Hello from the other side
I owe a thousand writeups on a hundred things to at least sixty people, and being that I've been awake for 22h of the last six days, I have zero excuse for not providing them…other than that I've just really been enjoying spending the time by myself. I'm reading books, making chainmail again, watching movies I meant to get to, organizing all my stuff, and oh yeah, doing a whole bunch of stretching and taiji practice, just for my own edification, that I'd normally never have time for (even on Everyman :)).
So yes, the Dymaxion schedule seems, at least so far, to be an awesome find! A couple notes on that adaptation, though they won't mean I don't owe more details later, I know:
* The "Gradual" adaptation method can kiss every butt in New England, if I have my say: That noise was AWFUL, and I'm sure if we hadn't finally abandoned it and switched ("sudden"ly) to the schedule we wanted to end up on, this all would have failed. So many people have told me about their gradual adaptation attempts, and I never had any personal experience to offer, and now I feel terrible about that and wonder how many failures could have been prevented if I'd tried this earlier and known to say GOD NO, GET ON YOUR SCHEDULE, because long dragged-out sleep dep where you're desynchronized from your regular schedule *but* not actually learning the new one is, if I may be dramatic for a moment, unspeakably awful. For 17 days, I just grew more and more tired; on day 18 I decided to give the gradual the middle finger and just get on Dymaxion, and by day 19 I was already starting to feel better. The last two days have been almost easy; I'm sleeping well and waking refreshed, and barely feeling any tiredness in-between…but NONE of those positives started until I got on the schedule.
* The Schedule, Dymaxion, I was awfully dubious about too; but unlike the gradual adaptation (which, when it works for people, I'm sure it does by accident \ because they manage to get on the full schedule before the gradual part wears them out too completely to adjust), it seems to have a whole lot of merit. It took two days (of actually being on the schedule!) for me to start napping the whole 30m, but once I did, magic. I'm absolutely reminded of Uberman, in terms of what the naps and the rest of it feels like, but it's no lie that only needing to sleep 4 times a day instead of 6 is WAY easier on the ol' "real life". I don't want to make any final-sounding declarations with less than a week of actual adherence under my belt, but suffice it to say that now that I'm doing it, I think I really like this schedule. <3
When it comes to "getting stuff done", well, overall the extra hours in the day have been pretty well balanced by being too sleep-deprived to do shit - for that last week of gradual especially, I was all kinds of useless. Now, though, I'm starting to catch up and then some, and many things I'd missed being able to do even on Everyman are starting to become regularly possible, like practicing music and making art…it's pretty great. And even on the other side of nearly a month of super difficult challenges, I can still easily say that yes, feeling rested and like you have enough time is *totally* worth the effort of finding and adjusting to a sleep schedule that works for you. …It's nice to know that after all these years of messing with it, that bit is still true. :)
Other minor notes:
- Per usual, I didn't give up coffee (which affects me very little), but also per usual for a strict schedule, it affects me more than normal, and I've cut back slightly from my usual 3-4 cups a day to two, max.
- I also still enjoy a drink sometimes, but I have a limit of ~one beer a day (I try to not drink more than that anyway, but I'm more strict about it on this schedule). I don't notice any ill effects from that daily beer (thank goodness :D), but a week ago I had two and *ugh*, that I felt.
- My exercise load has been medium-light (*for me*, my range being on the high end of normal amounts), but I've not only had no trouble with it, I've used the extra time to add some more stretching and conditioning to my usual martial arts stuff, and that's gone fine. Next week I plan to add back my thrice-weekly swims, too.
- Since yesterday, my sleep dep has been at 10% or less. It's not completely gone yet, and I'll report back on how long that takes, but I feel as good or better than on monophasic, and almost as good as I did on Everyman 3, already, which is pretty awesome, yeah? :D
More soon! Nap lovely <3
Originally published at counterclockwise. You can comment here or there.