It is with regret that I am reverting to a monophasic sleep schedule. After almost two months of trying to maintain a polyphasic schedule, I have concluded that it is impossible for someone with a daily schedule as dynamic as mine to be polyphasic without inordinately inconveniencing both self and others. Some observations I have made regarding the difficulties of polyphasic sleep in a monophasic world:

It was difficult to frame sleeping around personal activities. If I wanted to go rock climbing, for example, I would have to go between the hours of 5 and 8:30 p.m. After arriving at 5, I would only have until 6:45 to climb before I would have to go home and nap. This problem was common, and was perpetually irritating.

It was also difficult to frame sleeping around social events. The immediate result was a significant limitation of opportunities to be social; I simply went out less. While this, in general, did not bother me, there were times that it was impractical. For example, if I went home or to my girlfriend's house for the weekend, something I wanted to do with others in the household might bleed into my nap schedule and delay it.

Any sort of group effort can be disruptive to a polyphasic sleeper. In my graphic communications major, we have to complete several assignments every semester which involve a group of two or more students operating a press. Each of these press runs can take anywhere from 4-12 hours, depending on the problems that surface. The lunch time that made the most sense in the workflow would not necessarily be at exactly nap time. If the press run took several hours, I would have to miss at least one nap.

I found that while delaying or missing the occasional nap did not cause problems, even delaying two naps could severely disrupt my sleep and make me very tired. This can cause a vicious cycle of oversleeping and missing naps, making the schedule difficult to maintain even after adaptation.

I greatly enjoyed the free time I gained from the polyphasic schedule. I enjoyed the energy I had and the "just woke up" feeling that I was able to experience six times a day instead of one. If I am ever leading a much more plannable and predictable lifestyle, I would like to try going polyphasic again. For now, however, a monophasic or biphasic lifestyle is much more suited to my daily activities.