First I am going to start with my alertness spreadsheet. Here is a reminder of the scale:
| 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: | 22 | 23 | 24 | 25 | 26 | 27 | 28 |
| 23/09/12 | 24/09/12 | 25/09/12 | 26/09/12 | 27/09/12 | 28/09/12 | 29/09/12 | |
| 00:00 | Asleep | Asleep | Asleep | Asleep | 8 | Asleep | 6 |
| 01:00 | Asleep | Asleep | Asleep | Asleep | 7 | Asleep | Asleep |
| 02:00 | Asleep | Asleep | Asleep | Asleep | Asleep | Asleep | Asleep |
| 03:00 | Asleep | Asleep | Asleep | Asleep | Asleep | Asleep | Asleep |
| 04:00 | Asleep | Asleep | Asleep | Asleep | Asleep | Asleep | Asleep |
| 05:00 | 9 | 6 | 7 | 6 | Asleep | Asleep | Asleep |
| 06:00 | 9 | 7 | 8 | 6 | Asleep | 6 | Asleep |
| 07:00 | 9 | 8 | 8 | 8 | 8 | 7 | 7 |
| 08:00 | 7 | 8 | 8 | 7 | 8 | 7 | 7 |
| 09:00 | 9 | 8 | 8 | 7 | 8 | 7 | 7 |
| 10:00 | 9 | 8 | 8 | 7 | 8 | 7 | 8 |
| 11:00 | 8 | 8 | 9 | 7 | 7 | 6 | 8 |
| 12:00 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 6 | 6 | 6 | 8 |
| 13:00 | 6 | 8 | 9 | 7 | Asleep | Asleep | 8 |
| 14:00 | 7 | 8 | 7 | 7 | 7 | 7 | 7 |
| 15:00 | 7 | 8 | 7 | 7 | 7 | 8 | 7 |
| 16:00 | 8 | Asleep | 7 | 7 | 8 | 8 | 7 |
| 17:00 | 8 | 8 | 8 | Asleep | 8 | 8 | Asleep |
| 18:00 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 9 | 8 | 7 | Asleep |
| 19:00 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 8 | 7 | 7 | 7 |
| 20:00 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 8 | 7 | 6 | 7 |
| 21:00 | 5 | 7 | 8 | 7 | 6 | 6 | 7 |
| 22:00 | Asleep | 7 | 8 | 7 | 6 | 6 | 7 |
| 23:00 | Asleep | 7 | 7 | 8 | Asleep | 6 | 7 |
| Mean: | 7.53 | 7.61 | 8.00 | 7.17 | 7.29 | 6.76 | 7.19 |
This is the final time I am going to be including this spreadsheet, for several reasons.
First of all, Libre Office has some issues which make this a nightmare. The conditional formatting is a real pain to set up, and when I export it to html it has stopped colouring the text so I have to hack the html manually afterwards.
The second reason is that I have realised that my scale doesn't make a whole lot of sense. This scale was based on how I thought I would feel on a normal monophasic sleeping pattern, with 9 being 'normal' and 7 and 8 being a bit tired. The more I think about it, I'm sure I rarely ever felt a 9 in the first place! The scale is too subjective, and it is difficult to accurately pick between 7, 8 and 9, and I'm sure that I am marking my alertness lower now than I would have in the beginning. I think that averaging 7 - 8 was probably normal on a monophasic sleep pattern.
The third and probably most important reason is that I just don't think this is necessary any more. I am sure that my sleeping pattern is working, and it is very difficult to remember to log my sleepiness when I am not really tired. When I was trying everyman, it was easy to remember to fill in the spreadsheet because the tiredness took over my whole life, but when you are scoring 7s and 8s all of the time it is very difficult to remember.
An interesting thing that this spreadsheet has taught me is that you always feel a little bit tired. If you ever stop to think about it, I think you will notice that there is always a slight tiredness present, but it is normally negligible (unless you are on some hard drugs in which case I think you will feel pretty alert).
After nearly 1 month of doing this sleeping pattern I am pretty sure that I will be continuing with it for a while. I am going to continue my daily updates for a while, especially considering I haven't had a full week yet where I have stuck to the schedule, but I don't think I will need to continue with this for much longer. I still don't feel 100% adapted, so I guess I will continue with this until it becomes 100% natural.