"It's too hard"...

Okay, I'm going to try not to get tedious about saying this *all the time*. I have said it in all of my articles, most of my emails, and pretty much everything I've written or talked about with regards to the Uberman schedule. But now that I'm starting to communicate with more people who are also making attempts, I'm sensing that this really isn't sinking in.

"Uberman" is not the kind of name you give something because it's a little bit hard.

Adjusting to this schedule is, for a short time, really, really, REALLY hard.

Do not attempt it if you cannot handle hour upon hour of very intense struggle for at least a few days. It will suck. You will be thrashed. You might think you are dying. THIS IS NOT FOR PEOPLE WHO PLACE A HIGH VALUE ON BEING COMFORTABLE ALL THE TIME.

It is normal, during the first couple days, to have to fight for every second you stay awake. It's normal to be miserably tired, to lay down for naps only to toss around for 15 minutes, sleep for 5 and then want to kill kill KILL EVERYBODY when the alarm goes off. You are GOING to be sleep deprived for a couple days! Probably more sleep deprived than you've ever been, unless, like me, you have a lot of experience with it. And having experience doesn't make it any more fun.

I will cut the rest of this, but anybody who's actually doing or considering doing the Uberman schedule should click "read more" and read the whole post. Seriously.

It's like getting a tattoo: YES it hurts, duh; it's a needle. But the idea is that you endure the pain --very real, very ouch, very not-fun pain-- in order to gain something bigger in the long run. With a tattoo, you can dull the pain by getting drunk, but that thins your blood and the ink doesn't take, often ruining the tattoo. It's the same with the Uberman schedule: You can dull the pain of the first couple days by sneaking extra sleep, but you're sabotaging yourself, and you'll probably fail to adapt to the schedule if you do that.

If that doesn't make sense to you, there's probably very little I can say about this that will -- and if you try it, you'll probably give up in a couple days, because you'll extend naps, take extra naps, etc. to "dull the pain" of it, and it won't take--you won't stop being tired!--and eventually you'll give up (and who could blame you? You can't live tired all the time). IT'S NOT EASY. IT'S REALLY NOT ANY FUN AT ALL, AT FIRST. That's okay. BUT IT WILL NOT STOP BEING DIFFICULT UNLESS YOU STICK WITH IT, 100%. It hurts me when I see people complain about how they can't take those first couple days, so they added a bit here and there so that they wouldn't be so miserable...I feel bad, because they tried, and they endured a lot, but then they hamstrung themselves, ruined their own effort.

Let me elucidate a bit more about not being able to nap, because that's actually a specific one I don't think I addressed already. It's not a bad thing if you can't fall asleep quickly in the first week, or even a little longer. When you're sleeping all night, especially if you aren't sleeping well, it can take a half hour or more to get to sleep; your brain doesn't know, in the beginning, that it only has 20 minutes. It has to be trained; that's what this is for! You train yourself to fall asleep quickly by getting right up the second the alarm goes off, no matter how much sleep you did or didn't get. You don't "reset the timer" because you only slept for 10 minutes and you want 10 more. You get up. Trust me, your brain is smart. You will go a few days with no naps or barely napping; that's the idea. But after a few days, IF YOU'RE REGULAR ABOUT IT, your brain will catch on, and you'll begin to zonk right out the second you hit the pillow (and wake right back up after 20 minutes).

But if you mess with the schedule AT ALL, your brain/body will not adapt to it. Think of it as a matter of flexibility, a power-struggle if you will. If the schedule adapts to you, you don't have to adapt to it. If it doesn't flex an inch for you, however, you WILL adapt, and more quickly than you think. That's why I keep telling people to MAKE NO MODIFICATIONS AT ALL for at least the first week or two, and preferably for the first month!

Of course, for those pioneers who think they can modify the schedule in some way from the get-go and make it work, kudos; that's all I was doing when I first tried this anyway -- pioneering. But deciding to do X and doing it is way different from deciding to do X and backing down once you see how hard it is.

I said I had experience with sleep-dep, but I don't want that to sound like a reason why initially adjusting to Uberman was easier for me -- it wasn't. A few months prior to trying Uberman, I decided to deliberately see how long I could go without sleeping. It was partially a gung-ho experiment and partially out of desperation to sleep well, which I hadn't been for months (I thought, maybe if I'm as tired as someone can get...). In the end I went just over 80 hours (82 if I remember correctly). It was interesting; I'm glad I did it. If you never have, then you won't know that after about 35-40 hours, sleep dep stops being unpleasant, and becomes more like an altered state; like being on a strange but not half bad psychedelic drug. You get all floaty, a bit painfully clear-headed, and quite giggly. In fact, when I finally went to sleep, it was because a concerned friend made me--I would have quite happily gone another day or so. It's comparable, actually, to what I hear fasting is like, though I've never done a fast longer than 24 hours.

Uberman, at least for me, was nothing like that. With the small amounts of sleep every couple hours staving off the psychedelic effect, I was simply gods-awful tired for three days. It was horrible; I probably moaned and bitched to everyone about it. I couldn't think. I heard a constant, high-pitched humming noise, and my eyes itched something horrible. I would get cold-flashes and shiver until I thought I would fall apart; then they would abruptly pass. Not fun!

But the important thing was, in spite of all that, I laid down every four hours and stood up 20 minutes later, every stinking time, and after a week I felt pretty much fine. After two weeks, I couldn't believe that I'd ever consented to live any other way. And after a month, and from there on out, I told everyone who asked me about that week I looked like such shit for, that I would GLADLY do it again, two or three times over, to gain what I'd gained. So there you go.


I hope that's helpful to some of you,
-PD