Power Overwhelming

After my last post it occurred to me that it is somewhat therapeutic to tear down certain concepts that people find useful/entertaining/essential but hold absolutely no appeal for me. And I will re-iterate this concept of how it holds no appeal for ME and ME alone. If you want to go running you are more than welcome to do so, and I will think no lesser of you (than I already do) for you doing it. Just don't expect me to follow you.

Today's topic would be the concept called POWER NAPPING. I was introduced to power napping during my A level year when I asked a classmate of mine how she survived by sleeping 3-4 hours a night and still come to school and stay awake during all the lessons, then go home and study the whole day without extended sleep catching-up. It seemed rather superhuman to me because I was sleeping about double her hours, and still dozing off during every possible lesson, going home and THEN taking another evening nap.

So she told me that she exercised what she called 'power napping', a phrase which I assumed she coined at the time but later realised that it was more widespread than I thought. Power Napping, as she defined it, involved one taking an EXTREMELY short nap of about 10 to 20 minutes, and waking up feeling suddenly refreshed and ready to continue studying for at least a good 1 to 2 hours after.

Now this seemed like a rather revolutionary concept at the time, so I did what I always do whenever a girl introduces something to me - I tried it. (right.) And I don't know what the science is behind it, but I find that it DOES sort of work. You do wake up feeling rather refreshed as if you had slept for a couple of hours, and it can extend your operating hours far better than splashing cold water on your face. There are however, a few problems.

1) Telling yourself to sleep for 10-20 minutes isn't the problem. If you're really tired you can probably fall asleep within the first 2 minutes, and you can always set a phone alarm that will definitely wake you up because 20 minutes isn't fast enough for you to hit REM sleep. Unless you've that magical and mysterious 'malady' known as narcolepsy. Or it's slightly more dubious cousin, MILD narcolepsy. The problem however is after your alarm wakes you up after 20 minutes YOU DON'T WANT TO WAKE UP. You're body is tired and you've actually had good sleep for probably the first time in awhile, particularly if you're napping in a comfortable place. And it takes a TREMENDOUS amount of self-discipline to get your ass out of... chair and go back to work.

2) After trying it abit more I theorised that how it sorta works is that you need to get a surge of adrenaline while sleeping and the sudden change in level of brain activity will be enough for you to function as if you were refreshed. In other words, you need to be SHOCKED awake, and sometimes an alarm just isn't good enough. It's like the scenario where you're sleeping in class, and you think you're only gonna sleep for 10 minutes, but after 10 minutes you think 5 more minutes... etc. And even then you still feel sleepy and you need to go to the toilet to wash your face. However if at the 8.39 minute mark your teacher wakes you up in a rather dramatic fashion (like flinging a whiteboard marker at your head) you are most definitely bound to be SHOCKED awake, and you'll find it pretty damn hard to go back to sleep anytime soon.

So the solution is obviously to a) Get self-discipline or b) Arrange your 'alarm' in such a way that it is bound to sufficiently scare the shit out of your... pituitary gland (is that what it's called?) such that it pumps enough adrenaline to keep you going for a long while more. Which is sometimes beyond your control.

Not that Power Napping is a completely useless concept. I've used it on multiple occasions in the army when I take the opportunity of my boss going out of the office for a short break. What happens is that when he comes back in he has the tendency to jerk the handle rather violently and throw the door open and shout something at me, which is more than enough to shock me awake. (He can't see me sleeping from the door)

I guess my whole issue is why one would NEED to Power Nap. I slept in classes and all not so much because I was tired but more because I was just plain bored. Power Napping is a way to keep your body going longer than it should be, which just strikes me as wrong for some reason. I mean if you have to survive on less-than-normal sleep for a couple of days for whatever reasons then it's fine, but when you have the luxury of being able to sleep for a good 8 hours every night there should be no need to put your body through that kind of sleep-deprived stress.

I know there are going to be many people that claim that the student life simple DOESN'T allow for you to sleep that much every night but I still find that hard to believe. But even if your university workload is that demanding it is no reason to deprive your body of natural rejuvenation. When I say 'not have the luxury of being able to sleep' I mean something more along the lines of a cranky old man waking you up at 3 in the morning so he can drive around and wake more people up at 3 in the morning. You are the only person who feels that you can't sleep because you need to study. To me studying when I'm tired makes absolutely no sense anyway because I'm not making any kind of progress, so I'd rather go to sleep and wake up in the morning to do work.

Oh I forgot to mention that there is a sort of a side-effect from Power Napping. It doesn't affect everyone, but it does hit me pretty bad. It can be described as this rather overwhelming sense of irritation directed at the object/person that woke you up in that shocking manner. I know it's kinda petty and rather princess-like, but I like sleeping and I really hate people who interrupt my naps. I've hurled vulgarities at ISD (secret army police or something) for waking me up at 2am suspecting me of forgery before. (Story for another time) There was once this incident with my brother a while ago that sorta sums it all up.

(at 6am in the morning, when I didn't need to go school)
Thom: Gor, wake up.
Me: What. What the fuck you want?
Thom: ... Eh? I had something important to tell you but I forgot what.
Me: (punches Thom in the face)

If there's a good reason for me to wake up, fine I'm reasonable. But if you're going to wake me up without one or take too long to tell me why then DIE.