neurohack

Caffeine’s generally a bad idea in a long-term polyphasic pattern. You’d build a tolerance to it, and have to start taking more, and it starts to make napping difficult. But what if you’re not looking for a pattern that’s sustainable indefinitely?

Scenario: you have a month in which to do an amount of work which isn’t actually humanly possible. Finish a book, write the next Facebook, whatever. So you need a way to cut down on sleep as much as possible during that month while leaving you as functional as possible.

Caffeine doesn’t immediately have an effect on your nervous system. It takes from 15-25 minutes to actually work. Also, caffeine’s half-life is about five hours in a healthy adult.

Which brings me to Tesla with caffeine naps. It goes like this:

1. Take a dose of caffeine (how much would vary by individual tolerance, but I’m guessing about 100mg would do it (about the amount in one cup of drip coffee).

2. Sleep until the caffeine takes effect. Quite often the caffeine will wake you up on its own – if not, set an alarm as well. It will definitely make waking up a lot easier.

3. Do stuff for the next five hours and forty minutes.

4. Repeat until your task is done.

I’m not making any claims about this working long-term. After a point the caffeine would just stop working at the present dose. But in the short-medium term, from 2-6 weeks, I’m thinking it would be effective. Caffeine definitely makes the early stages of adaption to Tesla a lot less painful (but it makes the rest more painful, so don’t try it with ordinary Tesla).

So next time I’m faced with a huge task and only a month in which to do it, this will be my pattern of choice – and of course I’ll write here about how it works out for me.

Questions/opinions/’you’re insane’ comments welcome. :)

Overslept on my 0300 nap, woke up at about 0510. Lesson learned: use audio track *and* alarm.

Feeling kind of dead at the moment; probably just sleep inertia.

So I’ve been off Tesla for a couple of months now. I didn’t stop because it wasn’t working, but Tesla is very inflexible and I wasn’t able to make it mesh with end-of-year exams.

Missing the sheer number of hours in my day, I’m adopting Uberman again – Uberman because it’s more flexible and skipping naps doesn’t screw with one too badly. I’ll try and update as often as I can with how adaption is going; I very much want to see if it’s significantly easier the second time around, and also want to experiment with things like moving naps around to fit into a movable schedule.

Adaption conditions have changed slightly from those under which I adapted to Tesla; I don’t have school to deal with for a while, and I’m starting out caffeine-free. I probably still have a slight physical dependence, but withdrawal should only consist of a few headaches.

It’s currently 0058 on 13/12/2009; hour zero will be 0100. Updates to follow.

It’s one of the issues that every polyphaser has to work out for themselves – to what extent can you use stimulants? My experiences below.

When I first started to adapt I was moderately addicted; 2-5 coffees a day (or equivalent in energy drinks). I started on the Tesla pattern, but soon realised that I had grossly misjudged the half-life of caffeine. It was still affecting me six hours later, and with only twenty minutes of sleep per nap I needed every minute. So I stopped – few days of headaches, nothing major. Adaption was much easier after that.

When I was on Uberman last year I started the adaption phase with a caffeine habit – I got literally nowhere until I kicked it. So Uberman, not surprisingly, is even worse for the Demon Bean.

Now, I was fairly tolerant to caffeine – with monophasic, I could have a coffee right before bed and go to sleep without difficulty. Polyphasic changed that for me.

In the name of science, I’ve been playing around with it since adaption, and found the following:

• If I have anything more than half a cup of coffee (~40 mg of caffeine) during a six-hour waking period I won’t be able to sleep (or will have great difficulty doing so, at best).
• If I have, say, a few sips of an energy drink directly after waking up, this will (probably psychosomatically) help me wake, but won’t affect me later on.
• If I know I’m going to skip a nap, then a coffee or two (or, in my case, a 160-mg energy drink) will be very helpful in remaining functional and won’t keep me awake for my next nap, as long as I take it within three hours of waking up.

So, my advice to those planning to polyphase: ditch caffeine before you start. If you know you’re going to be up, then a small amount won’t hurt and might help, but in general a caffeine habit is a Bad Thing on Tesla, and even worse on Uberman. It won’t help at all during adaption, and once you’re adapted you won’t need it.

Comments about how you’ve found polyphasic and stimulants to mix are appreciated – I want to learn as much about this as possible.

I’ve always had trouble waking up with a normal alarm (or indeed multiple alarms), so after some experimentation I’ve come up with something that seems fairly perfect – a twenty-minute track of pink noise laced with binaural beats which is padded on either side with music.

Using headphones, I’m much more sensitive to changes in aural environment – I’ll usually wake up as soon as the pink noise stops, even without any other kind of alarm.

If you want to play around with this, you can download some of the ‘alarms’ I use here.