The World Within

Certain journeys that you take in life will be awfully lonely and success in those paths-less-travelled will be determined solely on how long you're willing to push for. - Tri I firmly believe that you often have to take certain decisions in life which you know will benefit you but no one understands or is willing to pledge you their support for. If you're too full of things people find hard to find any common grounds with, then most of your decisions will be of this nature. You'll have to commit to seeing through to your decisions alone, without hoping anyone will understand them and without ever even trying to justify yourself. If you know deep down you should do it, then no matter how crazy people think you are for doing it, do it. No matter how lonely and difficult it gets, do it. Only quit when it is you who knows that it is time to or you who feels that you probably should and that too for your own sake. Wanting to be polyphasic is one such decision for ...

Easy for me to put but difficult to fathom—I've spent 7 days now trying to tame the Uberman and as each progressive day blurs into the next, I have inched closer to uncovering its mysteries. Each and every day is a new challenge, a new lesson and a new test of perseverance all over again and yet those who have that grit to keep going no matter what are the ones who get the holy grail.  Today I ended up hitting the bullseye for all my naps, in terms of the timing as well as the duration, except for the 4 am nap which I delayed by 5 minutes but anyway wrapped up when I was supposed to. The graveyard hours were a smooth transition and with the night fading away to the day, I could see a new day and a new hope arise within me. Today was a significant step taken towards success and one which I shall build upon with all I have. The overall nap quality was better. I was clearheaded and sober in the morning till the 8 am nap, post which I was a little drowsy and tired b...

Today was another of those days I made little to no progress with the routine but learned or incorporated something in that will help me through the adaptation. During the first nap of the day, I was already using a dim light to simulate the dark period and the subsequent wake blocks were better. Yesterday for the first time I was as active and energetic during the 12am - 4 am block than I have been so far. In fact, I looked forward to the graveyard hours with the hope that it would be a different experience today. As I inched closer to and went past the 4 am nap, I still retained my wakefulness. It was relieving. I was happy thinking that I had made some progress. However, in all that happiness, I became careless and began reading in my bed, while leaning against pillows. I equated my wakefulness to the experience during the day time, during which no matter how much I read, I never feel sleepy and, now that I look back, I was overconfident. After the 4 am I may have been reading fo...

It was around 11 pm on day 4 and I was speaking to a friend when suddenly, the lights began flickering violently and progressively became dimmer. Fearing that they were about to blow up somehow, I rushed to the buttons and switched off everything. The room was then enveloped in utter darkness. Uncertain what had just happened, I opened my door and looked across, only to find more darkness. The entire apartment was in darkness now and I was partly relieved that it wasn't something local to my room. The next obvious step was then to check the elevator and the neighbours and they seemed to be as confused as we were. Power cuts are extremely rare in my area and even when they do occur, they never last for more than 5 minutes. Half an hour later when there was still no electricity, people began to panic. It turned out that it was the entire lane that had suffered a power cut—a string of buildings beginning from mine towards the right. The members of the building called up the respon...

The fourth day is turning out to be quite insightful, as far as this journey is concerned but mind you, these insights have come at a price. The fourth day could either be a huge failure or it could be a huge success, even acting as an important ingredient for making this experiment successful. So it all boils down to how I perceive it and given the gravity of what this experiment means to me and my potential of growth, I realized I can't let one failure knock me down. I can't quit so soon and become another beacon of failure on this quest. I need to embrace these failures as part of the experience and a rather important one at that which can mean the difference between making it through this experiment and losing my sanity and health in its pursuit.  At 1220 hours when I had my first nap of the day, I already had this thought nibbling at the back of my mind that this night is going to be a heck of a deal. So far, I have only been purely Uberman twice, separated by an i...

I transitioned into the third day with ample curiosity, which lasted till the morning. I read a lot about the experiment I am doing and boy, did I get so many reminders that this is going to be insanely difficult—given that I am more or less a beginner. How there are countless bloggers like me out there who began as strongly as I did but they could go nowhere, they never made it through the series, and rightfully so. Their unfinished blogs on the subject serve like tombstones along the way, warning anyone treading the same path to head back while they still can. The Uberman routine is quite advance and you require a lot of skills you have to acquire first by adapting to simpler routines. What I am doing here is comparable to suicide.  However, no matter how relatively unscathed I feel right now, I am vulnerable to this routine and can crumble and get blown by winds after winds like sawdust. Things may seem easy right now because they are, but won't necessarily be tomorrow. ...

 On the second day, Uberman started to become a little less friendly. I had my 12 am nap to begin the day and I was mentally and in every way normal and fine but then the 4 am nap came along and things changed drastically, and unfortunately not for the better. After the 4 am nap, I was in the dreaded graveyard hour and that's when the nightmare played on repeat. I tried reading but I couldn't focus, If I focused really hard then I could not understand what I was reading. My eyes were tired from an extended period of staring to the point that my vision blurred. I decided to shut my laptop off for the day. But an interesting observation that I will share is that everything was fine till before the 4 am nap. For some contrast, I had been doing some calculus on both day 1 and 2 and I couldn't find any noticeable difference in my cognitive abilities. If at all, I did better than usual days. Now, that couldn't have been specifically due to this experiment but it wasn...

So much for sleep, eh? I finally pulled the plug out on the 21st of April, 2020 when I decided to give Uberman one more chance. "Give it time" "Have patience" "Persevere" "Be disciplined" The tables will have to turn this time, what say Uberman? It was 12am, I had not a hint of sleep to drown me under. My routine during the days which followed that one had been owlish to a certain extent. I would sleep by two or three in the morning and get up by ten or half-past ten later. The mornings and afternoons would go into house chores while after the afternoon, I would do some workout and follow it up with a bunch of other things I liked doing. So when I made up my mind, studied the routine I wanted to follow and charted it up, I decided to skip the first nap of the day, which starts at 12am. Here's what the schedule looks like: Nap 1/4 at 12am/12pm Nap 2/5 at 4am/4pm Nap 3/6 at 8am/8pm And by the time it was 3am,...

What if you could cut your sleep down, and I mean down to about 2 hours for every 24? Imagine the extra time that you would have and what all you could possibly do with it. While the world shuts down for the day, you're just getting started. The concept of day and night ceases to make any sense, your entire life is compartmentalized into periods of wakefulness and naps, almost eternally. Does it sound interesting? Well, let me be the first person to introduce you to the world of polyphasic sleeping—an entirely different world to operate from that seems to have managed the elusive and mysterious sleep, once and for all. What is Polyphasic Sleeping? The word polyphasic simply means multiple phases and polyphasic sleeping means sleeping in multiple phases. So instead of being a monophasic (sleeping in one phase) or a biphasic sleeper (sleeping in 2 phases), polyphasic sleepers sleep multiple times throughout the day, and overall, sleep less than monophasic or biphasic sleeper...