Polyphasic Sleep - Return To Monophasic

Unfortunately I have to announce that I am going to be switching back to monophasic sleep.

This morning I woke up at about 5:00am and was as awake as a zombie. But I thought it was 6:30am and time to get up then because I was hardly conscious at all. So I switched off my alarms even though they weren't going off and tried to go upstairs and have some breakfast. I managed to get a few things out but couldn't find what I was looking for even though I know where it is. I then noticed the time was 5:09am so I went back to bed. What I did not remember at the time was that I had not reset my alarm clocks. I woke up slightly after 10:00am.

I could recover from this and continue with polyphasic sleep because this would be a rare thing to happen but I knew eventually I would oversleep if I did not hurry up and adapt. I did adapt to being able to function better on 4.5 hours sleep than I usually would but that would be bad for my health if I kept it up for too long. This adaption to being awake almost all day while only sleeping 4.5 hours did not allow me enough sleep deprivation to adapt to having full sleep cycles during naps.

I think that is the main problem I have been having all along and the only way to fix it would have been to purposely sleep deprive myself by sleeping 3 hours one night. Although I can't guarantee that would have enough effect to allow me to sleep properly during my naps, and I'd have to keep it up for days. The other option would be to start over and this time focus on napping before it's too late. I am not going to try polyphasic sleeping again soon however, as I feel it will be easier to do in the future.

I am still happy that I made it so far so to me that is success enough. I know now that I have what it takes to push myself through sleep deprivation and be patient until it gets better and I know what to do next time. I think I learned a lot from the process and enjoyed the challenge and I am happy that I made it through to day 19 before I had any major serious oversleeps.

I do not intend on trying this same sleep schedule again. It is too hard to balance naps with core sleep because the core sleep is just too long. I know other people may have success with trying this so don't let my results stop you from giving it a try. Next time I try I will be older and in a better position to do it. I want to adapt to Uberman sleep, that is a 20 minute nap every 4 hours. That is simple and the adaption works easily if you can make it through all the sleep deprivation because you do not have a long core sleep keeping you awake. It takes no longer than 7 days to adapt if done without error which is unlike my schedule which could have taken me over a month.

So now I'll just return to monophasic sleep and I'll do my best not to get lazy and sleep in too late or stay up too late. I'll make the most of it and just return to polyphasic when I am better prepared in the future.