Waking Dream

For the last couple of weeks I’ve been trying to train myself to sleep less. It has actually worked out pretty well. I now manage to go on an average of five to six hours a night, rather than the former eight I needed. The trick, I realised, is to reduce the amount you sleep gradually.

What I’ve been doing is just staying up a little later at night. I began with an extra half hour, when I had adjusted to that, I added another half hour to my waking world time. This works the best if you’ve got a time you have to get up, as then you can’t compensate for the extra time you stay up at night be sleeping in during the morning.

The thing is, that pretty quickly you notice that you’re only slightly more sleepy on five or six hours than you were on eight. I’m willing to accept a little bit of sleepiness for an extra two to three hours a day. That means you get an extra day every week and a half! Furthermore, I’m of the opinion that soon enough that sleepiness too will fade and while it’s still around I’ll compensate it with coffee (Sweet, sweet coffee…) and micro naps.

The only big drawback I’m noticing, at this point, is that it’s a little harder for me to both concentrate and remember. It is far easier for me to get distracted than before, which is probably the reason why I’m having trouble remembering things (as I’m just not paying attention when I’m first told them). This is very unfortunate, especially if you’re trying to absorb new information from your students, books or dates (I’ve found dates get quite annoyed when you ask the same question more than five times.)

What use is more time if you’re going to remember less of it?

Maybe it’s that we can only remember so much stuff per day and if you take extra time, then the amount of memory you have gets spread thinner over the hours you’re awake. That would fit in nicely with the once proposed theory that sleep is the time during which you process all the things you’ve experienced during the day. Only so much can be processed during one REM cycle, right?

I guess it’s just a matter of waiting and seeing. Hopefully this side effect will also fade and I’ll be back to my good old self, plus two extra hours a day. If they don’t, well then I’ll have to consider the entire situation very carefully, once again.

My experiment continues.