Everyman 7 and PyCon

My hotel room at PyCon had a temperature of, I'm guessing, about 78. Maybe higher. I'd start to sweat in a T-shirt and jeans. I couldn't bring myself to turn on the air conditioning in the middle of winter so I just turned on the fan and slept on top of the covers.

Now it's back to waking up in a 62 degree house. We have the thermostat set to kick it up to 68 at 6 (hmm, probably 7 now with DST), but when I get up at 3 it's pretty cold. Back to wearing a jacket and a hat in the morning.

So if you want to start a whacky sleep schedule I recommend starting in the summer. No sense in making things tougher than necessary.

Bonus tip: I started out not turning on any more light than necessary when I got up in the middle of the night. Small lamp to read, or nothing at all when I was using my laptop. No sense wasting electricity right? But it turns out that darkness all around makes your body ask, "why aren't we in bed?" And while your body may have a point it makes it tough to adapt to a new schedule.

Last weekend I decided that 4.5hr of core sleep was going well enough that I could try 3, which if you recall was the goal to start with, but didn't work for me at first. Both mornings I did that I woke up after my 7:00 nap, thought, "I'm still beat" and slept another hour. (The kids were not adjusted to DST yet so that was actually an option.) So, not really a success, and I went back to 4.5 in the interests of being alert.

Then Wednesday I flew out to PyCon. The upside of traveling while doing this is, I'm enough used to napping during the day that I was actually able to sleep on the plane, something I've never really been able to do before. I just pulled my hat down over my eyes, put in some gun-range-quality ear plugs, and slept. The downside is going through security, boarding, etc., is likely to not jibe with your nap schedule. So I missed 12:00 and 5:00 naps and slept extra on the plane to make up for that.

Thursday I missed my 12:00 nap since my tutorial schedule didn't really allow for one. Friday I missed my 12:00 nap since I was too keyed up about my upcoming talk. (They had me in the biggest room, capacity 600 or so. This is my third year speaking at PyCon but there are a lot more people this year; it was a little intimidating at first, but then I hit my stride.) But I still felt okay, so for Friday night I switched back to a 3h core again, and Saturday I got all my naps in.

I was actually one of the best-rested people at PyCon. Lots of people were staying up late and only getting 5h or so of sleep and paying for it during the day. One poor guy stayed up playing Tigris and Euphrates with us and got up 6h later to keep a deal he'd made with someone to go swimming in the morning. 6h doesn't sound too bad but he'd just flown in from Australia so he was jet lagged to boot. He looked like death warmed over when I saw him the next day.

Summary: After a month on the everyman schedule, I'm on day 3 of my 3rd attempt at switching to a 3h core and this time it is going pretty well. I don't need caffeine to stay up. Currently I feel at least 80% alert, which while not stellar is a lot better than how I felt after 3h the first two times. (40%?)