Sleep Schedules

As a stay at home parent I have some options available to me not available to many other amateur poker players; chief amoung these is some flexability with regards to when I sleep and when I play. To date there are basically three sleep-play plans that I have used. Each has its own strengths and weaknesses and I will lay out here.

Schedule 1

I think of this as the default schedule both because it was what I was doing before it occured to me that I have options, and because in the absence of planning and dicipline it is what I fall back into. Basically it means playing during my son's nap, then again at night after he has fallen asleep. I get all my sleep between when I finish playing at night and when he wakes me up in the morning. The advantage of it is that it is an easy schedule to keep and it is almost impossible for there to be a day without poker. The disadvantages are that I am playing most of my poker when I am tired and that it is very easy for a long poker session to leave me a wreck the next day.

Schedule 2

This schedule was my first idea for a sleep schedule other than the obvious. Basically it works the same as schedule 1, except that I go to bed when my son does and do most of my playing in the wee hours of the morning. The biggest advantage of this is that I am sure I have slept enough. The disadvantages are that it is a very hard schedule to keep, I find that even one night of missing my early bed time completely throws me off, and also that when I am playing early in the morning the ambiguity about how long my son will sleep can either affect my game, or keep me from playing at all. Further, there is something about doing most of my playing in the morning that makes it feel like a very long time between sessions.

Schedule 3

This schedule was born out of dissatisfaction with schedules 1 and 2. In this method I take a nap when my son does, then play longer hours in the evening, before getting a few hours of sleep at night. The advantages are that I feel absolutely fantastic when I am playing under this system. The disadvantage is that I feel like crap the rest of the day, and that household chores that I tend to get done during my son's nap, get forgotten.

Results wise there is no question which method works best - I bring my A Game every night when I am sleeping via schedule 3. But the havoc it wreaks on my life, is enough that I am not sure I want to bring it back (I am just coasting on schedule 1 right now). I suppose my experimenting has, more than anything, shown me that for someone whose number one priority is not poker, adjusting your sleep schedule to fit your poker just won't work.