This week has been an interesting week - I have started to really get to grips with this sleeping pattern but have also had a few days where I didn't get to have my naps due to doing a course in London.
First of all, I think I am actually starting to adapt to biphasic sleep, because I have had quite a few days now where I have not really felt tired but have still slept for my nap. It seems that as long as I try to take my nap between 3:00pm and 4:30pm I can nearly always get to sleep for it, even if I only manage to sleep for 45 minutes or so. The main problem that I seem to have at the moment is that I don't really know what to do if I can't get my nap.
Yu Lee has tried to nap after 8:00pm a couple of times, and it has never worked for her: She is always too tired to get up and always ends up going straight back to bed. When I was in London, I tried to take a late nap after dinner and accidentally slept through until 4:30am. This is something I need to learn to deal with as sometimes it is really inconvenient to be able to nap straight after work, but I think I will wait until I'm better adapted to start experimenting with this.
This week I have also decided to be a bit more flexible with my bed time. Before this week I was trying to rigidly stick to sleeping between 1:00am and 5:30am, and I think this was helpful in thebeginning, but now I am just going to sleep when I feel tired, as long as it results in sleeping for a multiple of 1.5 hours. This means I can either sleep at 10:00, 11:30 or 1:00.
The reason this was not a good idea in the beginning is that I was still adapting to biphasic sleep, and I need to become accustomed to sleeping in the afternoon. In the beginning this was difficult, so I needed to be a bit overtired to force my body to sleep. As this is becoming less of an issue now, I can sleep whenever I feel tired and hopefully recover some of the sleep I have missed over the past month.
As usual I am going to include this week's record of my alertness throughout the day. I will include the scale below, and then the chart with my alertness for each hour of each day.
| Score | Meaning |
|---|---|
| 0 | I give up |
| 1 | Microsleeps. Feeling like falling asleep when doing physical activity such as walking. |
| 2 | I could sleep at my desk by accident whilst trying to type something if I'm not careful. Occasional microsleeps a possibility |
| 3 | Uncomfortable (extremely tired) / very sleepy. Even just sitting down is uncomfortable and/or I have to fight off sleep constantly |
| 4 | Very Tired – I could fall asleep in less than a minute. Programming is impossible or at least very difficult |
| 5 | Reading would make me fall asleep or feel really sleepy |
| 6 | I could read without sleeping but it would make me feel drowsy |
| 7 | Normal Monday afternoon after missing a few hours sleep on Sunday night |
| 8 | Slightly Tired (definitely don't feel like I could fall asleep). Normally I would feel like this at about 8:00pm – 9:00pm |
| 9 | Normal Awake |
| 10 | Better than normal |
| Sunday | Monday | Tuesday | Wednesday | Thursday | Friday | Saturday | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| DAY: | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 |
| 16/09/12 | 17/09/12 | 18/09/12 | 19/09/12 | 20/09/12 | 21/09/12 | 22/09/12 | |
| 00:00 | 5 | Asleep | Asleep | Asleep | 7 | Asleep | Asleep |
| 01:00 | Asleep | Asleep | Asleep | Asleep | Asleep | Asleep | Asleep |
| 02:00 | Asleep | Asleep | Asleep | Asleep | Asleep | Asleep | Asleep |
| 03:00 | Asleep | Asleep | Asleep | Asleep | Asleep | Asleep | Asleep |
| 04:00 | Asleep | Asleep | 7 | 7 | Asleep | Asleep | Asleep |
| 05:00 | 6 | 8 | 7 | 7 | 7 | 8 | 7 |
| 06:00 | 7 | 7 | 8 | 7 | 7 | 7 | 8 |
| 07:00 | 7 | 7 | 8 | 7 | 7 | 7 | 8 |
| 08:00 | 8 | 8 | 7 | 8 | 7 | 8 | 8 |
| 09:00 | 7 | 8 | 6 | 8 | 7 | 7 | 9 |
| 10:00 | 7 | 7 | 7 | 7 | 8 | 8 | 9 |
| 11:00 | 6 | 8 | 7 | 8 | 8 | 8 | 7 |
| 12:00 | 7 | 8 | 7 | 7 | 8 | 7 | 7 |
| 13:00 | 6 | 6 | 8 | 8 | 8 | 8 | 7 |
| 14:00 | 7 | 7 | 7 | 7 | 7 | 7 | 6 |
| 15:00 | 7 | 7 | 7 | 7 | 7 | 7 | Asleep |
| 16:00 | 7 | 7 | 6 | 7 | 7 | Asleep | Asleep |
| 17:00 | Asleep | 7 | 7 | 7 | Asleep | 8 | 9 |
| 18:00 | 8 | 7 | 7 | 7 | 9 | 7 | 8 |
| 19:00 | 7 | 8 | 7 | 7 | 7 | 7 | 7 |
| 20:00 | 8 | 7 | 7 | 7 | 7 | 7 | 7 |
| 21:00 | 7 | Asleep | 5 | 6 | 7 | 6 | 7 |
| 22:00 | 6 | Asleep | 6 | 6 | 6 | 7 | 7 |
| 23:00 | 5 | Asleep | Asleep | 6 | 7 | 6 | 6 |
| Mean: | 6.74 | 7.31 | 6.89 | 7.05 | 7.26 | 7.22 | 7.47 |