This, and today’s other post, is my first real writing on this blog in nearly 8 months. I have been through quite a journey, which I will share a very small part of today (by necessity – it would take a book to write it all).
I keep on going back to (anyone’s) fundamental motivation for polyphasic sleep, insisting that it has to be one or both of:
- Consciousness development,
- Business development,
and also that motivation for this experiment would come from several possible sources:
- Feeling generally out-of-control of one’s time and looking for a solution
- Wanting to undertake a consciousness experiment, just for the heck of it (and once again, polyphasic sleep is just about the cheapest and most powerful consciousness experiment one could undertake on one’s own)
- Already running a (reasonably) stable and productive life, but still wanting to increase one’s production or effectiveness.
I fit in all these categories, and as such (to be brutally honest with myself) I am not a good candidate for polyphasic sleep, because I need to get underlying addictive patterns around time and money handled first (or at least get more self-awareness around them).
Which leads me to the main reason I haven’t posted much in the last 8 months: I AM AN ADDICT. A workaholic, first of all – this means that I have lost some connection to my fundamental value, source of meaning, and connection to myself, to my body and fundamental human needs; and that I use work (and it’s close cousins, time and money obsessions) as a distraction. This is a potentially serious condition, with great costs to one’s health, relationships and even business – work addicts can be either workaholic or work-anorexic or both. Work-anorexic means that we may carry on binge and purge cycles with work – work 48 hours in a row and then stay in bed for 3 days for example. So clients may be happy during the 48 hours but may fire you in the next 3 days – it’s not a good work-cycle to get into, or helpful in business. Work-anorexic can also mean that we procrastinate or compulsively avoid work.
That’s me on both counts – workaholic and work-anorexic.
And oh – another reason I haven’t posted much lately: as my life was falling apart around me (for reasons related to the above), and I was unemployed, I questioned the wisdom of posting my narcissistic ramblings all over the web for anyone to see and my friends to read. As of right now, however, (1) I seem to have stabilized my new business, which means I will probably never work a regular (employee job) again, so I don’t care what potential employers find out about me; and (2) My friends don’t read this blog for the most part, so I can say whatever I want. The game that I am playing with this site, is just to write about myself and things that I care about, and see what kind of traffic I can gather (my secret ambition is to be a professional writer – we’ll see about that).
But back to polyphasic sleep —
I have now come to the additional, startling realization, that my relationship to work, time, and money, is the fundamental developmental issue of my life, is at the core of who I am and how I relate to the world, and that there is a great deal of healing that needs to happen if I hope to “awaken” in this lifetime (which is my earnest hope) – or even, to set the standard lower but still adequate, if I hope to have a stable, productive, generous, engaged and related life.
However — I am still beginning my polyphasic sleep experiment again today, March 8, 2010. The fact that I am not a good candidate doesn’t exonerate me from making the attempt.
And if you are new to polyphasic sleep or coming to this blog for the first time, understand that polyphasic sleep is not about sleep-deprivation (that would be unhealthy). It’s a way of increasing the efficiency of your sleep by breaking it down into shorter segments. It’s about gaining greater effectiveness, happiness, clarity and focus in your life – it’s about generating additional time that can be used for any purpose including personal and spiritual development.
If you are reading this far please comment, it will keep me motivated.
Related resources
I was looking around for some simple way to track my time on a 24-hour cycle, found a few articles related to tracking time spent browsing the internet, but nothing for my purposes so I made a simple spreadsheet with automatic tabulation of results. It’s fairly self-explanatory and looks like this:
How to use:
- Download here (right-click > Download to your computer)
- Open in Excel
- Setup your time category labels in column R
- Print out a copy. Write your weekly schedule (or as close approximation as you can) in columns B, D, E etc
- As you go through the day jot down the numeric code of each activity you do per half-hour time slot on the printout, and then later transcribe to the computer. You can choose to record EVERYTHING you do for a week including sleep (I did – it’s quite instructive) or, just write down significant events you want to track (ie, work activity)
- I suggest you follow the procedure in Your Money or Your Life at the end of each week for valuing / prioritizing your time / money use. For each time category, decide if
- You want to spend more time on that activity
- You want to spend less time
- Or, it’s about right
Additional resources
- Found this: Xpert-timer works well for timing project-related activity at the computer. Especially nice is the activity timer, with start/stop clock, and project assignment. I am buying it for work-related activity and automatic invoice generation, but for personal use I still need something on paper that I can fill-in during the day and transcribe
- The ODesk application may work well for this purpose as well, and be free. I need to check it out
- Lots of tools available for the very popular David Allen’s Getting Things Done (GTD) methodology – see Zen Habits: 5 Simple, Effective GTD Tools and/or Google “GTD Tools”.
My issue with all of the above: they are great for work-related tasks, but I want a global solution that includes sleep and personal / recreational time, and that works when I am not at the computer. I don’t want to run my life 24 hours as a project, but I do want to know where my time goes in order to perform a regular assessment / prioritization of my time usage.
I also need (separate project) a tool to track work-hours and automatically generate invoice details for billable hours. Still looking, will follow-up on this later.
About two months ago I wrote an article Polyphasic sleep, consciousness development and business development, in which I explained my fundamental motivation for doing this experiment, which is resolving my tortured relationship to time and money and then using this freedom for business development. Since then, there have been extraordinary events in the development of our commune, and nice progress in developing my internet marketing and social media consulting company. I have also created and am actively engaged in four high-power developmental groups: I have a half-hour every week-day Mastermind call with two friends, I have a group that is exploring synergies and developmental possibilities between the Waking Down in Mutuality and the Shalom Mountain communities, and I have a business development / study group for Project Mojave. In addition I am coaching one-on-one with Saniel Bonder (who is an effin’ genius) and sometimes inviting other people to the call. Despite all successes, it’s been an up-and-down process, polyphasic sleep has been irregular at best, and my coffee addiction is substantially unchanged. I had therefore concluded in my previous article that polyphasic sleep had been an extremely valuable thing for my own personal (consciousness) development, but the jury was still out whether it would lead to any results in terms of business development.
I want to suggest that consciousness development is a fundamental goal for anyone who attempts a polyphasic sleep experiment, even if they do not declare it as such. And that business development (prosperity) flows from that, but it may take a little time.
Think of it. Short of actually going to live in an ashram or doing an intensive meditation retreat, what could be a better consciousness experiment than polyphasic sleep? It can be done at home in the midst of one’s everyday activities, it doesn’t cost anything, and it can lead to dramatic personal transformation. In the case of the Uberman schedule, this is doubly true as it has pronounced consciousness altering effects as well – I really like Ka Ntru’s blog on this topic (search for “polyphasic sleep”).
After 5 months on this experiment what is gradually emerging is that the leading edge of my own development is deepening and clarifying my relationship with my wife, Rebekah. This is an awesome yet shocking realization – awesome in terms of the possibilities, and shocking in that this had not been obvious to me before. In my usual masculine, goal-oriented, single-pointed consciousness, bulldozer style of being, I have been speeding forward without great awareness or concern for the people around me and their needs. Perhaps this was developmentally appropriate and timely – and I can hardly complain about the results – but the time has come to get this handled. It’s possible as well that “getting this handled” is a masculine problem-solving approach towards a situation that is likely to be a lifetime of work – oh lucky me to have such an interesting problem to solve, as the problem of relating lovingly and deeply and powerfully all the time to the person with whom I have chosen to share my life (and my business!).
I am planning a major post on this topic to the Lifestyle Design blog soon.
As I am heading into 3 months of my on-and-off experiment with polyphasic sleep a short retrospective (and prospective or forward-spective :) seems in order.
First off, my situation is a bit unusual as the type of polyphasic sleep that I am doing, essentially biphasic (Winston Churchill’s schedule!), has the tremendous advantage of allowing one to switch back and forth between normal (monophasic) sleep and polyphasic. So if I need to stay up late one night I will just skip the next early morning polyphasic shift and start again the following night. There is a lot of discussion on the boards about the challenges of the Uberman schedule to one’s social life, and the impossibility of skipping naps while on Uberman. I don’t need to worry about this – nor do I want to have to worry about it. I fundamentally believe that good quality sleep and rest is one of the greatest pleasures that is available to us, and I am not prepared to risk sacrificing that for the sake of 2-3 extra hours of work per day (while on biphasic I sleep around 6 hours daily and feel fabulous).
The flip-side of this, however, is that my current biphasic schedule does not enforce discipline. So, I have been going on-and-off, and I am still dealing with my caffeine addiction.
Despite this I can say that my initial 3-month experiment with polyphasic sleep has been a smashing success in terms of consciousness development, and as yet uncertain in terms of business development.
What do I mean by “consciousness development”?
Well, my initial stated goal (which I wrote about in Fundamental motivation and preparation and My Manifesto) was to resolve my [somewhat tortured] relationship to time and money. Resolving my relationship to time (ie, coming to peace with the way I spend my time and how I live my life) is more of a consciousness-development goal, while resolving my relationship to money (ie, generating a comfortable income in a way that fits my mission and values) is more of a business development goal. However, these are really different sides of the same issue.
Given all that has been going on in my personal life and the tremendous insights and changes of the last 3 months, that are well-documented on Polyphasic sleep blog, I can say that the experiment is a great success. Polyphasic sleep was my gateway into these experiences and into this new life, in a way that is still a bit mysterious. In some ways, I think that creating the intention to live a richer, fuller and more spirit-connected life was the fuel of this awakening, and polyphasic sleep was one of many vehicles that brought me there. These vehicles include, among others, my personal coach Nancy Froio, my spiritual teachers Saniel and Linda Bonder, and my amazing wife Rebekah.
What was missing in all this however was the money part. There has been huge progress in that area in the last 2 days.
Polyphasic sleep gives me about 5 hours a day of very focused time in the early morning shift (2-7am). What to do with this time has been the issue, where to focus that energy, how can I be in the world in my passion and getting paid for it. It occurred to me very recently that I could use this time to develop information products (training videos and ebooks) on creating websites and developing internet businesses. And I still have the second morning shift (8-12am) for client work and direct billable hours. Developing information products is something that I love to do – I have two programs already in the works, Create your own website for free (or cheap) using Wordpress and The one-hour guide to online video marketing. Has this been done before? No doubt. However, in a worst-case scenario, these products will build my credibility and bring me clients to my online training business. In a best-case scenario, I can sell them via affiliate marketing, pay-per-click (PPC) or even organic search-engine traffic.
Is this a no-brainer? Duh.
Can anybody do it? I think you must be able to support yourself working half-time for the duration that it takes to develop your information products. I am fortunate right now that I have this possibility, due to circumstances that I did not create but which, ironically, are acting in my favor now. Alternatively, you can gain a few hours a day with polyphasic sleep and use your time for that purpose. So yes, one way or the other, anybody can do this. I intend to develop training products that show you exactly how. Anybody with specialized knowledge can do it – lawyers, accountants, coaches, whatever. The fundamental idea is that at worst you develop your consultancy (gain clients and increase your rates), and at best hit that elusive and sought-after passive income.
Very simple idea, very powerful concept.
A few announcements:
- I have setup the “Marc’s Life” list and blog as its own blog, as it isn’t logically part of any of the other businesses that I am creating. The archive of old posts is still available here.
- I have been using the Polyphasic sleep site also for generic personal check-ins – understandably as I have been using polyphasic sleep essentially as an experiment in personal development (consciousness research). But from now the site will be limited to my experiences specifically in polyphasic sleep, that has been ongoing on-and-off for 10 weeks now (wow, can you believe it I have been doing anything consistently for 10 weeks :-).
- As excited as I am about Saniel Bonder and his teachings, and other models of development that we are creating at Trellis and testing in our new Relationship Coaching practice, these things convey best by direct contact rather than email. Also the “Marc’s life” subscribers signed-up as my friends rather than as students of this-or-that guru or transformational practice. So I am upping the phone calls and decreasing the emails and posts to Marc’s Life going forward. If you are wanting to stay tuned-in to my developmental philosophy and practice, please subscribe to Lifestyle Design School which is the new forum for these types of things.
- There has been substantial progress in terms of my life-work and business. I am starting an online training company for blogging, internet marketing, internet business development strategy, and personal productivity (David Allen’s Getting Things Done methodology), under my current wonderful domain name Tranquility Consulting. I have some trial clients right now and I provide training both on-site and via Windows remote desktop. I will be marketing through my network, eBay and strategic partnerships. This idea has been a long-time in gestation and it’s time to get moving. I will share more later.
- Rebekah has resigned her job. She was unhappy there and the personal cost was too high, not to mention lost opportunity for energy healing clients, relationship coaching, weight-loss coaching, and developing Trellis. I fully anticipate she will make up her lost salary in two weeks time.
- I am back on polyphasic sleep and it’s going well. I don’t know what I would do without it and in many ways it’s the lynchpin of my personal development program. I am attempting to do all my research and business development in the first polyphasic shift (2-6am), and my calls and billable hours in the morning (9-1). Then I have a long nap and I am free for the rest of the evening. This is my ideal schedule. It’s not fully operational and I don’t feel I am working effectively yet, but there has been so much changes and personal transformation in other dimensions lately that I am not too worried about it. It’s an ongoing process. Getting clear on my business vision was huge, and the David Allen / Getting Things Done (GTD) stuff is also huge.
So – I won’t say that the “consciousness revolution party” is over – after all Saniel and Linda are coming this weekend and I am so excited I can hardly breathe (I will be spending four days with them) – however, it’s becoming more grounded and concrete. And while this is too long to get into right now, let me just say that my historical distress and obsession around issues of money and time-management is my core personal work (core wound), and is being addressed by the work I am doing with the Bonder’s and Waking Down, in addition to the what I am doing with Tranquility Consulting. All this is an aspect of what Saniel calls “hypermasculine dharmas”, I will just leave you a little nugget:
The fundamental intention [of hypermasculine dharmas] is to dissociate from perceived limits of who we are and what we can or can not do… In order to accomplish the necessary dissociation, extrication, or liberation, the hypermasculine force of being first analyzes the limits it perceives and then deduces, by both intuitive and deductive means, strategies of thought and action that will achieve the desired goals. The hypermasculine impulse then works to superimpose these strategic formulas of thought upon the living human mind and body.
Chew on that one for a bit (particularly in terms of the potential costs of such a system to one’s psyche), and if you want to go deeper with me around this I invite you to subscribe to Lifestyle Design School.
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Quotes "Sleeping is no mean art: for its sake one must stay awake all day".
- Friedrich Nietzsche
"No day is so bad it can't be fixed with a nap".
- Carrie Snow |
