10 November 2010

To Sleep, Perchance To Dream?

So I've decided to embark on a little experiment. Anyone who knows me or has read this blog for any length of time knows that my sleep schedule is absolutely verkacht, which is a Really Bad Thing, particularly where all of my neuropathic issues are concerned. Or when I drive home after the 15-hour shift that turned into 18 hours.

Anyway, I've been considering polyphasic sleep schedules for quite a while. Certainly biphasic sleep, at a minimum, was well known in the pre-industrial world, and there's at least anecdotal evidence that it's quite doable. And, let's face it, I've been essentially living a bi- to polyphasic sleep schedule for years now.

Considering the problem and my general state of feeling tired most of the time, though, I've realized that my polyphasic sleep has not been regular. Not one little bit. So after reading up on the Everyman sleep schedule and with some encouragement from Mush, I think I've sorted out a variation that can work for my crazy schedule.

The plan is to get a core 4.5 hour block of sleep in the morning, then 20 minute naps at about 4PM, 1AM, and 5AM. The 4PM to 1AM stretch is a good bit longer than the recommended no-more-than-6 hour interval between naps, but it's the most workable solution I could think of that I could maintain during my regular work schedule. The nature of emergency work, of course, is that you never know what to expect, but the first half of my shift is almost always the busiest and I can typically find 20 minutes to spare in the post-midnight half. I'm hoping that my body will say, "A semblance of regularity? I'll take it!"

In Other News

The other day I dug Angus's lamb fleece (from last year) out of the shed and scoured it. Now I'm in the process of combing, then carding it. The combing is to get out as much of the vegetable matter as possible before carding the fiber into rolags. Also, the shearer made a lot of second cuts, and I'd prefer not to have a lot of neps in the yarn. At any rate, I've got a bag that's filling up with rolags and am looking forward to moving on to the spinning process.

7 comments:

Lisa/knitnzu said...

Good luck with that schedule Mel! It makes me physically remember the first days when boyo was home. No more than an hour of sleep in a row...

JelliDonut said...

This is an intriguing idea, but it takes me a good 20 minutes just to fall asleep. I don't think I could make it work, but I'll bet you can.

FiberQat said...

My dad slept that way. It worked really well for him. I hope it works well for you.

Michelle M. said...

I'm tired just reading that. I hope it works. There's a joke in there somewhere about counting/shearing sheep, so pretend I made it and that it was funny.

Erin said...

Keep us posted on the polyphasic sleep thing - it's something I've never had the discipline to try. It takes me far too long to fall asleep, especially if I know I have to get up again in short order.

Anonymous said...

My husband seems to have the polyphasic sleep schedule. He never sleeps more than 4 hours at a time at night and naps intermittently all day. He too is always tired.

Laurie said...

Was fascinated by that data about the 4 hours/then naps. But I think you can't go for the long interval without naps, and having it work. (They did say you want to kill yourself the first two weeks.) What about modinifil? Could probably time it so that it was done when you were done.