By David Korhonen

Breaks and sleep

Breaks are my nemesis. I hate them as much as I need them. 

It’s is always a moment where you start losing your habits, goals and overall motivation. Having time activate in me the procrastination’s syndrome and not only for work but for everything. From the wake up in the morning (where even after a week I sleep more than 10 hours a day) to the daily obligations like shopping or washing. I feel like my motivation and mindset is being washed up during breaks. And it’s a weird feeling knowing that the only moment you have time to do everything you wanted to is the moment you don’t want to do anything.

I guess being sick the whole week didn’t help either. Every time I get out of an intense period, my body needs to get sick (or my immune system is just weakened by tiredness). Whatever the season is. Even if it doesn’t mean anything in the UK, it rains all the time anyway.

But it maybe wouldn’t have happened if there were no outlaws at SCA. Some of those little Krak gangsters broke rule N°4: Get healthy. Breaking rules isn’t the best way to go guys.

Anyway, this week break was I think needful for everyone. But it makes me think about the meditation and the “powernap” we talked about earlier this term. Because those long breaks broke me, I feel like having a healthy sleep cycle is very important to keep the motivation and avoid needing long breaks.

So I researched a bit about sleep in general, sleep schedule and multiphase sleep to see if I can improve mine. And it turns out that there are different sleeping methods, even though I don’t know if they are valid or not.

1. Monophasic sleep. It is the one we are all probably used to. It’s a one time sleep period (usually around 8h depends on people).
2. Biphasic sleep. A sleep split in two-part of several hours. According to scientist Thomas Wehr, it’s the natural way of sleeping for humans. But it seems to have disappeared because of artificial lights.
3. Dymaxion. Four naps of 30 min a day. A 2 hours sleep method (shortest possible).
4. Uberman. Six naps of 20 min a day. Same but with shorter sleep time.
5. Everyman. A method which claims that human needs at least four core hours of sleep that can then be complete with naps.

Those multiphase periods of sleep seem very unnatural for most of them, and I’m not even sure that they are benefic. It focuses more on winning time rather than improving the sleep. However, they all emphasise on the benefit of naps.

Thus I will try to add naps in my sleeping habits to see if I can feel less tired during hard work periods. And then maybe try to wake me up earlier to feel better in the morning.