Oversleeping and Undersleeping

Both are extremely bad and should be avoided at all costs. Well, the undersleeping and sleep deprivation are kind of necessary evils in order to adapt your body to the Uberman sleep schedule, but I was more specifically referring to trying to cut your nap times even shorter. I haven't been on this experiment for an incredibly long time, so I can't comment on the absolutes of either of these, but I can mention the experience I have with them and how they've affected me. This is most likely a topic that I'll return to later on after I've fully adapted, where I can give a better view of what happens when you are on the full cycle.



Oversleeping
For now, oversleeping refers to being asleep during times when I shouldn't be. This can including not waking up to my alarm and continuing my nap, as well as accidentally passing out during one of my wake cycles. The idea is that I ultimately end up with more sleep than I had planned for that day. Right now for me, the ideal sleep time is about 3.5-3.75 hours at night, and 4 30-minute naps for a total of 5.5-5.75 hours of sleep. This isn't bad, considering I used to sleep at night from midnight until 6:30 on a daily basis, however, there is 1 major difference. My modified schedule achieves almost the same amount of sleep, but in much shorter bursts. The only way I should still be functioning is if I am still getting the same amount of REM sleep as I was before, which leads me to believe that I am indeed doing so. I will say, though, that I have overslept a few times, which means I am still transitioning, which is to be expected.

The period that I am most likely to oversleep would be the 5-11 AM period. This period includes my waking up at 5 from my longer nap, my awake period from 5-9 (this is the least difficult section), waking from my nap at 9 and my waking period from 9:30 to 11. By far, the waking from the 9 AM nap and onward is the most difficult. For whatever reason, my motivation to wake up at 5 just completely disappears when 9 rolls around and I've got no motivation to get up. It also feels like all my missing sleep catches up to me then. This could be, in part, due to the fact that for the past several years of my life, I've preferred to sleep in the mornings, especially after staying awake past midnight. My past lifestyle is working against what I am trying to accomplish here, but the transition period should help smooth out that shift slightly.

So far, I've overslept twice in this category (possibly a 3rd time, but I don't think I actually fell asleep, I just sorta closed my eyes for a bit). The first time I overslept was when trying to wake up from my 9 AM nap. This was back in the early stages of my transition, so I was only using a single 30 minute timer that rang once an I got up. At the time, I really didn't fall asleep, or if I did, it was a very light sleep, so that single alarm got me up every time. However, now that I am falling into deeper sleep, I've switched to using multiple alarms that never stop ringing until I manually turn them off. The second instance of oversleeping occurred when I already had the multiple alarms, but didn't enforce myself to be out of bed completely before turning off my alarms. Because I update my Twitter account every time I take a nap and wake up (@ChrisOrwin), I used to update it before I even got out of bed, that way the timestamp would be as accurate as possible to the time that I actually woke up. This, however, had some unintended side effects, namely the fact that I didn't get out of bed before turning off my alarm. So, here it is, 5:30 in the morning and I wake up. To help stimulate myself, I turn around in my bed so my head is at the foot of my bed, just to do something different. I pull up Twitter on my iPhone and start pecking away at my keyboard. Next thing you know, its 7 AM and I just woke up... again.

So, how does it feel to oversleep? Don't you enjoy letting your body make up those "lost" hours of sleep? The answer is NO! Oversleeping while on a monophasic sleep schedule tends to refresh the body and mind and, assuming you don't freak out because you're late for something, feels relaxing. However, to wake up from a nap that accidentally lasted 90 minutes instead of 30 is a challenge. I felt groggy, extremely sleepy and worn out. The only thing I wanted to do was go right back to sleep again, which I knew that I couldn't do. I think that made it slightly harder as well. For both of my oversleeps, it wasn't until after the next sleep cycle that I felt better. So, oversleeping my 5 AM meant that I felt pretty bad until 9:30, and even then, with that cycle being the worst, I still didn't feel to terribly great. Oversleeping my nap at 9 meant that I felt absolutely terrible until after lunch at 1:30-2 PM. These results are similar to the results that others have reported for messing up their naps.

I'm actually glad that I didn't publish this blog yet, as I've just had another encounter with oversleeping that I felt that I should share. Every once in a while, my body will naturally wake up after only 15-20 minutes of being asleep. I usually roll over and look at my alarm to judge how long I have left. By this time, however, I feel wide awake and fully alert. The first 2 times this happened, I shrugged and hopped out of bed. However, the last time this happened, I decided that I should finish the nap and went back to sleep. This was a huge mistake! First of all, I wasn't really sure if I had slept at all or not, as my dreams didn't really feel like a dream, but more like I was making it up off the top of my head while laying in bed. I knew that skipping a nap would be disastrous, so I opted to stay in bed. It seems that my body had filled its REM requirement and decided to wake me up, so that when I went back to sleep, my body never entered the REM stage again. This meant that when I woke up, I was tired and groggy.

This was the absolute worse that I've felt during my entire transition. I was constantly banging my head against my desk trying to keep myself awake from 9:30 AM to 1 PM. This was the longest 3.5 hours of my life. I felt like I wanted to just give up, to call the entire experiment off and go back to sleep for a normal 5-6 hours. It was absolutely dreadful. Thankfully, however, after my 1 PM nap, everything was back to normal for the most part. I could still tell that I was a little tired, but it wasn't nearly as bad as before the nap. Later on in the same day, I had to nap at my grandparents' house, so I set my alarm and got ready to nap on their living room couch. After only 9-10 minutes, I get woken up by my brother screaming at the top of his lungs (yelling at my other brother because they were fighting). I looked at my alarm, determined that I had another 20 minutes in my nap and that I probably didn't really fall asleep anyway, but I hesitated. I remembered back to the morning when I was completely out of it and decided that I should just get up instead of risking it. So, with only 10 minutes (more like 6-8) of sleep, I climb off the couch and go about my day. I felt completely fine, and didn't get tired until my normal time around 9 PM. That was completely mind blowing that I was able to function with less than 10 minutes of sleep (which ties a little into the undersleeping section below)! My 9 PM nap came and went as a regular 30 minute nap and I was feeling fine the rest of the day. I will say, however, that at around 12 (midnight), I did start feeling just a little tired, instead of making it until the usual 1-1:30 AM. I just found this entire day completely weird, and a very good example of what oversleeping and undersleeping can do, and the weird and unexpected results it may have.


Undersleeping
I don't have as much experience with undersleeping as I do oversleeping, but I'll list out what I've discovered and believe so far. For the purpose of this blog, I am going to say undersleeping includes the following:
1) Skipping naps
2) Shortening the length of your naps
3) Waking early from your naps

During my entire transition period, I am proud to say that I have never completely skipped a nap. There have been plenty of times that my naps occur extremely late (upwards of 1.5 hours too late) and countless times where I end up laying in bed for 30 minutes without ever falling asleep, especially in the early stages. I feel that in order to make the most effective adjustment as possible, you cannot skip any naps, regardless of how you feel. There are 2 reasons that seem to make logical sense to me for doing this. The first reason is that forcing yourself to lay down to nap will condition your body to get used to napping at the same time every day. If you start skipping naps, your body may just believe that you enjoy laying down at random times and it will not start forming a habit like it should. The other big reason is sort of similar. By laying down for 30 minutes, you are not only conditioning your body to get used to having to lay down then, but you are also letting your body know that you are only going to be laying down for 30 minutes. The sooner your body understands this, the faster you develop the habit of immediately diving into REM sleep. I think that if you lay down for 30 minutes one period, then 45 the next, then 15, then 60, then 30 again, you will end up confusing your body into thinking that you are just sleeping for random amounts of time and it may not develop into a habit. Of course, nature doesn't always follow the way of reason, but these seem to be pretty good reasons for not skipping naps early on.

For the later stages, skipping naps is the equivalent of staying up all night. You should start to think of your "cycles" (as I've started to call them) as miniature days, rather than naps within a single day. So, where you will normally sleep for 20-30 minutes at "night", normal people have far fewer days but sleep for 5-7 hours at "night". This means that staying up for 8 hours is about the equivalent of staying up for 36 hours. This means you are going to be really tired! Because I am not completely on the Uberman sleep schedule completely, I am unable to comment on the feeling you get when you miss a nap at that stage, however, I have had very poor naps during the transition phase. I had read somewhere that it is highly suggested that if you miss a nap and aren't able to take it close enough to the scheduled nap time, that you should hold off as long as possible to your next nap time. The next nap should be taken on time, and NOT taken really early. The same applies to late naps, take your next nap on time, don't push it back! So, not only are you going to be extremely tired, but now you've got to struggle to stay awake until your next nap. After a nap or two, you should be back to feeling fine.

Shortening the length of the naps is something I read about in Steve Pavlina's blog on his Uberman sleep schedule experiment. While I have no experience with this now, as I try to keep my naps as consistent as possible, he reported that shortening the nap length improved his sleep.  I believe he started out with 30 minute naps, which is what I am currently doing, which he then shortened down to 20 minutes and again to 15 or so. The reason for doing this is to make sure that you wake yourself up directly from REM sleep, preventing your body from drifting into any of the other stages of sleep. Waking up from this sleep cycle feels the most refreshing, without leaving you groggy or tired still. I've experienced this feeling when I've woken myself up before my alarm, and it is absolutely amazing. After I get past this transition phase and get onto the cycle completely, I will be dialing down my naps until I reach the optimal nap time. This could be 25 minutes, 20 minutes, or even a low as 15 minutes. This will vary from person to person, and so you'll have to do some experiments on your own to find your optimal settings. 1 word of caution though: if it is set too low, and you have trouble falling asleep for some reason or another, your alarm going off before you even reach REM sleep will cause the same trouble that skipping a nap would cause, so you've got to be real careful and take into account your surroundings when setting up your alarm. A 20 minute nap every time may not be the best solution, as some naps may be in noisy environments and should be extended to 30 minutes, while others may be shortened to 15. I plan on experimenting with this later on, once I'm done working and completely my transition.

As I had mentioned quite a few times above, waking up naturally will also shorten your nap times, but these may not be bad. From what I've experienced thus far, my body knew exactly when to wake myself up so that I felt refreshed and had plenty of energy for the next day. In fact, when I tried to disagree and go back to sleep, my body repaid me with the worst case of sleep deprivation I've had thus far. I was exhausted beyond belief. Having learned my lesson, any time now that I wake up, roll over and discover that somehow 10-15 minutes have flown by without me realizing it, I will be getting out of bed. It is quite an odd feeling, and the first tendency will be to say: "I don't think I've fallen asleep yet, I've just been hallucinating or something" and try to finish the nap. Here, I highly suggest you climb out of bed and see how your body responds to that little sleep. Perhaps I'm an oddity and that if someone else tries it, they'll be exhausted if they didn't finish their nap. I can't comment much more on this subject, as its only happened 3 or 4 times for me so far, but I'll be keeping record of how frequently these occur. My bet is that as time goes on, they'll happen more and more.


So yeah, there is what I currently know about undersleeping and oversleeping (which you can tell I'm much more familiar with). I'll be keeping track of how my naps go to see if I can spot any trends developing or fading. All these stuff is so incredibly interesting, and I would recommend that anyone who has the schedule for it to try something like this. There is just so much I've learned about myself and others from doing this experiment, and hopefully you are learning something too!