Ryan's Currently Unnamed Blog

Ok.. first.. i RARELY bother to take these... but saw this on someone's page that I respected and it seemed acurate for them... so.. I took the 5 minutes to take this and:

Not too surprised by the results... although... I DO feel the need to disassemble that quiz and see how it works... not too hard to see which ones of those fit into which category... but guess its just the nerd in me to figure out how something works.. lol

Secondly... overwhelmed is an understatment. I'm finding myself with A LOT to do... and I've always felt like I've needed more hours in the day. As much as i *LOVE* being lazy and sleeping... and have always been a bigtime night person and NOT a morning person. So, I think I just might be able to pull this off... maybe...

First, some background.... my sleep scheudle has always been kinda... crazy... for quite some time... I've stayed up very late.. often past 3 or 4am... and been up for work the next day around 8:30am. Lately, I've found myself pushing myself less and less... and getting to bed around 1 or 2 am.. and sleeping a little bit later.

The problem is... my body doesn't like it... normally, by the end of the week, I start feeling very sluggish. So, sometimes, on Friday's I feel useless. The second problem is that I NEED to catch up on the weekends. So, I end up sleeping for 8-12 hours (making me a binge sleeper, i guess). This is manageable.. but often leads to the feeling that i've wasted a whole weekend. And worse, if I push myself to get through things even more.. I end up getting myself sick. Normally just a cold, but still annoying then when I have to deal with it.

The other nasty side effect is... sometimes I don't even make it to Friday.. which then means that I end up sleeping more thursday night... and end up being thrown off and either end up sleeping TOO much on the weekend (where I end up tired or with headaches) or end up sleeping less then I need and then end up dragging earlier the following week.

So... the first system I read about was the Uberman... which I think I read about back in 2000 or so.. which, as cooshie (is that a word?), as the IntegrationWare days were (dot com-type consulting company, playing quake after hours.. sometimes longer then the 8 hour work day... indoor basketball court for lunch or 'brainstorming' free throw sessions... free drinks in the kitchen... with beer on friday [long standing tradition to celebrate another week of being in business])... I didn't dare to try to ask my boss (at the time there were serious pressures facing the business) if I could take a nap while I'm at work.

But... Uberman is simple... every 4 hours... you take a 20 minute nap. That's it. So, that means you are sleeping for 2 hours a day, effectively getting 22 hours in your day. I'm not really sure what I'm getting now.. on average, but its certainly more then 2 hours... and there's something to be said for the consistency of it all.

Earlier today, i came across this post, talking about the 28 hour day. Which basically makes your week a 6 day week. The problem is... that you have to negotiate a 4 day, 10 hours per day work week, and Monday melts into your weekend giving you a 56 hour weekend... Sounds great in theory... but I honestly don't know if I really could sleep a full 8 or 9 hours a day at this point.

And, in a way.. I'm already tuned to a polyphasic (as opposed to the more typical monophasic, where you sleep the same amount of time everyday) sleep schedule. Its just over a longer period. And I don't really get sleep depreviation symptoms until things get really out of whack, so I've always had Uberman in the back of my head.

But I recently came across the "Everyman" system... which sounds MUCH more possible to integrate into my daily routine. Its actually kinda simple. You get a 'core sleep' at night... anywhere from 1.5-6 hours. depending on what your body can take, and how determined you are to squeeze the most out of your day. then you just space out three 20 minute naps throughout your day... (one of which is during the work day.. but that's easier then squeezing in two 20 minute ones).

Another interesting alternative is the "Dymaxion" which gives you 3 hours of sleep a day, landing it right between the Everyman and the Uberman, and is four 45 minutes naps throughout the day. Which also only needs one during the work day, but 45 minutes is a much bigger chunk, and still unmanageable for me, when I often work through lunch.

The other positive thing about it... it will put me on a rigid schedule... which would probably be a good thing.. since that's my biggest problem.. when I get to working on something and find out that the sun is coming up and I need to be at work in a few hours...

Will give it some more thought and maybe take the plunge.