Neil Hopcroft

A digital misfit

Bah! I hate jetlag. I’ve gotten myself into a cycle of two small sets of sleep per night rather than one big chunk like I’m used to – three hours when I get in from work waking up at around 11pm, just after all the useful restaurants and cafes have closed, and three hours from about 2am to 5am.

Any helpful ideas for breaking this cycle?


Categories: Memories.

/ 7 Comments

7 comments

  2. venta

    Don’t go to bed when you get in from work ? Or don’t sprawl on the sofa, or whatever it is you do.

    Will probably mean one horrible evening while you try to stay awake and do stuff for a bit, but should be all right in the long run ?

    Reply
  3. sushidog

    Melatonin is good, but your best bet may just be to force yourself to stay up later, and don’t crash out after you get in from work. Basically, decide what you want your sleep schedule to be, and then try to live like that as much as possible; try not to sleep outside the hours you’ve set for yourself, and when you should be sleeping, go to bed. If you really can’t get to sleep at an appropriate time, you could try knocking yourself out with something like Actifed or some other over-the-counter antihistamine/soporific, but only for a couple of nights. I find this _will_ get me to sleep, but I’ll wake up feeling slightly groggy. However, it may help to kick your sleep cycle back into normal gear!

    Reply
    • neilh

      Am back to one night per 24 hour period now, which is probably good, but it seems to be scheduled for about 930pm, which is a bit irritating since that means I wake up at 5am and have to kill time until the office opens at 9am (I’m too much of a second class citizen to be allowed to open the office). Still, things seem to be getting better, barring nightmares about Austins of course.

      Reply
  5. Anonymous

    OK I’m not a LiveJournal user, but I thought I ought to see if the technology allows me to talk to Neil.
    Being an expert on sleep, I would say not to worry too much because your body will sort itself out eventually. Also I believe that your problem is work and if it went away and you could sleep the 22hrs a day that I’m convinced that we all require, then the world would be a better place,
    Somnambulant Simon Satori

    Reply
    • neilh

      Message received loud and clear, but you’ll have to be coming back to check whether I’ve responded – if you were a member this would be emailed to you, with a handy link to reply again. Of course, I can rustle up a code for you if you would like to join, tell you what I’ll do, I’ll make the first one free, when you want some more, just come back to me…

      8 hours sleep a night would be a luxury right now, I’ve been running on between three and seven since I got back, and then wonder why everyone seems snappy at the office (maybe its just me?).

      Reply

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