The Simple Method of Preventing Jet Lag Every Time

Jet lag sucks. I remember the worst time I had it, during one of my first trips to Japan. I was so excited to get out and see Tokyo, but I just couldn’t pry myself from the bed. At three pm in the afternoon I battled to keep my eyes open, knowing that I would lose and end up sleeping through the evening.

Luckily jet lag is very easy to beat if you know the trick. I came up with this during one trip, it worked, and I’ve been doing it ever since. I got back to San Francisco yesterday afternoon and today I woke up at a normal time, went through my normal routine, and am just now starting to get tired at 11pm, like usual.

I wrote about this before, but made it too complicated. Here’s the easy version:

The only thing that matters is that you are at an appropriate level of tiredness for the time you land. The goal is to compromise your comfort on the flight and possibly the time right before the flight to achieve this.

For example:

My flight back left Beijing at 6pm and arrived in San Francisco at 7pm. My goal is to be only slightly tired when I land, so that I’ll be tired enough to sleep by night time. So I get a really good night sleep in Bejing, and sleep for 3 hours on the plane. My natural inclination is to sleep more than that, but I know that if I do, I’ll be wide awake when I land. So I suffer through staying up later than I’d like on the plane.

Tomorrow I’m flying from San Francisco to Amsterdam, leaving at 6am and arriving at 8am. That will be a very easy one because I’ll be tired from waking up so early, so I’ll sleep as much as possible on the plane and end up with around 6 hours of sleep, waking up right before the plane lands.

One thing that makes this easier is to pretend you’re at your destination’s time zone as soon as you get on the plane. I always set my watch back and try to mimic the light. So if it should be dark, I’ll close the blinds and maybe even put on my sleep mask and just listen to a podcast. If it should be bright I’ll crank up my laptop backlight, open the window (only if it’s light), and turn on the reading light.

Most people on planes give up to the boredom and temptation and end up sleeping as much as possible. I’m always a little bit jealous of them when I’m supposed to be staying up to beat jetlag, but it’s always worth it when I land and am already fully adjusted. No sense in wasting days of trips stuck in bed where it’s a lot harder to readjust.


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