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
- Workaholics anonymous (check out wonderful phone meetings)
- Procrastinators anonymous (also wonderful phone check-in meetings)
Hey!
Yes, I’m reading this and I can fully identify with anything in this post.
From the relationship to work (I’m actually still a high-school student, but I work on time-intensive projects beside school)- I can work on a project 8 hours a day BESIDES school for weeks, and after that do not touch it for weeks either, even if I have team members who rely on me working steadily and reliable, to the polyphasic-sleeping part, I think I know how you feel.
If you want to contact me, feel free, I think you can look up my mail address with this post.
Good luck,
Rasmus
Hey, how is your schedule going so far? I have just learned about polyphasic sleep. I kind of wish I knew about it while I was in college. I had broken down my sleep into several naps and core, but didn’t know that it was called polyphasic, I was just exhausted. I was working at starbucks and had shifts that started from 4 am to 10 or 12 depending on what time class started and then I would try to nap between classes or my next shift. I started dreaming during those short naps, so I guess I adapted.
Now that I just recently learned about this, I am trying it out while I have a flexible enough job, where I can leave for 20 minutes or so throughout the day to nap in my car and it won’t be a big deal. I think it’s a fantastic way to gain extra time, as I always feel I don’t have enough of it. There are always chores to do at home, side projects, reading, working out, downloading music, etc. So it would be a fantastic way for me to create more time for myself. And hopefully catch up with a seemingly never ending list of things to do :).
Hope you’re doing great and have already adapted. Best of luck!