The Uberman Series Day 4

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 instance of oversleeping. I was expecting something similar to the second day's experience even today. The pattern seems to be predictable and I am sure will be recurring. A day of following the Uberman schedule increases the sleep debt to such an extent that extensive sleep deprivation is experienced during the following day's graveyard hours. After my first nap, I engaged in my usual activities like reading through laptop or mobile screens, writing on quora, reading a physical book or a digital one from my phone or either journaling in my diary. At around 3 am, I started to feel more sleep-deprived and looked forward to the 4 am nap, hoping that it would improve my condition. Post the 4 am nap however, I was at an even worse place than before. Just after half an hour of screen time, my eye strain increased and they got teary and blurry. That's when I decided to shut my laptop. That's when the countdown began. From the second day's incident, I learned that doing anything would be fruitless. My mental condition was deteriorating with every passing minute and I knew that it would soon be difficult to read, focus or even understand anything. Sleep deprivation is like an ever-present monster which lurks around you at all times when you are following an extreme schedule like the Uberman and having nothing to do only makes things worse. You are left to confront your sleep-deprivation head on and remember, when it comes to that you can't win. You can run all you can and hide all you can. You can delay but it becomes inevitable. You've lost.

By almost 5 am, I had reached a new standard of being inoperable and non-functional. With nothing to do, I sat idly and dazed. At times I tried to keep myself engaged with the help of my phone, but that didn't take me anywhere. There was just more eye strain and fatigue on the other side, and I often had to leave my phone aside minutes later. I would sit and feel sleep-deprivation sink its teeth deeper into my flesh. My body would slouch, my eyes would barely stay open for a few seconds before sliding back down and my body would threaten to go limp. To improve my odds, I began pacing back and forth in my room. By this time, I was feeling sleep deprivation so acutely that even walking straight seemed like a herculean task. I was more or less walking with a weightless body and like a drunk person. The walking would induce some wakefulness so I would sit, but soon enough the temporary wakefulness would evaporate and I would again risk passing out. I spent much of my time repeating this cycle over and over. I struggled like that until 5:30 am when I realized that my eye strain hadn't so much as budged. That's when I shifted my attention to the super bright lightbulb in my room and decided to switch to a dimmer one. Dimming the lights to a moonlight intensity helped with the eye strain but not with the mounting sleep-deprivation. Each and every passing minute felt longer than it was and I obsessively kept checking the time, hoping the 8 am nap was just around the corner. The 8 am nap was supposed to be the final test I had to pass today, it would have been significant progress ahead. However, before this tale transitions from hopelessness to hopefulness, I will break it to you that just about 30 minutes before my 8 am nap, I was happy and at the same time proud of myself from making it that far. That's also when I slackened and ended up screwing it. Consequently, I have no recollection of when I fell asleep, how I fell asleep, or what exactly happened.

Fast-forward to 4 hours later at 12 pm when I gained some consciousness and realized what had happened. I also learned from my family that they had tried to wake me up during my 12 am nap last night and I hadn't so much as moved. I was amazed that I couldn't be woken up from a 20-minute nap. That's how deep my naps have become, which is a good indication but scary if I oversleep. I began processing the events of the morning to understand what was going on and how could I deal with similar situations properly in the coming days. Here are the mistakes I was making along with the changes I plan to implement to correct them.

Mistake 1: Spending Dark Periods in Bright Light

First and foremost, I realized that it was the one silly mistake that contributed to a lot of eye strain and was even affecting, to a certain extent, my nap quality during the nights. I was doing everything under a lightbulb brighter than your standard one. Also, from my reading on the subject, I understood the importance of having a dark period while being polyphasic, so that you can align your body clocks to make things easier. With what I was doing, it was stark daylight for the most part except for the nap times. I have decided now to switch to the dimmer light at the beginning of the new day, at least for now during the adaptation period to avoid eye strain and help my biological clock.

Mistake 2: Racking up Screen Time

I was sitting in front of the screen for at least half of my 22 hours of wakefulness. While I can sustain that without any eye strain during the daytimes, at night due to the graveyard period, this becomes a great recipe for failure, especially when your body experiences the most fatigue and sleep-deprivation at that time. I'll be addressing this issue by using screens for no more than 30 minutes at a time and always separating consecutive sessions by 15 minutes.

Mistake 3: Poor & Limited Choice of Nighttime Activities

My daytime activities are excellent as they keep me engaged perpetually. I don't ever get bored or out of things to do. However, during the night, these same activities turn from friends to foes. Reading is relaxing and that's exactly what makes it a poor choice at night. Writing is also engaging but it is mentally taxing during the graveyard hours. These are the only two activities I cycle through across various devices and then from books to diaries. And during every Uberman Climax (I decided to use this phrase to refer to the incidents of Day 2 and 4) I fail to do these activities and end up being pitted against my own sleep-deprivation, which as time has taught me, I fail to defeat. So strip these activities away then I have nothing to do but face the elephant in the room. I need to come up with better alternatives that will make my nighttime struggles bearable. Here are a few I have decided so far:

1. Emptying my wardrobe to refold my clothes and keeping them back in.
2. Listening to songs (I listen to metal and rock and the kinds of bands that can wake you up from a coma).
3. Light exercise (some jumping around, throwing arms in the air, etc).
4. Doing some random origami and making something out of the paper.
5. Shifting pillows around from one bed to the other and back or making a throne out of pillows to rule the night with.

Mistake 4: Trying to be Productive

Two days were enough to make me realize that right now, all I should focus on is the adaptation. If I focus on being productive, then I can only think of productive things to do, which, unfortunately, induce sleep and are mentally exhaustive. So each night from now on, I want to focus on having fun or doing light and silly things, rather than getting something done. I am sure, there's a lot that can be done now.

Mistake 5: Making it Easy to Fall Asleep

In the middle of the night when you are acutely sleep-deprived and idle, the most expensive mistake is doing things that make it easy for you to fall asleep. Sitting idly, leaning against pillows, laying down, reading or even cuddling with pets and/or people. I am guilty of doing all these and when you do it, you feel that indulging into these activities for a while may make things better but they don't. That time your mind is so not working as it should that these things aren't obvious at all. It is better to make a note of it when you are sober so that you don't have to make a wrong decision later.

Mistake 6: Screen Exposure Before Naps

Especially at night, I would read on screens while also keeping an eye on the clock and just five minutes to a nap quit everything and prepare for it. I suspect that it leads to poor quality naps and takes more time to fall asleep due to the blue light and again, a stark contrast between bright lights and suddenly darkness. Now, I've put up preparation alarms 15 minutes before each nap, so that I can have 15 minutes of buffer time to wind down for the nap.

Mistake 7: Failing to Keep Microsleeping in Check

Sometimes when you are intensely sleep-deprived, your body will find creative ways of squeezing sleep in. One way it does so is by microsleeping where you have mini sleep sessions anywhere and in any manner. The sessions may last for a minute or sometimes even a few seconds. But if it is sleep outside of your nap times, then it is considered oversleeping which is not good at all for the adaptation. You are forcing your body to repartition your sleep, to refine your sleep quality in the time allotted, but if you just let your body sleep in every now and then, then it will always resort to that. I tend to microsleep during the graveyard hours during the Uberman Climax. Some of the ways of dealing with microsleeping, I read, include chewing ice cubes, holding water in your mouth, splashing your face with cold water, walking, etc.

The following are just a few mistakes I was making which were sabotaging my adaptation progress. Currently, I have a positive attitude towards these incidences as they help me learn and improve so that I can optimise certain aspects of the adaptation which were leading to failures. Whether I get successful at adapting to the Uberman or not, the entire experience in itself is rich with plenty of lessons and are training me in discipline and sleep practices. Also after today's incidence, I have insane respect for those who have successfully adapted to the Uberman and crazy respect for those who have so much as tried it. Uberman is a new level altogether.

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