I am going biphasic!

Before I am accused of trying to confuse my public, let me give you some basic information. Here is the link where I started:
http://www.stevepavlina.com/forums/health-fitness/1638-switching-biphasic-sleeping-start-here-3.html

In simple words, it’s a way of taking your daily sleep in 2 instalments instead of one big chunk. First part is a small nap of about 1.5 hours and then a core sleep of about 4.5 hours a few hours later. I had read about Polyphasic sleep before, the kind of Leonardo da Vinci is supposed to have used, where you take a 30 minute nap every 6 hours, sleeping only 2 hours in a 24 hour day. For obvious reasons that’s not possible for me to try when I am working, but I just found this biphasic stuff from this blog:
http://caloyelboy.blogspot.com/2010/11/on-biphasic-sleeping.html

and decided to try it.

So, I am going to try it tonight.

Now, I know the big question in your mind is “why”?

There are many reasons, one of them being just to try something new and unorthodox, but there are 3 main, important reasons.

1. Get extra time. Recently, I started working full-time again, and going from having all 24 hours at my disposal to having only 3-4 hours to do everything I want to do is very hard. All my projects I started in Second Life during my Idle period are suffering, and as I tried to catch up with them, my guitar was left forgotten. I can’t allow that to happen.This is one of the straegies to get some extra time and use it to work on all my crap.

2. Quality of sleep. I have been noticing it for a long time now that I don’t sleep that soundly as I used to. In my “youth” I have literally slept through earthquakes and hurricanes. But these days I don't sleep so well even if I am extremely tired.

One time I thought this was because of my over-involvement in my digital life and my brain is focused there. Maybe so. So, I turned off both my laptops, including the media laptop that's connected to the TV, turned off the TV instead of on screen-saver as I usually do, put the primary laptop in a corner instead of on my bed and went to bed. It was eerily silent in the room and dark, without the HDD LEDs and the laptop fans, but the sleep was no better.

Recently, it's been becoming a pattern to sleep about 6 PM on the Friday afternoon and sleep till 7 am on Saturday to catch up with the lack of sleep during the week, even though I get up about 6-7 hours a night. I love sleep, I really do, but 13 hours out of my 24 hours is a bit much. I do have things I want to accomplish.

So, this might help with that.

3. More energy, better well-being. People who have tried this have reported much better energy levels throughout the day starting from the morning. I feel tired and sleepy in the afternoons regardless of the number of hours slept.

My plan is to have the nap somewhere between 7.00 and 9.00 PM and the core sleep from 1.00 am to 5.30 am. If I get up that early in the morning, I will consider walking to the station to catch the train for work. One reason I take a taxi now is that the 1.5 miles, uphill walk in the cold costs about 25 minutes of my day and I don't have that much to spare right now. If the sleep works and I have the time and the energy I will try walking to the station at least on the days when it's not raining.

One side-effect of that will be I'd save some money on the taxi fare.

With the extra time on my hands, esp. in the late night hours, I will be able to do some nice work. I have been meaning to write more lately. And of course, blog more. There are also some new areas of hobby/self-improvement that I want to get into. This might give me time for that
So, the plan is to start tonight since it's Friday and the next 2 days are more or less my own. I plan to take the nap from 7Pm to 8.30 PM tonight, then core sleep from 1.00 am to 5.30 am.

I will try to keep a log, maybe on here. Watch this space..

The first couple of weeks are supposed to be hard on the body while it adapts, so wish me luck!