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It’s just gone 6am here and I’m feeling pretty tired now. I woke from my 4am nap fine, but I’m really starting to feel sleep deprived now, which is good since it means my adaptation is well underway. I slept for the last nap better than I have before. I’m not getting any REM yet that I can recall, but at least I’m tired enough to nap properly so the REM will come pretty soon.

I’m using SleepTracker to keep track of my naps, according to the software I’m averaging a little under 3.5 hours sleep per day over the last 3 days, which includes my oversleep. This should still be little enough to be causing a major REM deficit and I’m certainly starting to feel it. If you don’t count my oversleep I am now at 39 hours with 3 hours sleep (averaging 2 hours per 24 hour period).

I just noticed something else about this stage of the adaptation which is that I am principally in foveal (central) vision most of the time, I’ve noticed this when sleep deprived before but never really paid much attention to it. Now that I think back on what I experienced with the uberman schedule last time around this ties up with the fact that once I was fully adapted to the schedule I was almost constantly experiencing enhanced peripheral vision. I get this whenever I’m in a relaxed state of heightened awareness. Time dilation seems to accompany this peripheral vision state and events seem to slow down so that I seem to have all the time in the world to think and respond, even when things are happening “objectively” quickly. It’s the same state athletes call “the zone”, and is a peak state that shows up in all sorts of different contexts.

It would seem that being REM deprived tends to inhibit this uptime state of consciousness, and having abundant REM sleep like you get when adapted to napping tends to encourage and permit this state. I guess it’s the body equipping you to deal with whatever has prevented you from being able to sleep - in nature, if you hadn’t been able to sleep in days there would probably be a pretty serious reason and you would be in dire need of a biochemical boost to help keep you awake and lucid. The body responds with elevated levels of the catecholamine hormones (adrenaline, noradrenaline and dopamine) which activate the sympathetic nervous system and trigger the fight-or-flight response to equip you for action.

The evolutionary explanation that these states correlate with either foveal or peripheral vision would seem to be because your foveal vision in the centre of your retina is predominantly comprised of cells called cones which give you detailed vision in this part of the visual field, this would be needed in a fight-or-flight situation, wheras the peripheral area of the retina is mainly comprised of cells called rods which are not so densely packed - your visual accuity in this part of the eye is lower, but your sensitivity to movement is higher. During periods of rest it would be most adaptive for you to have a wide field of view so as to be able to see predators or prey approaching from a wide range of angles, and to have a high sensitivity to movement to easily detect them.

Another thing I have noticed already is that my body feels like it is going through a detox. This may be partly because I have been particularly careful over my diet, and have completely eliminated caffeine and alcohol, but I suspect it is also directly related to having less sleep.

I have a huge todo list, some of which is mental work I can do sitting down but a lot of it is physical work which requires moving around, even if it’s only something like tidying up, putting up some pictures or cooking some meals for later today. I’m glad I made up a big todo list, and I would recommend doing that first to anyone starting polyphasic sleep - once you get to a certain point in the adaptation you won’t be able to think of things to do - if you have a list in front of you it’s just a matter of carrying out the tasks in a zombie like manner - you can do it on autopilot and that’s important when you’re in a state where your capacity for thinking and choosing is impaired. Right now I cannot get motivated to do anything, even as I type this it almost seems like someone else is typing it, and I am just watching it happen.

I’m prepared for the next few waking periods to be among the worst, so I will be performing my tasks, going out for a walk and basically anything I can do to keep myself on my feet and awake.