wrapping up the sleep research

The final word on sleep experiments comes from Steve Pavlina who engaged in a 6 month experiment of sleeping for 20 minutes every 4 hours. His recount of the experiment and his observations one year later put an interesting spin on this line of thinking. However, this analysis of Steve’s polyphasic sleeping technique explains sleep cycles in detail and would be a useful starting point for deeper research.

Sleep experiment part 2

Since abandoning my experiment to eliminate my sleep debt, I have ‘binged’ significantly on staying up way too late. My sleep debt is high and I can definitely see its impact on my day-to-day performance. I decided to research more effective ways to fall asleep in order to counteract my inability to fall asleep when I have no sleep debt. Of the methods that I have found, two have proved useful. Method one is to count backwards from 100 to 0. While I don’t find that I necessarily fall asleep doing this, it does calm the mind. The other is to imagine that your body is turning to stone starting with your toes and moving upwards. It is claimed that most people don’t get past their arms and I will attest to that. It works well. I will reinitiate the process of eliminating my sleep debt and will see if this technique counteracts my previous sleep challenges at ‘zero sleep debt’.

Sleep experiment results

Some literature suggests that lack of sleep is a serious impediment to your daily performance. Recommendations including keeping a sleep journal where the total hours fallen short of an 8-hour night’s sleep is tracked. For instance, if you only obtain 6 hours of sleep, you would add 2 to the sleep debt total. Then, you simply try to ‘pay back’ the debt by getting extra sleep here and there.

I attempted to do this for one month and had terrible sleep. One challenge is that my heightened awareness of the sleep process and my anxiety over being in sleep debt made it difficult have a relaxing, enjoyable sleep. Another factor was that I was not tired enough to fall asleep when I finally eliminated my debt. As a result, I began thinking. Soon, I became so involved in my thoughts that I simply had to get up and capture the ideas.

Perhaps a little sleep debt is what is needed. The desire to fall asleep might be a good thing. I will try the experiment again, factoring in some degree of sleep debt.

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