My Journey Of Boredom

I’m so glad you asked! 

It was difficult getting into it. I started over Summer (which I definitely recommend) and it took… let’s say a month to become 100% adapted. I had some setbacks along the way so it might only take a week or two, it all depends on the person. 

I started by reading everything I could about polyphasic sleep. There are a handful of forums where people talk about their experiences, advice or tricks to help, different schedules, things like that. I’m sure you’ve probably checked out many of these already but http://forum.polyphasicsociety.com/ and http://www.reddit.com/r/polyphasic/ in particular were very helpful to me. I also started blogging about it, which sort of helped me personally in sticking with my goals. It’s sort of a mental trick to keep you feeling responsible, I guess? Anyway.

So after reading all of that crap and getting lots of advice, I planned out an exact schedule on paper that I knew would work with my high school classes. I think I chose a 90 minute core nap at night with various naps throughout the day. Then later I decided to try the SPAMAYL schedule in order to get myself used to sleeping during naps faster. I figured I could always add a core nap later, but adapting is easier if you throw yourself into a strict schedule. SPAMAYL is incredibly flexible; you essentially take a nap whenever you’re tired.

So, I stuck with it for about 2 weeks (this was over summer, so I was free to take naps whenever). However, I noticed personally that I kept oversleeping at night by taking a 4.5 hour nap exactly. I decided that since I was sleeping that way anyway, this was the best option for me. Although I was sleeping maybe ~6 hours each night (not a dramatic change from how I had been sleeping before) I noticed the benefits immediately. I had tons more time to do homework or dick around on the internet. More time than I even knew what to do with, really. It actually became challenging for me to find things to do at night while I was awake. I learned languages, read every book I could find, did homework and projects way in advance. It was great! I told everyone I could about how awesome I felt. I was eating healthier, getting up early, and had more energy throughout the day.

When school started, my final schedule was a core 4.5 hour nap anywhere from 9pm to 5am, a nap right before 8am, one during school (optional), and one right after I got home. The trickiest part was napping during school. My high school bus came at 8am and I didn’t get home until 4, and it was sometimes difficult to stay awake for that long. I ended up eating my lunch during class and taking my nap during lunch in a secluded spot. It was my senior year and I was a good student so my teachers were content to let me do pretty much whatever. It worked, aside from the few occasions where someone mistakenly woke me up! Then I would be really grumpy for the rest of the day. Sometimes I couldn’t nap for whatever reason, but it always worked out.

The only downside I saw was that if I had missed my lunch nap I couldn’t really do anything after school, because I had to take a nap as soon as I got home or else I would be tired and miserable. My schedule was pretty flexible, but high school can be a random time and we had classes one after the other. Still, I’d totally recommend it.

In my own experience, I started out thinking I would be sleeping in a very textbook way, but ended up forming a more custom schedule based on my own physiology instead. I still got lots of benefits, and I’m sure the time benefits would only increase if you took more naps. Less time sleeping means more time being awake, learning things! Also, I don’t know what your schedule looks like, but if you have at least 30 minutes between any two classes, I would definitely try to fit a nap in there.

My advice for you? Ok, here goes:

1. Take a core nap. There are schedules without core naps (Uberman, SPAMAYL) but these schedules make it difficult to stay awake for long periods at a time, which you will probably need if you are in school. Also, it helps just to separate one day from another.

2. Stick with it for at least a week. It’s going to feel miserable that first week while you adapt to being, essentially, sleep-deprived. I personally felt like a zombie at times, like I would sit on the couch and the world would just fly by me while I stared at nothing.

3. Don’t worry if you don’t sleep through your naps. Relax, it happens. What’s most important is resting. Even if you lie with your eyes closed for half an hour and feel stupid, don’t get back up, even if you don’t feel tired at all. You have to train your brain a bit so that it knows this is your designated sleep time.

4. Set multiple alarms. Seriously, this one is so important.

5. Listen to your body. If you keep oversleeping at a certain time, if you’re craving a certain food, if you get hungry at weird times, try to figure out why. And if it’s an easy change to make, do it!

Polyphasic sleep, a term coined by psychologist J.S. Szymanski, refers to the practice of sleeping multiple times in a 24-hour period—usually more than two, in contrast to biphasic sleep (twice per day) or monophasic sleep (once per day).

I will do my best to answer both of your questions in one post because they are linked so closely.

The way I ‘delete’ memories is through a suppression method using a type of memory palace I’ve created called a locked palace. This locked palace is a room with peggings like any other palace; however, the door to it is locked and the key is in the real world. In the memory palace you don’t have an omniscient view of the rooms you’re walking in. It’s first person. So when a room is locked, you can’t get in there. And eventually you’ll forget what’s in that room. And because you’ve literally moved the memory into that room, you will forget that memory after you’ve forgotten what’s in that room until you are able to get the key, open the room, and decode the memory.

So how do you unlock a locked palace? The key is a real world series of sensations that stimulate various parts of your brain, and therefore release various chemicals in differing orders. I know, it sounds strange and complex. It’s really quite simple (well not the psychology of it, but we’re ignoring that part for now. Just don’t screw up your mind and your psychologist wont have to discover a new problem I’ve invented). It works the same way as the locked memory. If someone told you about the memory you locked, your unconscious would find it and pull it bleeding out of the palace. You can’t stop your unconscious mind (so be careful with what you lock away). So you create an event that you can store with the locked memories. This event is a series of sensations. So for example, espresso and peppermint. The combination of these two sensations entering your body in a specific order releases chemicals into your bloodstream, resurfacing the memory of the last time that specific sensation was articulated. So you place this event on the inside of the door of the locked, and when the sensation is recreated, your unconscious will break through the door to let you see what’s inside, effectively unlocking  the palace. The tricky part is planning.

I hope this answered both of your questions.

As aspiring deductionists, the Mind Palace, also known as the Memory Palace or Brain Attic, becomes exceedingly important. It has the potential to be useful to anyone in any walk of life, but as people training ourselves in the art of deduction, having a wealth of reference information to draw back on becomes paramount. I highly recommend this technique for anyone studying deduction. There are plenty of posts and resources on the Internet detailing the what the Mind Palace is and how to make one, but I’ve noticed how shockingly underused the Mind Palace is. Many refer to it as a Memory Palace, as I stated earlier. The truth is, this technique can be manipulated to become much more useful.

1. A calming technique 

Most of us watched the BBC version of Sherlock. He gets shot, having only seconds of consciousness left. So, doing what he could to save his own life, he fell back upon his Mind Palace. He figures out what he needs to do to save his own life, one of them being the prevention of shock. He falls back on a childhood memory of his pet dog named Redbeard, effectively calming him.

 This can be accomplished by having a specific room or section in your Palace dedicated to emotionally calming objects and locations to you. This can involve the beach, your Grandparents’ living room, your bedroom, or a completely made up room that would relax you in real life. Mentally hang pictures on your wall, add a fireplace, calming music and aromas to this room. This is immensely underrated, and could one day be incredibly important, whether you are in a life-threatening situation or are just incredibly stressed. Never underrate the necessity for a relaxation period. 

2. Visualization 

This one is rather broad, so I’ve split it into sections. All of these will progressively get more vivid and realistic as you progress. 

The Visualization of Worlds: 

This one seems sort of obvious. However, most don’t realize the potential this possesses. Most use it to visualize objects, paintings, memories, etc. However, you can go much, much further. For example, take the Sherlock Christmas special, The Abominable Bride. The majority of that episode is Sherlock’s own little world, one he completely imagines, but for a practical purpose. Through a combination of his knowledge of the case and his own imagination, he is able to construct an entire world inside his own mind. 

The Visualization of People

Besides worlds, you can also remember people. When you look at a complete mental universe, remembering and visualizing people may seem fairly obvious, but hear me out. You can remember your friends, family, inspirational characters, etc. You know how when you know a person, you can predict what they would say to certain things? You memorize their personality, the different quirks of their person, and their little habits. Using that, you can create a mental version of them in your head, and, with practice, have full conversations with them. This takes a large amount of practice and is fairly difficult to pull off. After all, this is you essentially pretending to be them, and you can’t guarantee  accuracy. This isn’t them, and you need to keep that in mind. This is your mind’s version of them, your mental interpretation.  I won’t lie, it is somewhat awkward when you first begin. This can also serve as a calming technique as well (or incredibly stressful and terrifying, depending who you visualize) This is seen in Sherlock as well, not only in the Christmas special but we also see him have a conversation with Moriarty, a mental version that he had locked up, chained, and put into a padded room. There is some psychological tells on how he views Moriarty here (many not being very obvious) but that’s a post for another day.

The Visualization of Complex Events and Timelines

This visualization technique can serve many purposes, as clearly shown. However, while in school, I used this to memorize events in history. In order to memorize battles, I would actually put myself there in the heat of the battle, a calm and careful ghost walking amongst the chaos. I would visit each side, the plotting of strategy, or if it was a surprise attack, the calm before the storm. I would visualize (as gruesome as it is) the blood flying. The explosions, the expressions of the soldiers, overhead view, all of it in slow motion. With waves of my hand, I pause the scene. I slow it down or speed it up. I can zoom in on particular details, for example, the marks of rank on a general. You can use this while deducing a room, a house, or a person, whether it just being a few seconds or, in Sherlock’s case, visualizing the murder, not unlike how Will Graham does in the popular TV series ‘Hannibal’.  It is important to realize that this is your head and therefore, you are God. You control time, location, and your view of the situation. Depending on what you’re using it for, practice some form of caution if you tend to be squeamish. You can imagine how it could be potentially disturbing to the mind to be able to picture (in vivid detail, the more practice you get) a murder take place. 

All of these techniques have the potential to be challenging, but all can be incredibly useful. They will take time to master. Some may be more difficult than others based on your own natural abilities, but do not get discouraged. Use these techniques and develop your own uses for your Mind Palace. Utilize it to it’s full potential. Remember, your Palace is limited only by your own imagination. Be creative with what you do with it.

If any of you have any alternate or creative uses for your Mind Palace, feel free to message me and I’ll either create a new post or add to this one. I’m interested to see what people have done with theirs!

Tips:

1. Work to become more observant in your day to day life.

The more observant you become in real life, the more you’ll be able to visualize and picture in your Mind Palace, making it more vivid and giving you the ability to notice more. There are some very good programs and videos on how to become more observant, find them and utilize them. 

2. Practice mindfulness and concentration techniques (post on that in progress), this will give you the ability to focus in your Palace for longer periods of time. 

Bodily fluids are broken down into two categories: excreted and secreted.Within these categories you will find the following:

Excreted: Sweat, Breast Milk, Cerumen (Earwax), Faeces (included because faeces are often covered in a mucus membrane to enable travelling through the bowel), Chyme (found in the stomach), Bile, Vomit, Aqueous Humour (a watery substance that covers the eye), Sebum (Skin Oil)

“[bite marks] are indicative of a highly enraged and sadistic killer who could potentially escalate to more extensive mutilation or cannibalistic rituals in future homicides.”   (from “The Method and Madness of Monsters”).