Becoming The Uberman - Day 1: "Origins"

For those of you who do not know: I am embarking on a quest. A quest so sacred and so desired, little have returned sane. What is this quest I speak of?  What is this pilgrimage of enlightenment?  This journey of power?  This mission of impossibility? The answer is infact, quite simple - I have no idea what I’m talking about.

The truth is I’m so sleepy I could care less about what I’m typing right now, so much so that I’m writing random baboon boobies as the intro to this post. What I can say though is that I'm tired, and the accumulated monstrosity of pillows and fluff behind me is silently murmuring chants of sleepless witchery, waiting for my will to dissolve into its soft, comfy arms.

I’m sure you’re wondering why I am undergoing such phases, no; I’ve already been through puberty, and no; I’m not on my menstrual cycle. I’m experiencng such radical sleepiness for two reasons:  today was my last as a 3^rd year university student, and I had to do an all-nighter (as is the same with every year) to finish off the last of my coursework before due dates. Secondly, and for a while now, I have been wanting to try a new method of sleep schedule named the “Uberman”, and this is the primary cause for my new-fangled experiment. Allow me to give you the low-down.

First, you gotta’ know some important stuff. Humans, by nature, sleep in a monophasic manner. Monophasic sleep means that a person snoozes once every 24 hours (unless you’re a grandpa, In which case you sleep once every 5 minutes) usually in large chunks of 5-8 hours.  Now, here’s the cool part; humans also have another form of slumber – this is called polyphasic sleep.

Couldn't be more true. Apart from the missing tissue rolls.

Polyphasic sleep refers to the practice of sleeping multiple times in a 24-hour period, usually more than two. Now in comes the genius. The story goes that a bloke named Dr. Uberman found that the human sleep process involves alot of wasted time (entry/light sleep, heavy sleep, ect.), and he determined the most important part of the sleep process is the REM (rapid eye movement) stage. This is where the brain begins to dream during the average sleep poress, and where the majority of resting occurs. Dr. Uberman figured that he could cut down on all the unnecessary hours wasted in bed and invented a polyphasic system where humans would sleep only 2 hours out of 24 – and this is done by sleeping for 20 minutes every 4 hours.  Yep, you heard me right. 20 minutes every 4 hours. No more, no less.

And so, here I am. Going through the infamous “adaptation phase”, where I train my body to endure countless days of sleep deprivation, by taking short 20 minute naps every 4 hours, so I may achieve this state of epic uberness. One thing I have realized after my first day on the Uberman cycle, is that 22 hours is a VERY long time. More than you’d think. The problem is filling up this time with constructive activities, like tidying my bed, this take about 4 minutes, totalling to 24 minutes out of my 22 hours. Win? Yes, I think so.

I decided to make a dedicated section within this blog detailing my daily progress in becoming the Uberman, alongside my other ramblings. I shall write a short summary near the end and an quick side effects list; for those who want to skip through my slow serious degeneration as a life form and fast-forward to my suffering.

SIDE EFFECTS

• Sleepiness. Wears off slightly after a nap, but comes back soon after.
• Incoherency with speech. Slurring of some words. This usually happens just before a scheduled nap.   Words like “Im going to kill myself” often crop up moments prior to naps.

SUMMARY:

• I’m so tired I could thwack a chicken with a pitchfork and feel no humane response; neither remorse nor humour.
•  I need to find shit to do. Or I’m fucked.