I’ve failed Uberman twice myself. You have pretty much an optimal plan, except for the naptation.
“Cut your naps down to 6 as quickly as you can without it hurting too much”.
From my own knowledge, which may or may not be trustworthy, naptation doesn’t need to be ended prematurely—the whole point is to get a huge number of naps in a short timeframe in order to learn to get REM in a 24-minute interval (which dreaming is a sign of). Getting a few more will just decrease your REM dep. The way I would do it is, get 12 naps a day until you find yourself unable to fall asleep for a nap at all—the critical thing is, you stay in bed until the alarm; you don’t just get up after ten minutes—and also take care that some people may have trouble falling asleep for naps at all, which is a separate issue. When you fail to fall asleep for a nap, that’s a sign that you’ve had enough and can’t sustain 12 a day any longer; either cut two naps or go straight down to 6 a day. I’d choose the latter.
Also, um, give beds a wide berth outside naptime. And get more than two alarms, preferably with one placed more than 10 meters away from the bed—the long walk to it and back will ensure you actually wake up in the process of turning it off.
Another thing that happened when I tried this was that no alarm could phase me. Every alarm I tried, including one that required typing my computer password, I would figure out how to turn it off in my sleep. I’m sure I could have continued escalating into solving np complete problems before it stopped, but I gave up soon afterward. I pretty much woke up exclusively from other being physically waking me. I even answered the phone while asleep once, no idea what I said.
Very good points. Thought I’ve written a stupid slew on tricks for this sort of thing, my favorite but-I-can-overcome-any-alarm hack is the one I (in one of many moments of silliness) called the Boomstick method: Deeply ingrain a habit of doing some set of activities immediately upon waking. For instance, for a solid month and/or numerous short naps or pseudo-naps, respond to an alarm by leaping up, doing ten jumping jacks, running to the bathroom, slashing water on your face and then reciting a [something]. Then stay awake for a good period of time, and do wakeful things for the first while. You can, in fact, get your body to read a) the alarm as a signal to start that routine, and b) that routine as a signal to flip all the hormones etc. to “I’m awake” position. It’s tough to develop, but overall works like a charm.
I’ve failed Uberman twice myself. You have pretty much an optimal plan, except for the naptation.
“Cut your naps down to 6 as quickly as you can without it hurting too much”.
From my own knowledge, which may or may not be trustworthy, naptation doesn’t need to be ended prematurely—the whole point is to get a huge number of naps in a short timeframe in order to learn to get REM in a 24-minute interval (which dreaming is a sign of). Getting a few more will just decrease your REM dep. The way I would do it is, get 12 naps a day until you find yourself unable to fall asleep for a nap at all—the critical thing is, you stay in bed until the alarm; you don’t just get up after ten minutes—and also take care that some people may have trouble falling asleep for naps at all, which is a separate issue. When you fail to fall asleep for a nap, that’s a sign that you’ve had enough and can’t sustain 12 a day any longer; either cut two naps or go straight down to 6 a day. I’d choose the latter.
Also, um, give beds a wide berth outside naptime. And get more than two alarms, preferably with one placed more than 10 meters away from the bed—the long walk to it and back will ensure you actually wake up in the process of turning it off.
Another thing that happened when I tried this was that no alarm could phase me. Every alarm I tried, including one that required typing my computer password, I would figure out how to turn it off in my sleep. I’m sure I could have continued escalating into solving np complete problems before it stopped, but I gave up soon afterward. I pretty much woke up exclusively from other being physically waking me. I even answered the phone while asleep once, no idea what I said.
Very good points. Thought I’ve written a stupid slew on tricks for this sort of thing, my favorite but-I-can-overcome-any-alarm hack is the one I (in one of many moments of silliness) called the Boomstick method: Deeply ingrain a habit of doing some set of activities immediately upon waking. For instance, for a solid month and/or numerous short naps or pseudo-naps, respond to an alarm by leaping up, doing ten jumping jacks, running to the bathroom, slashing water on your face and then reciting a [something]. Then stay awake for a good period of time, and do wakeful things for the first while. You can, in fact, get your body to read a) the alarm as a signal to start that routine, and b) that routine as a signal to flip all the hormones etc. to “I’m awake” position. It’s tough to develop, but overall works like a charm.
I have a guess as to what you recited.