Jet lag is a common condition of all long distance travels pursued by plane. Due to a time zone change people experience difficulties related to sleep disturbance and fatigue. Being tired few days after landing may sometimes make your short holiday much less pleasant. So here my my own tricks how to deal with a jet lag.
Stay focused
Jet lag is a condition that is much easier to deal with, when you know what to expect and what to do. The main problem is that your body clock is not at the same as the time zone, which means you need to act against your instinct. What I mean is that your body sends you signals of being tired and sleepy or on the contrary not sleepy at all and – to some extent – you need to ignore it.
Just like my flight from London to Los Angeles: it took me 11h to arrive and I crossed as many as 9 time zones. I landed in early evening which for my body was the middle of the night. In this case it was already dark after landing which increases my feeling of being sleepy.
Adjust your watch
You need to do all you can to adjust to the new time zone. So you should never leave the previous time on your watch. I used to do this in the past because I thought it will allow me to feel better when I knew what time is in my original time zone to understand how tired I should feel. The moment when a pilot or flight attendent gives you a new time is the right moment to adjust your watch.
Stick to the plan
Do all you can to go to bed in new time zone. It is the difficult part: you often feel devastated in early afternoon and keeping awake next 6h seems almost impossible. I know this is not easy but you need to stick to the plan. I remember when I arrived to New Zealand after 30 h flight (with 2 connected flights) and it was 9:00 a.m. in the morning. It was almost impossible to go through the day. So what I did was I rented a bike and spent all day outside the apartment. Fresh air and physical activities are very helpful in staying awake. The worse you can do is stay in a hotel, sit on the bad and surf the internet.
Last night when I landed in LA I went to bed at 9:00 p.m. which was late enough. I woke up at 3:00 a.m. but the real trick is not to allow yourself to start the day at 3:00 a.m. just because you feel not sleepy. So what I did was reading few chapters of a book and then I switched the light off and slept until 7:30 a.m. I feel great, energetic and ready to start exploring California!
I hope you will find these tricks useful.
