Uberman: a Retrospective

As can probably by guessed by my lack of posts for this last week, I am no longer on the uberman sleep schedule. This is primarily due to the presence of the girlfriend. On the night of the 11th day I decided to not wake from my midnight nap and slept until late morning later that day. The transition back to my old schedule went easier than I had anticipated, although I wasn't on the uberman schedule for too long which probably made it easier. For the most part, I have been back on my normal sleep schedule of sleep for 10-12 hours then be awake for 12-14 hours, thus bringing a close to the polyphasic sleep experiment.

I have a few observations to make now that the experiment is over. My primary finding is that my body didn't like the sleep schedule, although I may not have given enough time for a proper transition. Basically I found that during the early morning hours I was completely useless, even while awake. I couldn't concentrate on anything but the most basic tasks and found myself nodding off fairly consistently. Seeing as how I wasn't able to utilize these hours effectively, the major benefit of the sleep schedule was lost. The other major thing that I discovered is that it is fairly devastating to have insomnia at any point on this schedule, as I found on day 9 when I became fairly delusional. I was again affected by insomnia on the following day, which certainly didn't help things

I did manage to get a fair amount of work done, regardless of whether or not I was consistent with the schedule, as I was able to build a game prototype to a state in which the player can actually win and lose. I hope to get some videos posted of my progress thus far, probably up by Sunday.

On a slightly different note I had another instance of insomnia last night and have been up for pretty much the last 36 hours, so I apologize in advance for grammatical/spelling mistakes that I don't catch immediately. During this time I was able to build somewhat of a new game prototype from scratch, which will hopefully be integrated into the other prototype that I have been working on. More on this when I have videos to post. Time for sleep now, I think.

End Day 10

Day 10 can almost be considered a total failure of the system. I didn't get much, if any, sleep from my afternoon/evening naps and ended up oversleeping all of my late night/early morning naps. I think this can be seen as a result from the previous day, as I have been trying to catch up. Also, my girlfriend is now here from out of town, which might have had something to do with it. I am still going to attempt to get on this schedule, but I fear that after the last couple days it will be like I am back at square one. Bah.

Days 8 and 9

I decided not to post yesterday as nothing exciting happened and the post would have mimicked the previous one too much for my taste. Today's post about yesterday is a different matter, however. It turns out that my insomnia came back to haunt me, as I could not sleep during my 4:00 pm, 8:00 pm, 12:00 am, 2:00 am, or 4:00 am naps despite being dead tired. After my timer went off for my 4:00 am nap and I had yet again not received sleep, I decided to reset the timer until I finally fell asleep. During this period Windows decided to do an automatic update and reset itself, so I never heard the alarm go off, thus I woke up at 8:30 this morning, giving me a nap of about three and a half hours. I am feeling better now and I will see if insomnia has also crept into today.

On a side note, I guess I got pretty delirious around 4:00 this morning, as my roommate mentioned this morning that I babbled like a lunatic for a while, eventually getting up to go collect the helicopter that was stuck to the ceiling that was actually a fire sprinkler. Perhaps I will have to set up a camera in case something like this happens again.

In other news the project that I have been working on is quickly approaching a level in which it can be revealed to the public, so expect that in a few days. Hurray!

End of Day 7

I have now been on the uberman sleep schedule for approximately a week. Thee have only been a couple of noteworthy things over the last 24 hours. One is that my 2:00 am bisect nap was interrupted by a small earthquake, and that I overslept during my 8:00 nap, resulting in a really tired/groggy feeling that I hope will go away soon.

As this marks the end of the first week, it is time to look back and analyze the happenings of the week. Considering how many oversleeps that I have had, in conjunction with how few incidences of REM sleep I have had, it is clear that my body has not yet truly adapted to the schedule. I fear that until the amount of REM sleep becomes more balanced, I will continue to oversleep or go through periods in which it is difficult to stay awake. This is a little disappointing of a result, in that i had hoped that my brain would have adapted faster than this and that my transition period would be coming to an end.

I have also not gotten as much work done as I would have liked. In the tired state that I have been in for most of the week it has been more difficult to solve complex problems than I feel it should have been. I find myself staring off into space for large periods of time without productive results. I will have to attribute most of this to my brain trying to adjust to the new schedule.

Despite the week's shortcomings, I have decided to continue the schedule for at least one more week and see whether things improve or not.

As per usual, I will post progress in roughly 24 hours.

End of Day 6

I am quickly approaching the first week mark. Things have started to improve. Half of my naps over the previous 24 hours have included REM sleep and I have started to have some rather crazy dreams. Because of my previous troubles with the midnight nap, I have decided to include a nap between my midnight and 4:00 am naps, which seemed to help last night. I did have some initial trouble focusing this morning and at one point I had begun to nod off a bit. Generally if I am doing something that requires a little bit of movement I can stay awake, so I should avoid sitting and watching movies/television while I am in that groggy state.

As usual, I will update again in 24 hours. Expect my next post to also include a quick summary of the week.

End of Day 5

I have now been on the uberman sleep schedule for about five days. I may have been a tad overconfident in my last post, as this last night has been a tad rough. I overslept during my midnight nap (again), and had to really fight to stay awake until my next scheduled nap. Luckily I had my rubiks cubes, which helped pass the time until my 4:00 nap. After my 4:00 nap I found myself starting to nod off while sitting at my computer, but after my nap this morning I have been fine. I will have to figure out something to keep on the schedule during the late night/early morning.

As usual, I will post again in 24 hours with an update.

End of Day 4

I have now been on the uberman sleep schedule for approximately four days. At this point I think I have passed through the worst of the transition period. I have been able to adequately do tasks that involve thought, and I have steadily been feeling less tired. I have not missed a nap since my six hour oversleep from yesterday morning. I have also begun to experience dreams, which is quite exciting as it means that I am actually passing in to REM sleep.

As per usual, I will write another update in about 24 hours.

End of Day 3

I have now been on the uberman sleep schedule for approximately three days. Day three was definitely the worst day so far. I was completely useless for a majority of the day. I worked on a lego for most of the day, which worked well since it required arm motion and didn't require much thought.

As with the previous night, I ended up oversleeping again during the midnight nap. This time I overslept by quite a lot, sleeping for a total of six hours. When I awoke the alarm was turned off, but I don't remember doing this. I will have to ask the roommates if they turned it off for me when I didn't wake up. I did wake up from this fairly refreshed, but we will have to wait and see how this will impact the transition period. I will also have to think of something to stop this oversleeping from happening.

Today I feel refreshed enough to continue with programming. Hopefully I will have something that I can post fairly soon. As per usual, I will post progress again in 24 hours.

End of Day 2

I have been on the uberman sleep schedule for approximately 48 hours now. Feeling very tired, although I think that I am feeling better than I was late last night/early this morning. The third day of the transition is generally considered the hardest, so if I make it through today I should be good.

I slightly overslept during my last midnight lap since I didn't set my alarm, but have been fine on all other naps.

Working on legos right now, since it requires more physical movement and less thought. I will probably go back to programming (which I did all day yesterday) sometime later today. Nearly time for another nap. I will report in another 24 hours.

End of Day 1

It has been approximately 24 hours since my last normal sleep schedule, and I have begun the transition onto the polyphasic sleep schedule known as the Uberman Schedule. The goal of this schedule is to take six 25 minute naps a day: one every four hours. I have decided on the hours of 12:00, 4:00, and 8:00 (am and pm).

I have completed four naps so far. I was quite surprised to find that I was able to get some sleep with every nap, although I have not had any REM sleep yet. I ave also done well with not oversleeping during naps, thanks to the alarm clock that I wrote using Game Maker that requires a code to be entered in order to shut it off.

So far I feel as though I have pulled an all nighter, which is pretty much what I have done. This means that I am feeling pretty tired, and it is going to get worse over the course of the next few days. I will have to do more hands-on tasks if I am going to stay awake.

Time to turn in for nap number five. I will report again in 24 hours with results from day two.

Ramblings of One Who is Sleep Deprived

Welcome, travelers of the Internet. Before we continue let us come to an understanding: the principle purpose of this blog is to act as a display of projects that result from my insomnia. I will not be using this blog as a virtual diary, tracking my day to day activities, unless these activities pertain to a project or experiment. My life is exceedingly boring, and people do not need updates on every aspect of it. I am using this blog as a way to display to friends and family what I mean when I say "I worked on stuff this week."

Most of these projects that I will show are/will be the result of ideas I get in the bridge between being awake and being asleep, thus the title of the blog.

The first example of this, which I am going to use to kick start this blog, is the result of many sleepless nights trying to make a primarily two-dimensional game engine do far more than it was originally intended while also improving my rigging and animation skills. The engine that I am using is Game Maker 7 by YoYo Games, and can be downloaded from www.yoyogames.com. I used Blender 2.49b for the creation of all 3d assets. Here is a demonstration video:

Procedural Crowd Simulation with Rig Demonstration from Joshua Cogswell on Vimeo.

This is not technically a game, in that the "player" only has control of the camera, and that each unit reacts to the others based on a set of instructions. Next project is to turn this into a functioning game.

On a side note, tomorrow (technically later today) I will begin a new project. I will attempt to follow in the footsteps of Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, Albert Einstein, and Thomas Edison and switch to a polyphasic sleep schedule. The intention of which is to condition the brain into allowing for more REM sleep through the use of short naps evenly distributed throughout the day, reducing the amount of seep needed for the body to rest. I will attempt to switch to this now, while I am between jobs, and will reevaluate after a week of trying it. As I consider this an experimental project to maximize my work capacity, I will be supplementing my posts with information regarding my status. For every one's peace of mind, I will end this experiment immediately if I begin to feel any ill effects either physically or mentally. Also keep in mind that I only plan to make this a short term experiment and am not considering long term plans to stay on this schedule.

I apologize in advance for anyone who has read this rather lengthy post and been disappointed by the content. I promise I will be better about this in the future.