My experiments with Sleep

Absolutely love history. It’s the best source of real (ish) stories that you can have.

I always say “Why read fiction when you can read history”?

It was 2015.

My high school boards were coming up and there was one paper which I dreaded above all else:

You guessed it right.

It had been an ultimate slog for the last 2 years.

“Why would I want to know what happened in the past”, I once said to my history teacher. I don’t remember her reply. But I certainly take that statement back.

Reading/listening about history is my favourite pastime these days.

And the slog was about to culminate in an exam and finally end.

But every great power in history has crumbled with a bang.

Small task - search Google for top 10 empires and how they crumbled. Thank me later, or don’t. I am very modest.

So my HISTORY also wanted to go out with a bang.

The syllabus was vast. Right from when the British landed on Indian shores in the early 1600s until they were ousted in 1947.

So, ~350 years of history with countless battles, treaties, reforms, acts and agreements.

As I said - It was a slog.

Add to it my hatred for the subject which detached any interest I might have had in the subject, thus rendering logic useless. I could only memorise and remember as much as I could.

And this was the tricky part - if I don t understand anything, I cannot do it. I can force myself to put up with it because

Life is not fair and you don’t always get what you want.

It was the second option for me.

I needed a 90+ if I even hoped to get into the University of Leeds. Read my Saga of 23

Add all this together and that is the disaster broth.

Pressure mounting, time slipping and syllabus unending.

I had about 2 days to revise everything. Did it non-stop and eventually on the day of the exam, at 6 in the morning -

I GAVE UP

The exam was at 2 pm.

I shoved the endless deluge of notes aside, lay on the bed and closed my eyes.

The next thing I remember - it was noon. I quickly showered, had my lunch and started walking towards the school. It was a 15-minute walk but felt like a walk.

What were you expecting, the good old line “Felt like eternity”. HA GOT YOU

Only one thing in my mind, “I don’t remember anything”.

Made it to the school, saw the teacher and my friends there but I was staring through them.

It was like my world had ended because I had slept for 6 hours!

These days, I don’t give a fuck, especially when the mission behind studying so hard has been achieved but ….

Man, those were the days. Wouldn’t change a shred of it.

I reached my desk, looked at my question paper and held my head - “I don’t remember anything”.

We had flexibility - we could answer questions out of the sequence.

So I started moving the pen on the paper, attempted questions I knew and kept doing it and as I reached the long answer -

Something happened!

It was like a deluge of information that flooded my brain.

I did not have to remember anything. It was like an ad pop on an 8th-rate sex website.

Answers were popping up in my brain and my hands were moving in sync.

Suddenly 3 hours passed and I had no clue what had happened. I cannot describe the feeling because even though I lived it - I wasn’t conscious of it. Impossible to describe.

It was only when I read The rise of Superman by Steven Kotler that I realised that it might have been what neuroscientists call the FLOW state, also colloquially called the Runner’s high.

And it was the 6-hour sleep that made it possible. Apparently, resting after intense activity strengthens neural circuitry for better integration of the information.

It was THE SLEEP, immediately before the exam and I tested this.

I was a private tutor for 9 years, taught 100+ students across the spectrum from “I just want to pass” to “I want a 90+”.

Tested this with the 90+ people of course. A night before exams I would ask my students to sleep. Obviously, they would furiously protest so I had to wager a deal.

I would promise to handle their parents in case they score poorly - making them risk-averse. They would happily agree and it worked for all.

So it was proven again, without labs and expensive equipment, that sleep is the best thing.

As for me, a couple of months later.

The results read 94.

Rohit Shaw