brain droppings

Yawn... sleep needs more work

So, I'm workin on this 'baby steps' kind of thing right now. Last week I kicked the coffee... at least as far as detoxing it out of my system (yay headaches.) Its all part of little master plan, details to unfold as they happen.
Its a very loose plan.
This weekend I was reading a post on lifehack.org talking about "sleep cyclies" which pointed to this guy, Glen Rhodes. He is a game developer (Flash) and musician, but those are moot points. The link I just placed is him talking about his experience with Polyphasic sleep (easy to deciper, poly = many, phasic = uh.. phases). He was talking about strategic napping more or less. The thoughts go like this, we as human have "sleep cycles" that are about 90 minutes long. He suggests observing your natural sleep patterns (without an alarm). You'll notice that you tend to sleep in these 90 minute intervals (1.5 hrs, 3 hrs, 4.5 hrs, etc for you playing at home.) When your sleep coincides with a cycle, you wake up fresh, if you don't obey the cycles then you wake up groggy (no I don't mean your spouse, I mean you're still tired.)
Of course this flies in the face of the whole "8 hours a night" talk we have been fed since birth, but it lends nicely to describe those students and parents trying to get the most out of their day.
All that is kind of funny because, about 2 weeks ago I started trying to regulate myself to 6 hours of sleep, its a nice bite size chunk. But now Mr. Rhodes has me thinking about 4.5 hrs (1.5 hr nap, 3 hour sleep). This of course, leaves me and my idle mind a need to focus better. Not sure if it means more blogging, an actual exercise routine, or something more academic... this is still playing out. Amy is VERY put off at the thought of me only sleeping 3 hours... she gets all cranky if she's sleepin and I'm not.
Anyway, lengthy post over. I'm gonna post some follow-up about the sleepin stuff as soon as I've had a chance to read up on it more.
*EDIT* There is a followup article at Lifehack.org with even more information and linkies. I guess this is a hot topic!

posted by Jody @ Tuesday, October 18, 2005