Framing sleep deprivation and the necessity of keeping to the schedule
Malcolm McCulloch
Can the Sleep Deprivation be Minimized or Shortened?
Sleep deprivation, while no fun, is an important phase in adjusting to any polyphasic schedule.
The sleep-dep is your brain “talking to you”, telling you that it’s no longer getting rest; and you’re “answering” it by taking regular naps[45].
Your mind/body is very much a machine in some ways, and the way it works here is fairly predictable: Sleep-dep is the normal, first-line response. When increasingly acute sleep-deprivation doesn’t make you change, your brain will try another response: It will adjust to the circumstances it’s stuck with, and switch to getting the sleep it needs by adapting to your new schedule. (Why does your brain do this? The science is still a mystery, but if you think about how fundamentally adaptable human beings are, it makes sense that, given *some* predictable rest that it can use, the brain would get around to just using it, rather than staying sleep-deprived!)
When this adaptation works, you’ll stop having sleep-dep symptoms—usually gradually, though once it begins to let up, the rest goes away quickly in my experience. (Sleep-dep disappears more quickly on Uberman than Everyman, I suspect because the perfect regularity of an equiphasic schedule is easier for the mind to adapt to.) It’s the sleep-dep – having it and beating it – that makes polyphasic sleep work, in a sense[46].
This, to say it again, is why consistent adherence to your new polyphasic schedule is so important: If you respond to sleep deprivation by sleeping extra, then you’re telling your brain that it doesn’t have to adapt; that applying the right pressure will make you change back to the comfortable old habit of sleeping for long periods of time. If you give in (even once), your brain takes it as a sign that it should keep up—even increase!—the sleep-deprivation symptoms, since they’re working. It’s imperative that they not work; that no matter what the symptoms, you sleep on your new schedule exactly. This will get your brain to give up on sleep dep as quickly as possible—usually within a few days—and resort instead to changing your sleeping patterns so that your naps give you the rest you need. The more “mistakes”, the more sleep-dep
[45] Regular naps in a pattern known to provide the rest you need, once you adapt. As we discussed previously, just any old naps won’t do it.
[46] Some people claim that a more gradual adaptation can still work while minimizing sleep deprivation symptoms; I discuss that in the earlier section on Adaptation Methods. But the short answer is, “It’s a long shot.”