24 Hour Genius by Eric Epstein

Author:Eric Epstein
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
Published: 2013-05-22T04:00:00+00:00

Sleep Deprivation During an All-Nighter

But what about the impact of sleep deprivation while you are working? As studies have shown, sleep deprivation potentially can chip away at one’s ability to focus, commit information to memory, and engage in logical reasoning. Doesn’t that mean your deep expedition into the work mine will be a failure?

For several reasons, nothing could be further from the truth.

It goes back to overclocking. Don’t assume your brain can’t keep up its processing speed for a day or so without sleep.

In one of the premier studies regarding this issue, “Failure to Find Executive Function Deficits Following One Night’s Total Sleep Deprivation in University Students Under Naturalistic Conditions,” published in 2009, researchers (most of whom, including the principal author, were associated with Harvard Medical School) recruited twenty-five subjects, aged nineteen to twenty-five. The researchers divided the subjects into two groups, one as the control, with a normal sleep schedule; the other engaged in thirty-five to thirty-nine hours of total sleep deprivation. Following the period of sleep deprivation, the subjects attempted a battery of varied, stimulating cognitive challenges, such as completing incomplete sentences, speaking as many words beginning with the letter A as they could think of in one minute, or learning and applying a new, made-up system of English grammar. The study found no statistically significant difference in success rates between the control group and the sleep-deprived group.69

Some individuals seem to have a particularly strong, hard-wired resistance to sleep deprivation (although the studies have not yet uncovered whether this trait is based on genetics or other factors). For example, in another study, “Are Individual Differences in Fatigue Vulnerability Related to Baseline Differences in Cortical Activation?” published in 2005 and authored by researchers at the U.S. Air Force along with several civilian researchers, ten Air Force pilots went without sleep for thirty-seven hours, and, at various intervals, practiced maneuvers on a flight simulator. Several of the pilots were nearly as effective at the end of the thirty-seven-hour period as they were at the beginning. Others experienced greater difficulties. Interestingly, most of the pilots did better at hour thirty-seven than at hour thirty-two, suggesting an ability to adapt to sleep deprivation.70 This study, like the others described in this chapter, was performed under strict supervision, without harm to others. I use this study to illustrate that it’s possible to adapt to the challenge of sleep deprivation. That said, above all, there are rules regarding the maximum duration of shifts and employers should respect those rules. If you are in such a field, you of course should defer to that guidance. Similarly, you should not try to work in a fatigued state if doing so could cause a safety risk to yourself or others.

The symptoms of sleep deprivation, when they do occur, are not necessarily a problem when you’re doing creative work. To the contrary: What you experience while fighting off sleep can be surprisingly helpful in encouraging creative thinking. Yes, you may experience some erosion, at the margins, in traditional

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