Off Topic With Ashley

So I’m trying out another sleep hack to try and reduce the amount of down time I experience per day. I’m terrible with sleep, and I’ll often snooze for ten hours by mistake, or end up going to bed at two in the morning.

The last time I tried something like this I was a bit ambitious, and while it worked out for a few weeks, it pretty much made me a walking zombie and it was difficult to justify such an awkward lifestyle against a social calendar. This time I’m a bit overambitious in how unambitious my plan actually is, and it remains to be seen if I can extract any benefit from it.

Basically I’ve been trying to take a siesta around five, which is enough to refresh me until one (or two) in the morning, when I can sleep again. It’s all very interesting, but if it works out I’d like to try a more ambitious scheme.

I really do hate sleep. It’s the most frustrating part of life for me because it is dead time from which nothing tangible ever comes, and the quality of it influences your waking time, usually not for the better. So watching that documentary on SBS which proves that with the use of drugs it’s possible to go almost completely without sleep, side-effects, or a buzz was highly intriguing to me.

I’d love to be able to work around the clock. How many times have you been working on something highly stimulating, only to find it’s three in the morning and your body is shutting down? Imagine how powerful it would be if you could skip that great long eight hour interruption in your life and replenish your body with the previously linked Uberman sleep schedule.

All this musing is moot unfortunately, because the legality of the wonder drug itself is questionable. It’s been around since the eighties and hasn’t had any measurable long-term side-effects (although admittedly alergic reactions to the drug can be pretty spectacular,) but despite this it isn’t available in most places without a prescription. This leaves this little musing back at the very beginning, but I’m keeping my eye on this field.

So in the short term I’m sleeping less, and relying on coffee more. It’s kind of tricky, but I’m hoping with the right amount of willpower I can pull off this biphasic sleep experiment, and then perhaps then transition to something more optimal.