At 3:30pm I decided to take a 2 hour nap so that I'd be able to get back on a normal sleep schedule this evening. However, I was more tired than I realized.
Apparently I managed to completely disable the alarm when it went off and I didn't really wake up until 11:30pm. So I did manage to get 8 hours of sleep in but now I'm quite out of sync.
Let's see how much I can get caught up on e-mail before I decide to head to work in another 7 hours or so. And maybe I'll figure out why people are so shocked that I prefer tools (desktop search, in this case) that work with the other tools I already use.
Heh. I suspect this whole sleep thing will end up being a multi-day battle.
Posted by jzawodn at March 07, 2005 11:49 PM
This is likely to look like snakeoil to a lot of people, but have you seen http://www.pzizz.com/ ?
I've tried it over the last few days and I think it's a very good way to take a powernap without the risk of sleeping most of the afternoon.
They offer a free trial, so it can't hurt to see if it can help you getting back on track.
I'm currently in China, travelling from Chicago. This is my first time dealing with serious jetlag, and I got through it fine on the first day. But I think it's just a coincidence of my flight arrangements. I got into Hong Kong at 7am (5pm subjective), but having napped erratically on the plane. I just stayed up all day, went out drinking at six, crashed around 7:30, and woke up at 6am ready to go.
the trip back will probably be less successful, as I get in around 5pm and I'll probably stay up very late hanging out with my wife and son, whom I miss very much, and it'll probably take me 2 or three days to normalize my sleep.
Jeremy, as someone with a bit of unwanted experience in dealing with wacky sleep schedules: yeah, it'll probably be a couple days before you can deal with it. It's important to remember that your body secretes chemicals to make you wake up; this part of your "clock" is hard to reset very quickly.
The best you can do is to stay awake as long as you can and then make yourself get up at your normal time, no matter what pain results; after a day or two, you'll crash hard and early one night, but you should get up around the normal time.
[You can further cement your wakeup time by making it a habit, even on the weekends. If you enjoy sleeping in, get up on Saturday and Sunday, eat breakfast, putter around the house, and then take a morning nap. More sleep, and you don't make the body think you're changing your sleep times.]
