Anki reps, mostly. I found that I could do proper review sessions for about 2-3 days and would hit an impenetrable wall. I couldn’t learn a single new card and had total brain fog until I got 3 hours more sleep. That, however, would reset my adaptation.
The whole effect is a bit less pronounced on Everyman, but not much. It is however easier to add sleep when you already have a core.
I didn’t notice any other major mental impairment after the initial sleep deprivation. I could (and did) play 16+ hours of BG2 and similar games each day and not break down. (I’m so grateful for the easiest difficulty setting now. One Uberman attempt took me 55 hours until I got any sleep at all and all my cognition went to hell. But I could still play HL2, although I got lost within an elevator.)
The other really bad thing about polyphasic sleep is impatience. Quote from my diary at the time (also notice the slight irritation):
Impatience is really getting annoying. Except for the short core I can’t skip any time at all anymore. If something takes 6 hours, like a download for example, I will be awake (almost) all the time and have to wait. Every. Minute. Of. It. You see everything pass. Someone just went to bed and you want to talk about something? Prepare to sit there, for 8 hours or more, fully awake. Wrote some email and await an answer? You’ll have memorized 500 digits of π before you get it. You can’t skip anything, can’t just hibernate a few hours. Once the sun went down, you’ll sit in darkness, for 14 hours and more right now. If you are not president by day, superhero by night and mad scientist on the side, you’ll be bored right out of your skull. Your puny hobbies are not enough for The Night That Never Ends, mortal!
Anki reps, mostly. I found that I could do proper review sessions for about 2-3 days and would hit an impenetrable wall. I couldn’t learn a single new card and had total brain fog until I got 3 hours more sleep.
Oh, cool—as I understand it, Anki keeps fairly detailed statistics and exposes them to you; it’d be interesting to see graphs matched up with you being on Everyman vs Uberman, etc.
I didn’t notice any other major mental impairment after the initial sleep deprivation...Besides all that, it’s cool and kinda works.
Yeah, but I wonder what’s really going on during polyphasic adaptation. Relevant tangential links:
Oh, cool—as I understand it, Anki keeps fairly detailed statistics and exposes them to you; it’d be interesting to see graphs matched up with you being on Everyman vs Uberman, etc.
Well, yes, it would be, if I weren’t a dumbass who threw them away. ;) I deleted my complete Anki deck at the time because it was pretty low quality and I was really getting annoyed with the content. I did another one that covered the later half of the polyphasic sleep period (which I also used to test my memory), but that was 1.5 years ago and as I have a fairly strict “delete boring cards” policy, virtually nothing of it is left.
Also, most of my diaries are gone. The only thing left are activity logs of some months (nothing really interesting) and several recaps I wrote based on the earlier material. Mania’s a bitch.
Anki reps, mostly. I found that I could do proper review sessions for about 2-3 days and would hit an impenetrable wall. I couldn’t learn a single new card and had total brain fog until I got 3 hours more sleep. That, however, would reset my adaptation.
The whole effect is a bit less pronounced on Everyman, but not much. It is however easier to add sleep when you already have a core.
I didn’t notice any other major mental impairment after the initial sleep deprivation. I could (and did) play 16+ hours of BG2 and similar games each day and not break down. (I’m so grateful for the easiest difficulty setting now. One Uberman attempt took me 55 hours until I got any sleep at all and all my cognition went to hell. But I could still play HL2, although I got lost within an elevator.)
The other really bad thing about polyphasic sleep is impatience. Quote from my diary at the time (also notice the slight irritation):
Besides all that, it’s cool and kinda works.
Oh, cool—as I understand it, Anki keeps fairly detailed statistics and exposes them to you; it’d be interesting to see graphs matched up with you being on Everyman vs Uberman, etc.
Yeah, but I wonder what’s really going on during polyphasic adaptation. Relevant tangential links:
http://www.cosmosmagazine.com/news/4264/can-we-be-awake-and-asleep-same-time
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/17/magazine/mag-17Sleep-t.html
Well, yes, it would be, if I weren’t a dumbass who threw them away. ;) I deleted my complete Anki deck at the time because it was pretty low quality and I was really getting annoyed with the content. I did another one that covered the later half of the polyphasic sleep period (which I also used to test my memory), but that was 1.5 years ago and as I have a fairly strict “delete boring cards” policy, virtually nothing of it is left.
Also, most of my diaries are gone. The only thing left are activity logs of some months (nothing really interesting) and several recaps I wrote based on the earlier material. Mania’s a bitch.
A Lesson is Learned But the Damage is Irreversible. People wonder why I hate to delete stuff, but examples like you are why.
Agreed. I’m now logging and saving much more aggressively. That wasn’t the first chunk of important data I lost, but I try to make it the last.