Four Hours of Sleep – Update #2

This is the second update to this post, where I’m experimenting with getting only four hours of sleep at night and an afternoon nap as needed. It has now been two weeks of sleeping from midnight/12:30 until 4:30 am with a 1 or 1.5 hour nap in the early afternoon around 3 pm, although I’m not using the sleeping schedule on weekends.

My body is starting to get used to having an afternoon nap even on the weekends after having slept for 7/8 hours. I’m not sure I like that, and if I’m not able to nap around 2/3 pm on the weekends, I just power through the tiredness.

Further, on the weekends I still wake up after four or five hours, and it takes a while (~15 mins) to get back to sleep. My body is definitely becoming accustomed to the new schedule. Maybe it will be possible to sleep in this manner without an alarm clock in the near future, which would be great. The best time to remember dreams is right upon awakening, without the jolt of an alarm clock, which often seems to wipe the dream memory clean.

Fortunately, there were even more noticeable benefits in the second week than there were in the first.

I have been even more aware of my dream activity lately, my subconscious workings if you will, and have continued to be able to observe what’s going on in the dream state from an often quite conscious state of awareness. There’s a lot going on while we sleep and it continues to be interesting to be consciously aware of a lot of that work, as kind of a passive observer.

I have felt an increased melding of my subconscious and conscious minds. I believe due to this melding, I have been able to experience the benefits below.

Intuition

I’ve never felt more intuitive in my life than I have in the last week. I just seem to know things I wouldn’t normally know.

I was looking for a cigar cutter in my golf bag (1st world problems), which has six pockets where it could be. I had no idea where to look and figured it would take a while to find it. I took two seconds and “tapped into” my intuition, if you will, and chose the correct pocket on the first try. I haven’t used it in many months, nor do I have a pocket where I normally keep it. Luck? Maybe, but it just felt like I knew where it was even though I shouldn’t have.

Often while I’m busy around the house doing something, I’ll put my e-cig down in an unusual place without thinking about it, then it will take a while to find it. I’m sure you know the feeling of paying no attention, putting something down, then spending several frustrating minutes checking every place it could be. In this example, I had placed it on the window sill without thinking about it. Ten minutes later when I realized it was missing, instead of searching a bunch of different places, I just paused and immediately remembered exactly where it was. This almost never happens – I usually have to look around like an idiot for several minutes.

I feel more in tune with people and their emotional states, and in some ways, their thoughts. There’s a lot of subconscious, and I also believe telepathic communication that goes on constantly among all of us. I just feel more tuned into this type of communication. Of course this is just a feeling, but I hope to have some specific examples over the next couple of weeks.

Solving everyday problems seems to be a bit quicker and easier. Just simple things like planning a weekend activity, who’s going to drive, where, when, etc. All the simple answers are just there without much thought. I hope this skill becomes far more enhanced so I can apply it to the bigger challenges.

In general, I have felt a bit more emotional than usual, which I’m not sure I like. It’s interesting though.

Lastly, I’ve had some great business ideas over the last week. More ideas are coming to me than usual, and the only cause I can surmise is the change in my sleeping schedule. Unfortunately, I would have to be superman to implement them all, but it’s nice to have an abundance of them on hand.

Maybe it’s time to test drive this heightened intuition with a trip to the casino.

Wittiness

I can be a pretty witty guy…depending on whom you ask. But over the last few days I’ve noticed my wittiness on overdrive, little quips and observations coming to me out of nowhere to the point where I surprised myself. I believe this new sleeping schedule, by enabling a stronger flow between the conscious and subconscious minds, is helping me be more quick-witted.

Example: penis.

Writing

It just seems easier to put my thoughts down on paper lately. The words flow a bit better than usual, it takes less time than usual to write something (including long emails and journal entries), and sometimes when I read something I wrote a few hours before, I’m a bit impressed at how it flowed in its first rough draft, without fully remembering having written all of the parts. If that doesn’t make sense, I’ve immediately contradicted what I just said.

__________

Really the only downside is that I’m a bit more tired than usual for those first few hours upon waking. But I’m less tired on four hours of sleep than I ever would have imagined back when I believed we needed a full eight hours to be rested, and I feel tremendous after my afternoon naps.

I’ve enjoyed the benefits to this point, and I’m looking even more forward to experiencing what the next two weeks bring…

Read the 3rd update here.