I guess with that in mind, I’m going to call this attempt off. After a kind of pathetic 3/4 days depending on how I regard the flight home from Beijing, I’m done. I’m a little disappointed with how I’ve done, and really I don’t think I’ve really come to my complete limit yet, but I’m unwilling to get there as the cost in terms of my classwork would be too great.

So now instead of taking my 10 nap, I’m going to just stay awake for a little bit and get back to a “normal” monophasic schedule.

All told, even this very short attempt I feel was a very informative experience, and I’m quit anxious to give this another shot when I’ve a schedule that is better suited.¬† I am well aware that this kind of schedule won’t just come to me so easily, but, I’m fine with that for now.¬† However, until then, I’m done with this attempt.¬† Back to the grind, as it were.

So, for better or for worse, the first oversleep has occurred, and without too much consequence besides to show me how easy it is to fall back asleep if I don’t force myself to promptly get up and out of bed immediately on alarms. It shouldn’t happen again.
As to how it feels, it feels shitty. I feel tired, I seem to have fallen asleep with my right eye directly over my right wrist, and with pressure on it, so I can’t really see out of it, as it’s all blurry. It’s getting better with time, as is always the case when I put undue pressure on my closed eyes. My eyes are bloodshot, and I feel like crap.

That said, I feel like it’s getting a bit harder. I have to be more… resolved to get up once I turn off my alarms. After I get up from a nap, I’ve been feeling pretty good, considering how much I’ve slept over the last few days. However, after an hour or two, I sort of progress rapidly into being really… slow. I mean it really does seem from my point of view much like getting way too little sleep one night, and then having that finally catch up to me, except it’s happening every four hours instead of every 24 now.

I don’t know, right now I feel like even at my best, I’m only working at maybe 2/3 of capacity. I’m not as quick in conversation, I feel sluggish, and I couldn’t even pull off an e-turn in mario kart 64 earlier, which was at one point practically second nature. Just then I had to look up the phrase “second nature” because I couldn’t convince myself I was going to use it correctly. This kind of second guessing is not typical of me, at least not at this sort of slow and deliberate level.

Another thing that’s only just hitting me is how with this schedule, things that normally govern the flow of my day, like eating or just the simple passage of time, are totally off. I get hungry at all sorts of times of the day, and since yesterday I didn’t even have things to snack on, I just had these periods of wakefulness where I didn’t eat anything, and it was… confusing, for lack of a better word. Also with all this sleeping and waking throughout the day, light/dark cycles seem like they stand to lose meaning. I’m not really sure what else would follow from that, but it seems notable to me now. If I recall the term correctly, my zeitgebers are all fucked up. The only thing that is really pretty constant for me is one alarm going off to tell me that I’m supposed to be in a place I can sleep in 10 minutes. Everything else I’m just playing by ear right now. At some point though, when I’m more comfortable and settled, I think I’ll make an effort and ritualizing when I take showers or do other things that I might want to associate with a particular time of day.

Oh well, I’m off to go buy some groceries and drop some mail off. I’ll sleep when I’m dead.

This is all in spite of the warnings of friends and cautionary tales of other people they know who tried and failed or perhaps simply promptly gave it up once having decided they didn’t like how it turned out.

This isn’t about improving my quality of life, or anything like that. First and foremost, I’d say I am doing this to see if I can. I realize that there’s certainly very little research on the effects of adopting such a schedule, and while the effects of strictly depriving one’s self of sleep are ultimately death, this isn’t really that, and given the success of at least a few other people with this schedule, I’m still going to try. And besides, it seems among some other friends there’s a bit of a pool starting up on how long I’ll make it. I might stand to make some petty cash at this depending on if/when I fail.

Edit: A quick other somewhat related tidbit: I flew from Beijing to Chicago earlier today, and on the plane, was sort of sleeping whenever there wasn’t a movie playing or a meal being served. While not on a strict schedule, it was pretty close to a “sleep whenever I’m tired” schedule, so, I have no idea if that will have any noticable effect.