Reduced Sleep Requirements
Reduced Sleep-Requirements are usually caused by genetic mutations, e.g. in the DEC2 gene, and altered orexin function. Wikipedia says that the DEC2 gene is not the cause, however anecdotes from the community confirm at least some sort of link between people who have been tested to have a DEC2 mutation and reduced sleep requirements.Whatever the cause, here are some things you may notice if you sleep polyphasically with RSR:
- You may struggle with Mono, and it may seem like your mono tries to rotate constantly. This is a symptom of oversleeping, but sleeping less may not work for you, e.g. because of poor sleep hygiene or peaks. You may be diagnosed with insomnia as a result.
- Schedules around 6h of TST may seem extremely easy to adapt to, and schedules above that may even not require adaptation at all. (But not necessarily 6h-mono due to peaks)
- On any schedule with naps that has a TST of 6h or higher you may be constantly tempted to skip a nap, and you might not get any repercussions from it. In some cases, this can even happen for 5-6h schedules like M3ext. If this happens, the schedule is very similar in mechanics to MX, and likely close to non-reducing for you.
How to handle it
There isn't really much to do differently. However, in most pieces of advice mentioning a minimum TST, you can probably go 1h lower, or even 2. In extreme cases, even double-shortened Mono at 4h30 TST has been possible, whereas any such Mono-Short schedule is usually completely unadvisable.
- You can probably attempt schedules with a TST of 4h, like M3.
- You can probably be significantly more flexible on schedules above 5h of TST.
- You can probably flex before adaptation on schedules above 6h of TST (as opposed to 7). On (non-shortened) schedules between 5 and 6h of TST that have naps, one of them (usually the last) can be somewhat flexible from the start.
- You can maybe even do NapOnly. But this is rare nonetheless.