Last night I slept for 7 hours; I would have been perfectly capable of making it through the day without a second thought, however after all this sleep schedule research, I was interested to test out my napping abilities (or lack there of). So when I found myself a little drowsy around 8:00 pm, I decided it was a perfect time to give it a shot.

When I first laid down, I was certainly skeptical - I have never known myself to fall asleep quickly. However no sooner than I thought that, I went into what seemed like a very lucid daydream phase, which I “awoke” from about 15 minutes later. Now I know that 15 min is barely enough time to get a restful nap, and its hard to tell for myself whether it was actually sleep or not, but that time did go by in what seemed like an instant, and I felt refreshed and awake afterwards. I interpreted this as a good sign.

So after spending an hour tweaking my 3 nap schedule around, I came to this first draft:

• Core Sleep: 2:30 a.m. - 7:00 a.m.
• Midday Nap: 12:40 p.m. - 1:00 p.m.
• Evening Nap: 5:40 p.m. - 6:00 p.m.
• Night Nap: 11:20 p.m. - 11:40 p.m.(adding up to an extra 10 min per nap until I think I don’t need the buffer anymore).

Waking up at 7 a.m. gives me more than enough time to make it to the office by 8:00 a.m. and have a good block of working time before my midday nap. I get another good working block in the afternoon and have another nap scheduled just before a normal dinner hour. Additionally, being napped by 6 p.m. will not interfere with the frequent evening racquetball trips. My 11:20 nap seems to be the most inconvienent as it can get in the way if staying up and interacting with other people. Usually, anyone at the office who I would be playing games with would need to be heading home by this time, however if games run long or if people decide to stay up late on a particular night, this nap will interrupt our games. Possible solutions include shifting the nap earlier or later depending on the activities, taking a break from the games and joining later (boo), or possibly skipping the nap all together (as it technically is an extra nap).

I’ve done my research, I have my plan - it is possible, here goes! Good luck me.

Everyman Sleep Schedule, Polyphasic Sleep