Originally Posted by
Sageous
Nice to see you trying this again, Epsika.
I'm sure I said this before, but I think it bears repeating: You really, really, really, really do not need to torture yourself in order to practice polyphasic sleep, no matter what someone on the internet might tell you.
You do not need to stay up for 24 hours before changing your sleep schedule; I can't even comprehend the thinking behind that nonsense. Do you really believe that a day without sleep will erase a lifetime of sleep patterns (not to mention centuries of genetic memory)?
20-minute naps are extremely short, and if you manage to maintain a pattern of these you will very likely either have no dreams at all, as your body struggles to squeeze in some restorative NREM time, or else you will, oddly, never quite fall asleep at all, and find yourself locked in a brief moment of hypnogogia before forcing yourself (with an alarm, I assume) to be awake again; you very likely won't have enough time to have enjoyable LD's in 20 minutes either (which I assume was your original goal). I suggest that you make those naps longer, (45 min or more), and --at least until you've made a comfortable adjustment to a polyphasic sleep pattern -- that you give yourself a good 4-hour stretch of sleep at night in addition to all those short naps. Later, after you've gained that comfort and your body has made its adjustments, you might experiment with shorter sleep periods ... but doing so right out of the chutes is probably not helpful at all, and might even be harmful. I suggest that you allow yourself to gradually change your sleep schedule, to gently massage your sleep cycles into a new form, rather than pounding them with a sledgehammer.
I also notice that you've been at this for several years, overall; hopefully that should be notice enough that maybe you're approaching the activity from the wrong direction.
I've probably said this before as well, but if you are comfortable with your new sleep patterns, and perhaps can enjoy your attempt to adjust your sleep cycles, you will very likely have a much easier time adopting a polyphasic sleep schedule. If you torture yourself by forcing yourself to stay awake for long stretches and find yourself lying on the floor unable to avoid sleep, I'm guessing things aren't all that pleasant for you, and a steady polyphasic sleep schedule is still out of reach.
tl;dr: I suggest that you do yourself a favor, Epsika, and lose the link to the page you showed me long ago (and all the rest of them), and start your own schedule at your own pace. If you make your switch to polyphasic sleep gradual, comfortable, and maybe even fun, you might see results much more quickly than you are seeing them now, and you won't experience nearly as much frustration or moments of uncontrollable sleep.
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