Dealing with conflicts in the routine - part 1

Triphasic works best if the nap times are pretty regular. However, life often has other plans and if you are doing this as a lifestyle, you will not want to interfere unduly with your work life or your social life. The morning nap has never been a problem. The evening nap can occasionally be moved back a couple of hours to accommodate the occasional late night social gathering. However, if I am going to a really late party - say one that starts at 10pm, then I take my evening nap just before I leave and then I do not need another nap until the morning. The biggest issue is with the afternoon nap which routinely conflicts with the typical work day.

I do not yet have a great solution for this problem, and I think that it is one of the major issues with fitting triphasic into a normal routine. I have tried a number of solutions with mixed results. Most of the time, I work at home at that is fine, but I also do carpentry. When I am doing carpentry, I work with a crew and typically have a 7-4 work day. I have tried moving my afternoon nap to 4:15 when I get off work, but it is too long to go straight through; I get far too tired by the end of the day, and I am working with power tools. There is no room to be less than completely awake and alert. I have tried slinging a hammock on the job site, but my co-workers mess with me during my nap. Mostly I have had to go to monophasic while I am working with a crew.

Recently, however, I think that I have found a work-around. I have set up a place to nap in my car. I have a hatch-back and the back seat folds down. It would be a lot easier if I had a mini-van, but with some prep, I can create a spot to take a nap. I have to have the back windows blocked, not just for privacy, but also because it simply gets too hot in the back with the sun beating through the hatchback window. An emergency blanket stuck to the inside with magnets has been the easiest and most effective way to do that. I move my car from the workplace to someplace more discrete, nap for 40 min. and return from "lunch". That seems to get me through till 4:30, when I take another 40 min nap. I use 40 minutes because that seems to be a length of time that is easiest for me to wake from. 45 min I will sleep right through the alarm. Go figure.

When I break my afternoon nap into two pieces, it is not as effective as just sleeping in one 1:30 chunk. I assume it is because I am breaking my sleep cycle. I am groggier, but that mostly passes. The real problem is that each time I do it, I seem to build up a little bit of sleep debt, and every 2 or 3 days, I find that I need extra sleep, so twice a week (Tue & Thr) I go to bed early for my morning nap and sleep a double cycle, which means that I get 5 hrs 50min of sleep on those days. That changes my average for the week to about 4:40/night, but that seems to be the price that I seem to have to pay.

I have thought about trying a 20 min nap at lunch, 20 min after work and then another 20 min nap around 8pm, which would be somewhat like the everyman or spamayl (sleep polyphasically as much as you like), but those systems seem to have a completely different basis. It would have the bonus of REDUCING my total time asleep per day, so it might be worth while to try.