No, I didn't end my polyphasic sleep experiment because it wasn't working for me like most people. I stopped it because I've been busy and haven't been able to keep getting to sleep at the same time at night.

Oh and no, I wasn't doing one of those stupid "let's sleep for 40 minutes at a time" things. Sorry, but to actually get rest, and not just sleep, you need to get in at least 90 minutes. The only way you can actually reach deep/REM sleep in 40 minutes is if you are massively sleep deprived. I didn't do the typical "polyphasic / Uberman sleep schedule", rather I slept for a predetermined amount of time each night, with that amount being in multiples of 90 minutes. I tried to do 7.5 hours of sleep each night, but usually ended up getting 6 hours or 4.5 hours on days when I had class at 8AM (for RIT20051, Monday and Wednesday, and for RIT20053, Monday and Wednesday).

My Findings:

Even with as little as 4.5 hours of sleep, I was able to go through my day in classes without feeling continuously drowsy or falling asleep all the time. I always budgetted 20 minutes extra time in bed because I don't get to sleep that quickly unless there is total silence or nice soothing white noise.

In general I just felt like I had a lot of energy. This is remarkable considering that aside from green tea (which I cut off around July 2005), I haven't had any appreciable amount of caffeine since March 2005. In the more than a year since I stopped having caffeine, I have consumed 3 bottles of bawls, all of them spread apart over multiple days, drinking maybe an ounce or two at a time.

So Why Stop?:

It's week 7. At RIT, that means lots of projects due this week and next week, while at the same time the weather is getting nicer and getting everyone thinking about Summer already. Currently I'm feeling a bit swamped. I have to have a fully working prototype of my video game for IDM (in Flash) done on Monday. Tomorrow (Thursday) I have a 10-12 page paper due on designing automotive control systems with Cognitive Psychology and HCI principles due for HCI, which of course I haven't started yet. In 340 (Comp. Platform Fundamentals), I have a hardware paper (5-7 pages) due Monday and a 5 pager on e-Commerce security concerns and solutions due Wednesday. The only class that I don't have any huge assignments and projects for is Discrete Math II, because well.. it's just Discrete Mathematics. I do have an exam in that class (2nd of 2) next Wednesday. Of course with all of the projects and papers I haven't actually started them yet, aside from drafting an outline for my HCI paper since the professor wanted one.

On top of all of that, I had the phole co-op interviewing thing going on (which was really only an issue from last Friday through Monday when I had the interview and later got the position) distracting me from my schoolwork.

Basically, I just have been too busy thinking about starting my assignments without actually getting anything done with them. That has consumed a ton of my time. As days still have just 24 hours, I have been forced to make sacrifices. Unlike Mike, I took the sensible approach and instead of being completely irresponsible and inconveniencing everyone that I live with (and using the bullshit excuse of having hard classes and "trying to make dean's list"… bullshit, you are taking a couple intro courses, a beginning photo course for non photo majors, and University Physics III which you should have taken two semesters ago but you had to repeat courses), I decided that I needed to temporarily cut back on my sleep a bit. If I only have 4 hours to sleep, I'm not going to try and sleep for those four hours instead of just the three needed to keep it polyphasic. I didn't think it would be a big problem, but boy was I wrong. I have been falling asleep in all of my classes, unable to focus in class, and am just tired all day long. I told myself that I could catch up with sleep on the weekends, but we all know how well that works.

What now?:
I need to get back to opolyphasic sleeping so that I can get my life back in line, but where can I make a sacrifice? One obvious place is my web browsing time. I am going to begin limiting the time I spend online (reading forums, catching up on all the feeds I keep track of, etc). I'm going to shoot for setting 15 minutes for checking e-mail and responding to all the forum notifications I receive (usually 30+ overnight). I'll set aside 30 minutes to play Brain Age for Nintendo DS (which I usually do while eating dinner anyway). I'll set aside 30 minutes for updating myself with the forums I visit in the evening sometime (probably right after I'm done with classes for the day as a little break), and then another 20 minutes for checking the NetVibes page where I have all the RSS feeds I keep track of listed.

In all seriousness, this will save me a TON of time. I typically spend 5+ hours each day checking my e-mail and responding to forum notifications. I spend another few hours reading feeds and learning about all the new stuff going on in the world. Cutting this down from at least 8 hours a day to just over 1 hour a day will give me time to get all my work done (and done well) and even SLEEP. In all honesty, if I maximize my efficiency and stop the useless (but socially fulfilling) banter and chatting on the forums, I can get just as much done in an hour as I do in 8 hours now.

Though I am tempted to give up AIM/GTalk for the rest of the semester, I honestly don't waste much time chatting with people on AIM (unlike some people who bother people all day long and then make excuses for why there has been a bottle of rotting milk sitting on the counter in the kitchen for over a month now). I would say I spend a max of 15 minutes a day IMing people right now. Hell I'll just integrate that with one of my evening sessions of e-mail checking or RSS reading, it doesn't really matter.

Is my life lacking? I'm not really sure. If we're talking socially, from the standpoint of anyone who hasn't/doesn't spend a lot of time on very active online forums bonding with a community, then yeah. In all of my classes, there is a total of 1 person who I actually talk to. I don't hang out with anyone at RIT who doesn't live in my apartment, and even with my roommates I don't really do anything, I just live with them. They have their girlfriends (and Mike the random girls he bothers and creeps out online) to spend time with.

I can't say I'm really that unhappy with how things are though. At this point in my life, I really don't have time to be very social (in the real world, physical sense of the word). Funny how most people think quite the opposite way about college. They think they need to get out there and be as social as possible before they settle down and start their real life. I think I may be in a very small minority of people who actually go to and stay in college for the purpose of learning. I want to expand my skillset and knowledge so that I can get a great, exciting career applying it. Though people say that the friends you make in college are your friends for life, I'm pretty satisfied with the friends that I have made here up until this point. I feel like I'll have time later in life, when I don't have all these assignments burdening me, to be social and make friends.

This is also the reason why I don't spend hours of my day actively seeking a girlfriend (I wonder who I'm referring to here). I've never had a girlfriend, and although I think it would be great to have a close confidant of the opposite sex that I could also be physically intimate with, I really don't need the distraction right now. Either way, it's not like any girl would really be interested in me anyway, I'm way too boring.

So yeah, now that i just wasted a bunch of time in IDM writing this post, though it is not really an issue, as she is going over XML basics and using it in ActionScript which I don't really need to pay attention to, I think I'm going to end this post.

I've made it this far, I don't need to crash and burn during week 7 just because of a simple time management issue. I am going to stop giving up sleep to sit and think about doing assignments without actually getting any done.

I need to take a nap. I think I'm going to sleep from 12-3 before going to Discrete Math II later today (4-6) so that hopefully I have the energy to have a nice long session writing most, if not all, of my HCI paper. The finishing touches on the paper or any sections not completed  due to writer's block can wait until the morning since I don't have HCI until 2.

After HCI tomorrow I'll breathe a massive sigh of relief, though I have a ton of stuff due on Monday. I just need a little time to relax, and the day before a huge paper is due is a miserable time for that.