Journal // 9th September 2024

Sep 9

On this day I… Woke Up.

And here we are. Again.

A few weeks ago I tried to change things up—most notably my sleep. You see I wanted less, sleep, as much as I love getting it is a bit of a waste of time, right?

Okay, sure we need a good amount of it to function, but we could get so much more done every day if we could get less.

I typically get around 5.5 hours a night. Take last night for instance, one app says I was in bed for 5h 41m and was asleep for 5h 14m, and another says 5h 40m and asleep for 5h 16m. Somewhere between 5 hours and 5.5 hours is my norm. And I wanted more.

I tried polyphasic and Biphasic sleep patterns. Trying to get only 4.5 hours of sleep a night, this failed. Miserably.

The idea of getting less sleep and still being able to function as a human being is a great idea, and I’m not saying that it’s not doable, I’m saying that I just failed because I didn’t do it right.

The human body is great at adapting, I mean we’re here today because of that fact. It’s not survival of the fittest it’s survival of the one who can best adapt to changes in the environment. But survival of the fittest sounds better.

All of the adaptations that led us, homo-sapiens, to be the dominant species took hundreds of thousands to millions of years to take place. So changing one’s sleep pattern overnight was probably a bad idea.

The best way would have been to get more overall sleep. my regular amount, then a 20-30 minute kip halfway through the day (or in my case between 12:00 and 13:00.) then slowly remove sleep time from the core sleep at night, reducing from 5.5 hours down 15 minutes at a time so it doesn’t feel like much of a jolt. Like today.

I woke up today 15 minutes earlier than usual, I feel fine and am able to write this. It wasn’t planned that was, frankly I was going to get back to my regular sleep schedule, but right now, I feel pretty good. I have a kip planned for later.

So, do we really need 8 hours of sleep?

Frankly, I don’t know. All the sleep studies I’ve read say that going from 8 hours to less will inevitably fail. Due to the shock of losing such a large chunk of sleep overnight (excuse the pun). But what if we give ourselves time to adapt? Make that change more gradual.

If today goes okay, and by that, I mean as planned, then I’ll try again. But this time removing 15 minutes from my core sleep.

Core Sleep;

Bed - 23:00

Wake - 05:00

New Core Sleep;

Bed - 23:00

Wake - 04:45

With a 20-30 kip between 12:00 and 13:00.

Let’s see how this goes over the next few weeks. I’ll also be adding a 05:00 wake-up every once in a while, to create that slower adatation. I want to force my body (brain) to get better quality sleep in the space of time I’m giving it.

Let’s take the 20-30 kips. Matthew Walker says in his book, ‘Why We Sleep’, that our brains will seek out R.E.M. or deep sleep if it is deprived of it. Falling into either one in order to get more.

Both R.E.M. and deep (stages 3-4) are necessary for cognitive functions and memory. If we need it, then our brains will WANT IT. He also says that Biphasic sleep is a more natural way of sleeping. Of course, he meant that having a 20-30 minute kip in addition to the 8 hours sleep overnight.

Biphasic and polyphasic sleep patterns have been tested and shown to have benefits and detriments to overall cognitive functions and memory but like I said earlier, all the tests I’ve read about seem to have been a shock to the systems of the participants rather than gradually decreasing it over a long period giving the brain time to adapt.

If you know of any please let me know in the comments the more information I have the better my understanding will be;