Well I’ve decided that this is make-or-break week for the "Uberman" schedule. I’ve been trying and failing to transition from Everyman to Uberman for a couple weeks now; if I don’t settle into a schedule soon I’m going to be in danger territory. So starting Wednesday either I successfully adapt or I go back to Everyman or even drop polyphasic sleeping completely for a couple months.
Off to a disappointing start. Last night I didn’t oversleep any naps – instead I fell asleep in my chair. It’s still oversleep, of as much as three hours. If I can’t stay awake tonight that’s pretty much it.
I was wondering…
.. after that post (a couple of posts back–the continuous improvement one) what was going on. I’ve watched your posts about polyphasic.. but I wasn’t sure why you got onto this kick… Was it the Baby?
Was it just to see if it worked?
I know my gut reaction to your points in that post on improvement was “Where’s the romance?”–by which I meant–“wow, the idea of trying to schedule one’s life so completely in order to be efficient has some appeal to one part of me, but another part thinks of that line from the movie “The Way of the Gun” where Ryan Phillipe’s character says “A plan is just a list of things that don’t happen.”… “
It also reminded me of late 19th century Prussian/German General Staff leaders who began to think that they could plan for every possible contingency in a war and thus control outcomes… This thinking had been rejected by earlier military leaders in Prussia–such as Moltke the Elder–because they said you could plan everything up to the start of a war, but from then on, you just had to “fucking adapt” (well, they prolly didn’t say “fucking”), because reality would always engage in what Clausewitz called “the friction of war”.. and screw up any long-term laid plans..
Anyway.. this was just my reaction. I was both intrigued and rather skeptical..
Sorry.. just thought I’d add a comment–I need more coffee before I write anything more coherent, but I wondered what was up…
Re: I was wondering…
It was because I needed more time in my days. Still do. At some point being more efficient ceased to be enough, and I needed extra time to take care of all of my responsibilities.
Oh and monophasic sleep had started getting unpleasant. Waking up gasping; nightmares; grogginess and the feeling of having slept either too much or too little all the time. It was time for a sleep reboot anyway.
I don’t know about romance, but there’s a certain awesome factor to being awake all the time. You see the family off to bed… then greet them in the morning… with the dishes done and a half a dozen other chores done… it’s a nifty feeling.
As for planning for everything… that’s all pretty well covered in the polyphasic literature, I don’t feel like reiterating… basically if you want to rigidly structure your life but feel like a superhuman (literally – interesting time-dilation effects have been reported), you go on the “Uberman” schedule; if you want the flexibility to deal with kids and life you go on the “Everyman” schedule. The last couple weeks of my polyphasic reports have been about an attempt to transition from Everyman to Uberman because of some annoyances with the former. And also just to see what it was like.
Cool…
.. I had no idea… that’s why I was wondering.
Sounds cool.. especially if your sleep was so horrible before.
I tend to sleep less than anyone else in the house anyway–well, maybe.. I do get up earlier–only about 6-7 hours a day.. but I am definitely not a night person..
I will take a gander into it sometime tho.. seems interesting..