the n00b in all of us!

UPDATE: I wrote this on Thursday but haven’t been able to post until Friday night. I’ve taken two naps, planning on staying up at night, and I feel great! I’m already happy to be back on a polyphasic schedule!

Three times this week, my daytime circustances have prevented me from taking enough naps (just 1 or 2 each of those days) between my core daytime hours of 7am to 10pm. Not having napped during the day, I didn’t wake up from my nighttime 30 minutes naps and basically ended up sleeping a normal night’s sleep, say 11pm-7am. That must have been refreshing, right?

WRONG!

This is the third of those three days following a full night sleep. It is also on pace to be one of the worst days I’ve had at work since I started doing polyphasic sleep again. Its only competitors are the 4 or 5 other days where I slept through the night and then sleepwalked through the next day.

Perhaps I was just too tired from the days I did get by on only naps, and this is just a carryover from that sleep deprivation? Good idea, but I doubt it’s true. The reason I decided to bite the bullet and go back to polyphasic sleep despite the challenges was that I wasn’t feeling rested despite getting a full night’s sleep! Normal sleep wasn’t cutting it for me, plus I didn’t have nearly enough time to do all the things I wanted, so I decided to try polyphasic sleep again. And not only did I get more time to pursue my interests, I was more alert and better rested during the day than before I started! So when people ask me “How alert can you be if you only sleep a couple hours a day?”, I tell them I’m a heck of a lot more alert than when I was sleeping 7-8 hours a day.

Polyphasic sleep has made my job, my hobbies, my startup, and (sort of) my family better, but everyone thinks it’s so crazy that I feel like I have to sneak around doing it. I mean honestly, the space under my desk is huge and would be a great place to sleep, but I bundle up and go sleep in my car so I don’t get in trouble or get funny looks.

More sleep is not better. Better sleep is better!

EDIT: OK, I’ve been up for a few hours, then took a nap, and now I’m a lot less grumpy.

Falling Asleep – This is something that I didn’t really have a problem with either time but a lot of people wonder how you can fall asleep in 30 minutes, let alone fall asleep and take a meaningful nap.

First, it helps to be tired but not too tired.  If you’re too tired, you’ll fall asleep but you sure aren’t waking up after 30 minutes!

Second, consistent time of day helps a lot.  For instance,  I usually nap around 11am as part of my lunch break.  If I have to work through that time, I get really sleepy around 11:30.  It goes away after 15 minutes or so but my body was definitely planning on sleeping at that time.  On the other hand, I have found it much more difficult to have consistent times at home, because even though my wife is much more supportive and understanding this time, there are still family duties, dates with my wife, errands, etc that need to be done, and I can only infringe on those so much.

Third, a blanket always helps me – I keep a small one in my car too.  If it’s very cold (like it has been the last week here), I roll the blanket up a couple times over my hands and then let the rest hang down over my body and legs.  Keeping the hands warm is generally enough to make me comfortable, and the blanket roll works better than gloves.

Fourth, taking several big, deep yawns (like ridiculously, cartoony big yawns) quickly gets me on the path to sleep.  Doing this usually makes my eyes tear up, and since I’m laying down, those tears tend to drip down my face and into my ears.  Kind of a pain, but moving my hands to wipe them away disturbs me and I have to start falling asleep all over.

Fifth, for each place that you plan to nap, find a position that works and stick with it!  With me, I sleep on my stomach when I’m in my bed, on my side when I’m on my couch, and on my back when I’m in my car.  If I try another position, I just can’t fall asleep (there have been tons of times I wanted to sleep on my side in bed – no dice).

Waking Up – Little surprise, this has been more difficult for me to get right consistently.

Sixth – find one alarm clock that works for you and use it everywhere.  I use a timer program on my cell phone – that way it’s with me at all times.

Seventh – don’t even think about snoozing.  The longer you’re asleep, the deeper you fall into sleep and the harder it is to wake up.  Probably two out of I’d prefer not to disclose how many  times have I actually gotten up after I tried to snooze.  Usually I’ll have up several hours later and just go to bed.

Eighth – along the same lines as seven, don’t put the alarm within reach of your bed.  I try to put it across the room so I have to stand up and walk, hoping that will jerk me out of sleep and give my rational mind a chance against my sleepy mind.  Or you could just train yourself to respond correctly.

Ninth – don’t stretch your time between naps.  I’ve found that if I ever have to go 7 hours awake in a row, I’m not going to get up when I take a nap at night.  Ditto if I have to go 6 hours twice.  Although it’s frustrating that situations like this happen, at least I understand how my body will react to it so I can plan accordingly.  I go a little longer between naps during the day (4-5 hours) and then naps more frequently at night (3 hrs).  I’m not sure if this is ideal, but I don’t have the flexibility that Steve Pavlina did.

Tenth – if you want it to happen, embrace the weirdness.  Yes,  I do take naps in my car while it’s snowing.  It turns out that the driver’s seat on a Jeep Liberty reclines very close to flat.  It also helps to point east, because then the sun is on the passenger side of the car and not in my eyes.  If reading this, let alone imagining yourself saying something similar,  creeps you out, then just do your daily hibernation and leave the last 30% of life to us!

1. A place to take naps during the workday
2. Buy-in/accommodation from spouse
3. Predictability: No big physical or temporal changes

Let’s dive in a little.

A place to take naps during the workday:   In order to make the schedule work, you take naps every four hours.  In special circumstances, you can stretch it to five or six hours, but this makes recovery later more difficult.  This means that there are 2-3 naps during or around your workday.  I find that associating the nap with work time rather than home time works better at home, and if you keep up work and office time, your boss won’t care (or even know).  In the first experiment, I slept one the train to and from work, and then in an out-of-the way room at work that had a couch.  Now that I’m at a new job where I drive to work, I don’t have either of those things.  So here are my options for a napping place (none of which look great):

• My car – private, semi-comfy, not very reclined, climate problems (Chicago winter, Chicago summer)
• Home – comfy, hard sell at home, makes the math hard (one nap for the entire workday + commute both ways), doesn’t help me in midday
• Gym – Don’t laugh, there’s a little-used gym in my office building with a sauna.  If I don’t turn it on (so I don’t die), I could probably take a half-hour nap there.  I’ll definitely have to test run it for a week or so to find a time when no one is there; having another guy crank the temperature up to 175 degrees and walk in naked would definitely disturb my nap.

I think I’ll scout the gym/sauna option in the next couple weeks to see if it’s workable.  If that doesn’t work, I might have to try the car (ugh)

Buy-in/accommodation from spouse: My wife didn’t like polyphasic sleep last time.  I think she thought it was just another one of my wild schemes that occupies my mind but goes away if she humors me long enough (“Hey, let’s start a non-profit software company as an international development effort in Fiji!”, “Let’s buy our own island in the Stockholm archipelago so I can go sea kayaking every day!”, “Let’s buy a busted old graystone in a bad neighborhood so we can earn rental income and buy at pre-gentrification prices!” – all real examples).  When I actually did it, she was worried about my health, my job performance, etc.  We’ve talked about it since then and she has tentatively agreed to let me do it again, and she’ll try to trust me that I won’t do anything to jeopardize myself.  I definitely didn’t cover this base before I started last time.

Predictability:  There’s a fairly delicate balance in polyphasic sleep, which is why the schedule is so strict.  I was doing with the schedule and my energy level, so I decided to use some of this extra time to exercise, one of the longstanding members of my To Do list.  Well, this caused the crash that ended my experiment.  Polyphasic sleep lets you manage and meet your mental rest needs, but it doesn’t do anything for your body.  After starting to swim laps, my body needed so much time to recover that I couldn’t stay awake and I just crashed.  That’s the biggest reason I’m putting off starting polyphasic sleep again.  Two weeks ago I started swimming laps again, and once I get to the point where I’m used to the exercise and I have the energy level for my workouts, then I can change my sleep schedule.  I also waited until after I finished the change to my new job for the same reason.  Routine is your friend.  Steve Pavlina, who had one of the most publicized successful polyphasic sleep experiments out there, was in excellent shape and was self-employed, so this predictability wasn’t a problem for him.  Hopefully once I’m more used to exercise, it won’t be a problem for me either.

It was a hard decision, but I decided that my health is more important than my hobbies. I’m going to continue swimming and doing other exercises, and hopefully when I’m in better shape (not perfect, but able to workout without being put out of commission for an entire day), I can go back to polyphasic sleep. My goal to restart is about three months from now, after we’ve moved into our new house. That’s going to be a big enough disruption to my routine that I wouldn’t want to deal with while trying to adjust to polyphasic sleep. Of all the advantages Steve Pavlina had over me, this is one I can actually do something about, much easier than changing jobs or working for myself. So for now, polyphasic sleep is on hiatus while I work on improving my conditioning.

Work that day went well. I had plenty of energy and clarity and had a much more productive day than usual. I slept fine on the trains, but my lunchtime nap was put off for almost two hours because I couldn’t get a slot in the private room at work where the couch was. I did start shutting down towards the end of those two hours and was grateful to finally get in there and take my nap. Good work day overall, though.

On Monday night, I slept through my alarm at 1:30am, so I ended up sleeping from 1:00am until 6:00am. I was groggy for most of the morning but still had energy and clarity at work and did a good job, like on Monday. It turned out okay even though I didn’t follow the schedule.

The problems came when I got home and realized that even though I discussed polyphasic sleep with my wife before I started, she was not fully on board with it. I guess she thought that it was another one of my crazy schemes that never actually turns into something (like my idea of starting a non-profit software company in Fiji or the time I bought CDs to teach myself Spanish so we could move to Buenos Aries). She wasn’t prepared for me to actually follow through. She thought I looked too tired, with puffy bags under my eyes. She worried about my health and my performance at work. I told her how well work was going but she was still concerned about me. It took a couple days for us to work out those issues and come to an agreement that we were both comfortable with. During that time I switched back to normal monophasic sleep to keep the peace. I could have started again on Thursday night, but I didn’t want to go through the readjustment period during a workday, so I put it off until the weekend.

Well, the weekend brought with it the finest weather we’ve had in Chicago in all of 2007. We went out with out little girl to the park on Friday and the zoo on Saturday. Six months of Chicago fall and winter basically turns people into albino vampire bats, so when we got back from the park, we were all pooped! I tried to stay up, take naps, and get back on the polyphasic schedule, but when that alarm went off, I shut it off faster than I’d squash a mosquito at a Florida campfire. “Your beeping doesn’t concern me – please leave.” We were all so tired in the morning that when the baby woke up (with her energy level completely unaffected by playing in the sun the day before), we took one hour shifts with her so that we could each get more sleep – this went on until 10:30am. Now that I’m recovered from the being out in the sun, I’m starting again tonight.

I’m a little nervous about starting on a Sunday night and having to make the adjustment during the work week, but a few days of normal sleep made me miss all the time I had during polyphasic sleep and all the stuff I got done. I don’t want to wait another for another weekend to start, so I’ll just do the best I can. I’ll write at tomorrow morning to report on how my first night went. There are just a few new rules I’m going to follow this time around:

1. Instead of using my big alarm clock, I’m using a countdown timer on my phone. This way I can take it with me, not worry about having to continually reset the clock, and also, it’s quieter for my mother-in-law who sleeps in the next room. She was having trouble sleeping because the big alarm kept waking her up.
2. NO TV WATCHING! Well, I’ll never just watch TV without doing something else at the same time. For one, I’m not making the adjustment to polyphasic sleep because there are TV shows I want to catch up on, there’s stuff I want to do. Second, it was the worst thing for trying to stay awake in the deepest, loneliest part of the night.
3. I’m adding exercise this time. We got a membership to the YMCA, and they have lap swim at 5am on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, and the weight room is open the other days. The 4am nap gets me up at 4:30am, the perfect time to drive over and get some exercise.

Wish me luck!