Click here to view today’s sleep log

Last night I went to bed at midnight, and when I woke up this morning I felt a bit more tired than usual for the first hour of the day. I think this may be because I woke up half way through a sleep cycle. This was also the first morning for a while that I don't think I woke from a dream, which also probably means I was half way through a cycle.

Today I didn't really feel tired at all at any point during the day. Normally I start to really feel like I need a nap at about 2:00pm, but today I was fine.

When I got in from work I didn't feel particularly tired, but I went to bed anyway, and as soon as I laid down the sleepiness came over me. I fell asleep instantly, but then I woke up again 10 minutes later. I continued to drift in and out for a while, but I eventually drifted into a deep sleep. When I woke up I was dreaming about fixing an aeroplane with my dad in Spain, and for some reason I had to pour frozen peas into the engine! At least this means I was definitely sleeping.

Although I had a pretty broken first half of my nap, by the time the alarm went off I felt like I could have stayed asleep a lot longer. I felt refreshed once I got up though.

Click here to view today’s sleep log

Last night, I was beginning to feel sleepy just before midnight, so when Yu Lee said that she was going to bed I thought I'd join her and sleep a bit early. I was in bed by 12:30, but I didn't actually end up falling asleep until after 1:15. As soon as I got in bed and got comfortable, the sleepiness started to disappear, and then I started to hear my neighbours TV, so at 1:15 I reset the timer on my sleep site (this is how I am recording my sleeps) and put in my ear plugs. I fell asleep soon after this.

I think the reason that I found it hard to sleep was that I had 3 cups of tea after my nap. I remember thinking that I probably shouldn't have done that, but I normally fall asleep really easily in the evenings so I did it anyway! I can't say 100% that the tea is what kept me up, but I have my suspicions!

Today was pretty uneventful - I felt slightly tired in the afternoon as usual and slightly more awake when I got home. When I laid in my bed I knew I would sleep though, and I drifted off into a nice deep sleep.

I had set my alarm for 2 hours, but I actually woke up naturally some time later. I think my ear plugs must have been irritating me because the first thing I did was to pull them out. Then I laid there for a few seconds until the clock caught my eye. It said "6:15". I looked at it, and thought "Oh crap I've overslept! How come my alarm didn't go off? I set it for 5:30am every day and I haven't touched it or turned it off for ages!". Then I suddenly realised that it was 6:15pm, and I was waking up from a nap and not my night sleep. In the end I had woken up 5 minutes before my alarm was due.

I definitely woke up from a dream, but in all of the confusion I forgot it. I think I have been waking up from a dream maybe 90% of the time now, which means that I am generally waking up in the right part of my sleep cycle.

Click here to view today’s sleep log

Last night I went to bed at 1:00am. As I had slept so much in the previous 24 hours, it actually took me a little while to fall asleep. I didn't really mind though - it wasn't frustrating and I felt nice and relaxed.

When the alarm went off at 5:30 this morning, I really didn't feel like getting up, but I got up anyway and jumped straight in the shower. It seems like you can easily get out of the habit of getting up early, but hopefully after a couple of days I'll be used to it again. To be honest I think I am still a little bit tired from the previous week.

This afternoon at work I felt like I wanted to take a nap a few times. From about 2:00pm I started to get the feeling that I wanted to go to bed, but as usual, by the time I got home I was less sleepy. I think it might be the walk home that does it, as I amexercisinga little bit and the sunlight wakes me up. After about half an hour at home I started to feel sleepy again, and then I went for a nice 2 hour nap.

It is 11:30pm now and I am feeling a little bit sleepy, so I think I will go to bed around midnight tonight.

Click here to view today’s sleep log

Today I slept a lot! If you click on my sleep log link above, you will see that I have slept for a total of 9 hours and 47 minutes today, which is a huge amount!

Last night was the first night that I had slept in my bed for quite a few days (actually it seemed like an eternity), and I was very happy to be sleeping somewhere comfortable. I went to bed at 1:00am, hoping to get up at 5:30am and continue with my normal pattern. Things didn't quite work out like that in the end!

My vibrating alarm went off at 5:30am as usual, and I didn't really feel particularly motivated to get up. I laid there for a few minutes, and the next thing I knew it was 6:00, so I must have drifted off to sleep. I told Yu Lee that I fancied a bit more sleep and she said that I should sleep longer if I want, so I set my ipod to go off at 7:00. The alarm went off and I snoozed it until 7:30, then I turned it off and went back to sleep again. I eventually woke up at 8:45 and got up.

I had loads of vivid dreams during this period, but I can't remember any of them now.

Due to sleeping so much during the night, I really wasn't counting on having a nap in the afternoon, but just after midday we went out shopping and while I was out I felt the need for a nap slowly coming over me.

We got back around 2 and had lunch, and then played computer games for a while, and then at 4:30pm I decided I was definitely ready for a nap and went to bed. I set my alarm for 2 hours, but woke up 5 minutes before it went off.

This evening I have felt great! I think I really needed to sleep in today, as my quality of sleep was awful while I was looking after ratty.

We were really intending to properly clean up today, and to get rid of all of the ratty related stuff in the front room, but after my horrible 3 days I felt that I really needed a break. It was great to do nothing much all day!

First I am going to start with my alertness spreadsheet. Here is a reminder of the scale:

Score	Meaning
0	I give up
1	Microsleeps. Feeling like falling asleep when doing physical activity such as walking.
2	I could sleep at my desk by accident whilst trying to type something if I’m not careful. Occasional microsleeps a possibility
3	Uncomfortable (extremely tired) / very sleepy. Even just sitting down is uncomfortable and/or I have to fight off sleep constantly
4	Very Tired – I could fall asleep in less than a minute. Programming is impossible or at least very difficult
5	Reading would make me fall asleep or feel really sleepy
6	I could read without sleeping but it would make me feel drowsy
7	Normal Monday afternoon after missing a few hours sleep on Sunday night
8	Slightly Tired (definitely don’t feel like I could fall asleep). Normally I would feel like this at about 8:00pm – 9:00pm
9	Normal Awake
10	Better than normal

And here are the results for this week:

	Sunday	Monday	Tuesday	Wednesday	Thursday	Friday	Saturday
DAY:	22	23	24	25	26	27	28
	23/09/12	24/09/12	25/09/12	26/09/12	27/09/12	28/09/12	29/09/12
00:00	Asleep	Asleep	Asleep	Asleep	8	Asleep	6
01:00	Asleep	Asleep	Asleep	Asleep	7	Asleep	Asleep
02:00	Asleep	Asleep	Asleep	Asleep	Asleep	Asleep	Asleep
03:00	Asleep	Asleep	Asleep	Asleep	Asleep	Asleep	Asleep
04:00	Asleep	Asleep	Asleep	Asleep	Asleep	Asleep	Asleep
05:00	9	6	7	6	Asleep	Asleep	Asleep
06:00	9	7	8	6	Asleep	6	Asleep
07:00	9	8	8	8	8	7	7
08:00	7	8	8	7	8	7	7
09:00	9	8	8	7	8	7	7
10:00	9	8	8	7	8	7	8
11:00	8	8	9	7	7	6	8
12:00	7	8	9	6	6	6	8
13:00	6	8	9	7	Asleep	Asleep	8
14:00	7	8	7	7	7	7	7
15:00	7	8	7	7	7	8	7
16:00	8	Asleep	7	7	8	8	7
17:00	8	8	8	Asleep	8	8	Asleep
18:00	7	8	9	9	8	7	Asleep
19:00	7	8	9	8	7	7	7
20:00	6	7	8	8	7	6	7
21:00	5	7	8	7	6	6	7
22:00	Asleep	7	8	7	6	6	7
23:00	Asleep	7	7	8	Asleep	6	7
Mean:	7.53	7.61	8.00	7.17	7.29	6.76	7.19

This week was the week that my pet rat died, which was very sad for me. Ratty was ill during days 26 - 29, which is why my sleeping pattern was not quite right on those days. I think that this sleeping pattern really helped me to look after ratty, as I was able to catch up some lost sleep during my naps each day.

This is the final time I am going to be including this spreadsheet, for several reasons.

First of all, Libre Office has some issues which make this a nightmare. The conditional formatting is a real pain to set up, and when I export it to html it has stopped colouring the text so I have to hack the html manually afterwards.

The second reason is that I have realised that my scale doesn't make a whole lot of sense. This scale was based on how I thought I would feel on a normal monophasic sleeping pattern, with 9 being 'normal' and 7 and 8 being a bit tired. The more I think about it, I'm sure I rarely ever felt a 9 in the first place! The scale is too subjective, and it is difficult to accurately pick between 7, 8 and 9, and I'm sure that I am marking my alertness lower now than I would have in the beginning. I think that averaging 7 - 8 was probably normal on a monophasic sleep pattern.

The third and probably most important reason is that I just don't think this is necessary any more. I am sure that my sleeping pattern is working, and it is very difficult to remember to log my sleepiness when I am not really tired. When I was trying everyman, it was easy to remember to fill in the spreadsheet because the tiredness took over my whole life, but when you are scoring 7s and 8s all of the time it is very difficult to remember.

An interesting thing that this spreadsheet has taught me is that you always feel a little bit tired. If you ever stop to think about it, I think you will notice that there is always a slight tiredness present, but it is normally negligible (unless you are on some hard drugs in which case I think you will feel pretty alert).

After nearly 1 month of doing this sleeping pattern I am pretty sure that I will be continuing with it for a while. I am going to continue my daily updates for a while, especially considering I haven't had a full week yet where I have stuck to the schedule, but I don't think I will need to continue with this for much longer. I still don't feel 100% adapted, so I guess I will continue with this until it becomes 100% natural.