The first day of my polyphasic sleep experiment was surprisingly easy. When I think back to my previous attempts it feels very different. For example so far I had no problems getting out of bed or waking up to my timer. On all my previous tries I had problems with oversleeping right from the beginning. I constructed more and more complicated mechanisms to wake me up after my naps. None of them prevented me from oversleeping.
Technically they woke me up, however most of the time I would somehow talk myself into getting “just one more nap”, because I wasn’t able to sleep for the first 15 minutes or so. This inevitably led to extreme sleep inertia. The process repeated, only this time I would be too tired to set my alarm systems correctly and I would awake several hours later, frustrated and still sleep deprived.
This time however I’m very strict about getting right out of bed and not allowing consecutive naps. I also write in big letters on a piece of paper, which I place right besides my bed, what I intend to do immediately after waking up. This helps immensely because it gives me an actual reason to get up.
Quality of Naps
While I wasn’t able to fall asleep on the first three naps yesterday, I had no problems falling asleep for the following naps, except the last one.
So far I don’t dream during those naps but at least they are somewhat restorative.
I think the worst part of sleep deprivation lies still ahead of me, but I feel confident right now that I can manage it since my experience so far is so different from my previous attempts.