3 Remain Physically Active
The MWT works by testing whether you can stay awake in the most difficult of conditions. Why does being bored make you more likely to fall asleep?
Narcolepsy is likely to be caused by a deficiency of orexin – the sleep regulation neurotransmitter. This means you feel tired at the wrong times, and vice versa.
While this has nothing to do with your activity levels, the effect on its own is not strong enough to cause you to fall asleep – only to be conducive to it. If you were being chased by a lion, then the body would not want you to fall asleep just because it was past your bedtime! Thus, stimulating activities such as this – and such as exercise, or speaking with friends – help to produce wakefulness-promoting hormones and neurotransmitters such as cortisol, adrenaline, acetylcholine, and others.
By remaining physically active, you can reduce your likelihood of falling asleep. If you do need to engage in a boring and repetitive task, try to make it more stimulating by gamifying it, or perhaps playing loud music.