Day 5

I originally thought that I could be somewhat flexible in my sleeping time - especially if i pushed a nap earlier rather than later. However, that turns out not to be the case. If I move a nap time more than about 20 minutes (or more) earlier or later, I wake up feeling foggy, groggy and generally jet-lagged. This feeling can last a couple hours, and on one occasion lasted a couple hours over the next nap period. I had to move a couple of naps to accommodate some things that I had scheduled before I started tri-phasic sleep. Fortunately, all those glitches are past, and all my future commitments will be with full consideration of my sleep schedule. 

One of the other "side effects" that I have noticed is that I am much more focused than I have ever been before. All my life, I have had distracting, slightly intrusive, thoughts. For example, I might be doing the dishes and be thinking about an architectural design problem at the same time. I might be doing architecture, and be thinking about the ramifications of the tau manifesto. I would spend time that I SHOULD be doing one thing and use that time doing something meaningless - usually surfing the web, but sometimes just doing stuff to avoid doing what I should be doing. The especially frustrating part of that was that I would have resistance doing even the things that I WANTED to be doing. My brain seemed to just be perverse.

Now, however, no resistance. I do a task with complete focus and when i have reached a completion point (either work done, or work on it for a specific amount of time) I move on to the next task. I have gotten more done over these last 4 days than I would have thought possible. I don't seem to need any "downtime", by which I mean that I don't have any desire or interest in doing non-productive recreational activities such as mindless web surfing, watching tv shows, playing video games, or unproductive puttering. I have always had a lot of interest and respect for the Buddhist concept of mindfulness, but have always imagined it to be beyond me. While I think that I am a long way from enlightenment, this new experience of mindful focus has been liberating.