Polyphasic Day One
It’s 2:30 am on the second day of my second polyphasic transition (days starting at midnight), and I feel wide awake and able to concentrate. I started using Placebo’s Polynap MP3 Soundtrack, and as I expected, it is quite helpful and effective at both getting me to sleep and waking me up. All of my naps have been restful, and I woke up with ease each time. Often when the white noise of the soundtrack finishes, I wake up on my own. If not the roosters will often wake me up. I also have another backup alarm (a loud one), which woke me up twice so far (out of 6 naps).
All of that is very important and helpful, but what really convinces me of the future success of my naps is something else… my secret weapon. In a word - water. Muhahahaha! If I don’t wake up from the lack of white noise, and if the roosters and the pigs fail to wake me up, and if I even manage to sleep past the loud alarm, a waterfall will come pouring down upon my face. I discovered the incredible waking power of water during my last attempt at polyphasic sleep, but I was unsure how to accomplish the same task in urban areas since there is no accessible place to attach a hose in my apartment complex. Then my coworker presented me with the brilliant idea. A water filter for a fish tank. It works perfectly.
I went to Petco and bought a Whisper In-tank Filter 10i for around $15, and then I bought a digital appliance timer at Target, and boom! No more oversleeping. The filter is inside a large pot full of water positioned at the edge of a table just over my sleeping head. After five minutes of the loud alarm, if I’m still not awake, then down she pours. The foam mat that I sleep on is covered with a layer of garbage bags and a towel, just in case it actually happens. But I haven’t been very tired much less close to oversleeping at all so far. I didn’t even set it up until right before my last nap, but now that it’s in place, I will make sure it’s set for every nap. My goal: not a single oversleep!
If I start to feel sleepy, I play a bit of Warcraft, and I’m awake again. So far so good…
Nice to see that the filter pump idea is working out. A lot more reliable than that Rube Goldberg-linke contraption you were discussing with me, but I’m sure that would have been a lot better to look at and a hell of a lot more fun to watch in action. ^_^
Andrew on 2 October 2006 at 3:12 pm
Ha, yeah, that contraption would have been over the top. As an update, I did oversleep once. I was really in lala land that time:
http://kirkkahn.com/blog/2006/10/05/like-putty-in-the-sandmans-hands-day-six/
One unintentional oversleep the whole time combined with relatively high levels of alertness most of the time is a worthy accomplishment I’d say.
Kirk on 30 March 2007 at 10:30 am