day 36, April 12:

Perseverance seems to be paying off.  There are small difficulties (but not that different from the monophasic ones: snoozing, tiredness at work, etc).  Generally I can feel my energy levels improving day after day.

• Smart Wake woke me in a small waking 1mn spike. It was quite easy to get out of bed.
• I’m aware and awake with constant energy levels and great concentration capabilities
• I did snooze on the 15h nap …  (trying to stay a little longer got me confused and made me snooze twice)
• extremely tired after 22h. Possible combination of failed naps, exercise and rush of exciting work for 12h – 14h of the day.

As you can see below the 7am nap was not very restful (mostly light sleep).  The morning nap is usually all REM so I could really tell the difference as I woke up.  I think it was a combination of things.   One rule I broke is going to bed straight after working (and my mind was racing with excitement about work).  I recommend taking a 5 minutes mental break before going to bed (I usually do some little chore) so you can break your train of thought, forget what you’re doing and focus on sleeping.  But today I didn’t follow my own advice.  In addition to that I was a little late for bed so my partner’s alarm went off 3 times in that time.  We have synchronized my naps with her monophasic sleep so we wake up at the same time.  but today I was a little delayed with work.

(2012/04/012, (3:10,5),(3:15,6),(3:20,7,”working already”), (4:56,6,”a little heavy feeling and tired eyes.”),(5:10,7, “manual activity: tidy+dishwasher brings wakefullness back”),(6:10,7.5),(13:50,7.5),(14:15,5),(15:22,6),(15:30,7),(21:10,7),(21:15,6),(22:00,5))

 

day 37, April 13:

Today it was a little harder to wake up in the middle of the night in spite of the “smart wake”.  I just wanted to stay in bed as I was a little tired from the previous day.  I also think I was just feeling lazy.  One of those days!

I tried to experiment with the 7am nap to see if giving myself 40mn would result in more REM. It didn’t.  And I was groggy after the light sleep.  I also used the “smart wake” alarm for which you have to give an interval, … and it tried to make me sleep as long as possible.

So I asked to sleep 40mn (±10mn) and ended up with 27mn REM, 27mn Light, 4mn deep, waking up after 58mn (not the result I expected).  So I will stick to setting my alarm 25mn – 30mn after I go to bed for the morning nap.

I am currently working a lot trying to launch a new website so the extra hours are very welcome.

(2012/04/13, (3:10,5,”itchy eyes”),(3:20,6), (4:00,7), (22:00,7),(22:30,6),(23:00,4))  and 7 for the rest of the day.

day 38, April 14:

Tomorrow I have to catch a very early morning flight and I’m not sure when I’ll be able to nap, so I’ve given myself a little extra sleep.  Well, 3h50 of core sleep, … so not much on most people’s books.  But more for me.

The last nap is missing.   I took the train up to Pavithra’s house (you met her in a previous post) and tried to nap in their bedroom.  But the new environment, the conversation and the late attempt (around 8pm) resulted in only tossing and turning but no sleeping.

(2012/04/14, very awake all morning. Tired at 5:30 (walk around house, drink), 6:45 (time to nap))