Click here to view today's sleep log

Today was the first day of my polyphasic sleep schedule, and I'm tired!

I have read that everyman starts off very easy and gets harder over the course of a few days, so I was expecting the past 24 hours to be easy. I have felt really tired, and it was a struggle to stay awake last night. I think this may partly be because I was slightly sleep deprived to start off with from the end of my holiday (I returned from Spain yesterday).

During the night last night, I had a list of chores and got most of them done. I unloaded the dishwasher, loaded it up, washed up the excess, got some things down from the loft (quietly) and cooked some sausages for lunch today. Before I went to bed at 7:00 this morning I went for a half hour walk and then made sausage sandwiches for today.

I slept for all of my naps, but the earlier ones were more successful. I was so tired for the first nap that I fell asleep quite quickly, and woke up feeling a bit better.

The lunch time nap involved power walking home, quickly sleeping and then marching back to work. I think it would have been better if I had cycled home and relaxed for 10 minutes before my nap. I need to get some oil for my bike before I can ride it so this is not an option for tomorrow.

My final sleep was the least successful but I definitely managed to sleep.

Now I have 3 and a half hours before my core sleep which I am really looking forward to!

This month I am starting a new crazy experiment - I am going to attempt to adopt a polyphasic sleep pattern.

What is Polyphasic Sleep?

Most people sleep once each day, normally during the night. This is called monophasic sleep as you are getting all of your sleep in a single sleep phase.

In some countries, it is not unusual to have a biphasic sleep pattern: This means that you would sleep twice each day. Normally you would have a long sleep session during the night, and take a siesta in the afternoon. A lot of people that nap in the afternoon like this sleep less hours overall - it seems that by having a short nap in the afternoon, you can reduce the duration of your main sleep by longer than the duration of the nap.

I am going to adopt a polyphasic sleep pattern, which means I will be sleeping multiple times each day. This should allow me to spend less time sleeping, while still feeling fully alert and awake.

Polyphasic Sleep Schedules

The first properly documented polyphasic sleep pattern was the dymaxion sleep pattern that Buckminster Fuller invented - he decided to split his day into 4 equal chunks, and sleep for half an hour every 6 hours. He did this for a few years and only stopped because "his schedule conflicted with that of his business associates, who insisted on sleeping like other men".

Another similar sleep pattern is the 'uberman' sleep pattern. This pattern is reportedly easier to achieve than dymaxion, and consists of 6 equally spaced naps throughout the day, each being 20 minutes long. This means that you only sleep for 2 hours each day, but the naps have to be consistently on time: You have to sleep every 4 hours.

The sleeping pattern that I am going to try is called the 'everyman' sleep pattern. In this pattern you sleep for a long, 3 hour core nap, and then have 3 naps throughout the day for a total of 4 hours sleep. (Each nap is 20 minutes long). This is supposed to allow a bit more flexibility than the uberman sleep schedule.

My Sleep Schedule

Initially, I am going to attempt to sleep the following hours:

Sleep Period	From	To
Core Sleep	23:30	2:30
Nap	7:00	7:20
Nap	12:20	12:40
Nap	17:00	17:20

The following is a graphical representation of my sleep pattern - the dark areas are areas where I am asleep and the light areas are where I am awake in a 24 hour period.

This is not quite ideal - I think it would be better to have exactly 5 hours between each sleep period but that wouldn't fit around my life so well. Instead the spaces are 4:30, 5:00, 4:20, 6:10.

The reasons that I have chosen these hours are to interfere as little as possible with my girlfriend's routine. She goes to bed at 23:30 and wakes up at 7:30, so my first 2 sleep periods fit inside this. My 12:20 nap will involve me cycling home at lunch time (I have slept at that time before when I have been exhausted), and my final nap is before she gets home from work.

Motivation

So you might be wondering why exactly I am doing this. The answer is pretty simple: Every night when I go to bed I find myself wishing there were a few more hours in the day. With this sleep pattern I will be able to be awake for 4 extra hours each night! I should also feel as alert as I do on a full 8 hour sleep, and a lot of polyphasic sleepers even report feeling better than on a full nights sleep.

Also I like doing slightly odd things! Even if this experiment fails, at least I can say I tried it and can be sure that 8 hours solid sleep is the best way for me to sleep.

Further Reading

If you would like to read more about polyphasic sleep, I would highly recommend the book Ubersleep. You should also probably check out the author's blog.

If you want a brief overview of polyphasic sleep, the wikipedia page has some good information.

You should also take a look at Steve Pavlina's blog, which contains highly detailed sleep logs from when he took up the uberman sleep schedule.

Now that I am back in England, and this experience has come to an end, it's time to finish off this blog with one final post.

First of all, for me this trip was definitely the best 'holiday' that I have ever had! Due to the length of the trip, I never really felt like I was on holiday - it felt more like I was living in Toledo, and that the house I was staying in was my home. Also, due to the fact that I could talk to people in Spanish, I felt that I got a much better idea of the local culture, and had the opportunity to experience things that normal tourists would never see.

During this trip there were 2 things that were extremely important, and central to the whole experience: The school itself, and the host family. I am happy to say that for me, both of these were perfect!

The host family was amazing: The house was brilliant and in a great location, and all of the people in the family were really friendly and helpful. It was great to return from class each day and have a delicious (and often enormous) meal waiting for me, and I could never have learnt so much without being able to practice speaking with the family. It was also great for me to spend so much time with Paula. There are no small children in my life in England, and it was nice to spend time with her and see all of the amusing things she would always be doing.

For me the school was also amazing. When I had to fill in the questionnaire on my last day, there was a section for suggestions, but I really couldn't think of any way in which the lessons could have been improved. I have had Spanish group lessons in the past in language schools in the UK, and always found the materials to be poor, and didn't really learn a lot. The materials here were good, and the lessons were fun and interesting, and I think I have greatly improved my Spanish over the past 4 weeks. When I arrived in Spain my host family didn't think I could say anything in Spanish, and to be honest this wasn't far from the truth! I had learnt a lot before I came here, but had never really had a lot of opportunities to practice. After just a few weeks at Aula Toledo I have been able to have lots of interesting conversations with people in Spanish, and have generally been able to understand what people have said to me, and have made myself understood most of the time.

Outside of class, Maite has organised quite a few things for me to do in the evenings, such as watching films in Spanish, going to concerts, going on tours of the city and having intercambios with students who are learning English. This has been great, because I don't think I would have found any of these activities on my own.

For me, the best part of this whole experience has to have been all of the lessons that I had with Cristina, especially in the last 2 weeks when I was the only student in the class. Cristina was an excellent teacher, and we got on really well. She was really easy to talk to, and always showed a great amount of interest in what I had to say. I'm going to miss Cristina a lot!

Overall this has been a great experience for me, and I didn't want to leave Spain and come back to England! There are a lot of things that I am going to miss about Spain, and I would love to live there one day.

After the last day of school, I came home and ate, and told Charo about my plans for the next day. I told Charo that I would need to get to the train station at about 1:00, and she told me that she could give me a lift to the station. She asked if I had a ticket and I told her that I didn't, so she recommended that I walk down to the train station to buy a ticket, as they could be sold out the next day. I followed her advice and walked down to the train station. It took me about 20 minutes in each direction, and it was very hot, but I enjoyed it as I knew I wouldn't be experiencing that kind of sun again for a long time!

In the evening I went for a walk in the valley, and then stopped at Cafe Zocodover for dinner. When I got there the place was deserted - I was the only customer in the whole bar. This felt really weird because the bar is normally packed! As there was nobody there, I had a chance to have a good chat with Maki for a while, before people eventually started coming in.

The same group of people came in that I had spoken to a few days before, so I chatted to them for a while and had a few beers, and then they left and said goodbye. Before I left I chatted to the owners for a while, and told them that it was my favourite bar because they have 'super-camarera' (super-barmaid). I think this made Maki happy. As I left they all wished me 'buen viaje' (bon voyage) and gave me business cards with their email addresses.

The next day I didn't really do a lot. I ate a light breakfast, packed my things, showered and sent a few emails. Then at 12:30 Charo told me that Miguel was waiting outside to take me to the station. I said goodbye to Charo and told her that I would miss living there, and that her house felt like my home. She gave me a bocadillo (sandwich) for the journey and I met Miguel outside.

When I arrived at the station, I said goodbye to Miguel and Paula, and made Paula give me a kiss on the cheek. I told her I would miss her and she said 'me too', but I don't think it will be long before she fogets that I ever existed!

Thankfully the journey home was uneventful - but it was a long journey. I had to take a train, then a bus, then a plane, and then a car ride home. I landed in England at about 8:30 Spanish time, and my girlfriend picked me up at the airport. At first I didn't feel particularly pleased to be back in England, but when I saw her car pulling up in the car park I was suddenly very excited and pleased to see her again.

Yesterday afternoon, I met up with Fernando again for another intercambio. This time he picked me up at the city gates, and we drove a short way out of town to a bar to have a few drinks. Fernando is training to be a police officer, so we talked a bit about the police in Spain, and it was quite interesting because he said a few things that were very different from what Elvira had told me.

Fernando told me that he had watched the riots in London on the news, and was surprised that the police just stood there and took abuse from the crowds. He said that would never happen in Spain, and that if you threw something or was abusive to a police officer here they would be a lot more heavy handed. This is the opposite of what Elvira said, but it could be different in Madrid where the media are watching everything due to the protests. We also talked about the difference in the way that suspects are treated in Spain compared to England.

One thing I have heard in England is that it is actually very time consuming to detain a suspect: The officer has to make the arrest, take the suspect back to the police station, and then convince the custody sergeant that the suspect has done something wrong. This causes issues when the police are needed on the streets, because the process is time consuming and they have to hang around at the police station for a while. (Someone please correct me if you know this to be wrong). Fernando told me that in Spain this process is a lot quicker, because the police officer just needs to drop the suspect off at the police station, and someone there will take care of everything.

The other difference between England and Spain that we talked about was health and safety, and the practice of suing people when there is an accident. I have seen on the TV some of the things in the fiestas here, for example in Valencia, where people are walking around with fireworks in their hands. The other thing that I always see on the news is when there are bulls running through the town with people running away, and being knocked over. You could never do any of these things in England because someone would sue the council if they got hurt! I told Fernando that this interferes with a lot of aspects of life in the UK because, for example, children often miss out on opportunities for school trips because there is so much paperwork and rules and regulations, that it is not practical to do a lot of things. I also told him that if the police are heavy handed with a suspect they are likely to be sued.

Today was the last day of school. For our break we went to a nice restaurant in town called com.es, and I had a tostada with jamon and tomato. You may have noticed that I am eating a lot of jamon: I can't really eat this in England, so I am eating as much of the stuff as possible because it is delicious!

At the end of class I filled in a questionnaire about the course, and I had no criticisms to write down whatsoever. I told Maite that the course has been amazing, that the host family has been perfect and Cristina has been a great teacher. Cristina asked me what I needed to do tomorrow, and it was a good job she did because it reminded me that I needed to print out my plane ticket!

After class I walked back with Cristina for the final time and it was really sad (¡que triste!). I told her that I had had a great experience, and that I was sad to be leaving. I said that I didn't necessarily want to stay in Toledo, but I definitely didn't want to return to England! If it were possible I would love to visit more places in Spain, but unfortunately I have to go home and work. I told her that she had been a great teacher, and that I would miss her a lot, and we did the kissing on the cheeks thing and parted.