It’s time to go back to school again! For many of us college students, it means long flights crossing several time zones. By the time we get back on campus, we’d feel so tired and sleep-deprived.
Our bodies would be protesting, for days, by stubbornly sticking to the time zone where our homes are as if we don’t miss home already. I’ve seen so many friends struggling to adjust for jet lag that I feel almost obligated to tell you my secret of a fast and effective adjustment.
I literally just got off the plane from China and I’m already sitting in my room in LA to type out this article. I’ve never really had trouble adjusting for jetlag. Here's what I do:
1. Book Flights Arriving at Night
Did you ever feel extremely tired after a flight, no matter how much you slept in the air? I know I always do. However, if you go straight from the airport to your bed while it’s still bright outside, chances are you’ll wake up late in the night.
Then, the next day you’ll feel tired again and go to bed before it’s even dark out. Simply put, you’ll have a hard time adjusting to the time difference. The best way to solve this problem is to book a flight that either arrives at local time late afternoon or at night. This way, when you get home and shower (and even unpack a little bit if you feel like it), it should be around 8-10pm (aka. A reasonable hour to go to bed). You can feel free go straight to bed then and maybe even find yourself becoming an early bird the next morning!
Don’t be surprised when you find yourself having no trouble stay awake during the day and go to bed at 9 p.m. the next day!
2. Exhaust yourself on the plane
This applies mostly to when your flight arrives at night. Not that you’ll feel super energized after sleeping on a plane, but you want to make sure you’re tired enough after the flight. The goal it to able to sleep when you arrive, so the best way to do this is to exhaust yourself on the plane. You may say, “this sounds tiring and boring. I don’t want to do it.”
Well, exhaust yourself can be fun without you breaking a sweat. My favorite way is to simply watch movies. Yes, you read it right. If you haven’t tried this before, trust me that watching a movie on a tiny screen in dimmed light while sitting in an extremely restricted space is truly exhausting. You may find yourself falling asleep while watching the movie.
You don’t have to fight the urge. Just go to sleep and you’d usually wake up pretty soon. I don’t think many people can sleep well on a plane in a sitting position. Otherwise, you can read a book or write an article or listen to music. Anything that will make your eyes droopy.
3. Set Your Watch to Destination Time
When you’re in the air, the airplane typically dims the light during the flight regardless of the actual time (of either the departing location or destination). It can be very disorienting because your body is unable to read cues from the environment to decide if it’s time to sleep.
To help your body adapt to the destination time zone, set your watch (or whatever you use to keep track of time) to the time of destination. This way, you can read your watch and decide what you should do while you’re on the plane.
For instance, if you know from your watch that it’s day time at the destination now, but you’re feeling sleepy from the dim light, drink some coffee or walk around a little to keep yourself awake as much and long as possible.
4. Keep Yourself Occupied If You Arrived During the Day
Of course, I understand that we can’t always get what we want. Sometimes, we just can’t get a flight that arrives at night. If that happens to you, don’t go to bed when you get off the plane, no matter how tired you feel. Keep yourself awake until it’s typical bedtime (around 9 p.m.).
If you do nothing, it would be extremely hard to not fall asleep, so you got to find something interesting to do. My favorite is to go out with someone and grab food. If the food is something you’ve been looking forward to for a while, this will work even better.
One time I arrived in China at early morning, so to keep myself from falling asleep, I asked my mom to take me to dim sum (one of my favorite kind of Chinese food). I was so excited for the food that I haven’t had for an entire semester, that feeling of tiredness completely disappeared. No matter what you do, make sure you don’t sleep until later!
I’m frantically writing this article to keep myself awake. It’s almost bedtime for me! I hope you can adjust to time difference as soon as possible with these tips I gave you!
