Thus far this has experiment has a bust. And the fault is all my own. The big thing about polyphasic sleep is the nap schedule has to be followed pretty strictly. Nap skips are never a good idea; which probably happened every day for me so far.

So the first day I got in my lunch nap, but skipped my dinner nap. When I took my late night nap at 12, it ended up being my core sleep. I slept for 5 hours, and when I woke up I felt horrible. Probably worse off then I had gone to sleep. To top it off, I had a 1200 word paper due Thursday which I hadn’t really gotten started on. I ended up half writing the paper, half taking 5-10 min naps to try and get that rested feeling. What a bad start.

Thursday I only got in my lunch and dinner naps, and I ended sleeping for another 5 hours during my core nap.

Friday I only got in the lunch nap, and I slept for a whopping 7 hours. I woke up at 10AM, which as completely unexpected. I didn’t even remember 1 of my 3 alarms going off. But what else do you expect when you skip 2/3 naps?

Saturday I think I took one 3 hour nap from 4-7, and then slept for 5 hours last night. Which brings us today.

So this morning I went into my schedule and wrote in nap times, and hopefully I can stick to it. I know on Tuesday I don’t have time for a lunch nap, but I’m hoping I should be alright. Saturday will be interesting as well, with me shooting from probably 11 to 6, straight.

One thing I’d like to see is whether getting more sleep before a day with naps skips helps, or if you need to get more sleep after a nap skip day. I guess it comes down to whether the naps are a preparative measure or a reactive measure by your body to account for the sleep lost.

So here goes Everyman, the restart.

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