Warning: There’s no thinking twice in this post, no deep pondering on thought or learning or perception. Just a quick little scribble about something I do that may or may not be useful to you. Or, at least, entertaining.
I travel a lot. (This comes as something of a surprise to me, since I never associated globetrotting with physics, educational research, teaching, or being a computer geek. My world-wandering fantasy career was National Geographic Photographer, with Indiana Jones overtones.) Most of my travel is between continents, so jet lag is something I’ve had to deal with a lot. And at this point, I’ve pretty much got it beat. Here’s my recipe:
- Build up a backlog of far too many things that must be done before you depart (or, for return flights, before the end of your trip). That allows you to:
- Spend your last several days before the flight in a frenzy of stressed multitasking and sleep deprivation, skipping indulgences like workouts, downtime, and social activity. This will insure that you will:
- Be completely exhausted when you board the plane, able to sleep regardless of the time of day in your accustomed time zone. You are now in a position to:
- Stay awake (using any requisite force, but not caffeine) during whatever portion of your flight aligns with daytime at your destination, and:
- Determinedly sleep (faking it as much as necessary) through whatever portion of your flight aligns with night at your destination. As a result:
- When you arrive, you have already begun adjusting to the new time zone. It is now crucial that you:
- Don’t blow it! Absolutely refuse to give in to the temptation to nap or go to bed abnormally early, for several days. Forcibly adhere to a reasonable local sleep schedule.
Some helpful aids:
- Pack an inflatable neck pillow, blindfold, and squishy foam earplugs to make the world go away if the airlines’ idea of a desirable sleep schedule, or your fellow travellers’, doesn’t match yours.
- If you’re a laptop-lugging road warrior, an extra battery and a set of plug adapters (for charging up during layovers in various airports) does wonders for making the don’t-sleep time period pass quickly. Some of my best writing has been done in-flight. (Well, at least it seemed like my best at the time…)
That’s it! I find when I adhere to this plan, I have only a weak jet lag effect when I arrive, one I can easily push through — whether I’m traveling east, west, or south, a few time zones or twelve. However, the times I’ve succumbed to a brief nap in the first few days, it has set me back the better part of a week. Big, big mistake.
Here’s my theoretical analysis of why the approach works: stress, frentic activity, exhaustion, and sleep deprivation leading up to the trip put me in a state where my body is reeling, confused, and disoriented. It’s lost its bearings. In the insulated environment of the airplane, it is then willing to shrug and accept whatever schedule I forcibly impose on it. It’s too confused and wounded to object. After arrival, however, a nap at the wrong time undermines all this, reinforces the subdued but not destroyed pull of the old time zone, and invites biorhythmic war within your skin.
Extending the “biorhythmic war” metaphor, I guess I could call this the “shock and awe” jet lag strategy.
