I was being told by everyone, “oh you must be exhausted,” “you should just stay in, get some rest,” “he’ll need a few days to adjust”.
Bullshit. I wasn’t going to settle for it. At all. Is jetlag a myth?
No. But it’s not as extreme as one would think. Or, it doesn’t have to be.
I was in Berlin staying up all night dancing because I had no place to sleep, and a friend, whose idea the whole dancing sleepless thing was, tells me “it’s all in your head”.
“Bullshit,” was my first thought. There’s obviously a physical aspect to the whole humans-need-sleep deal.
But the more I thought about it, the more I realized just how much we influence our energy level. How much power we have to interpret how we feel.
And I realized “sleepy” and “tired” as ambiguous. There’s 2 types of exhaustion. Physical and mental.
Jetlag gets you at the physical. When everyone else is fully awake at 7pm (Seattle), it was 3am my time (Glasgow). So my body was exhausted during those hours where I was physically inclined to sleep.
So how did I stay up, sleep 6 hours, and adjust within 2 days?
I leveraged my environment. I put myself in exciting, energetic, active situations during those hardest times of day. My first 48 hour were PACKED. I had traveled for 28 hours straight from Glasgow to London to San Fransisco to Seattle. I slept 6 hours that night. Then I forced myself up and got to it.
Meeting friends, out to tea, films, parks, tennis. Working around the house, cleaning all my shit, throwing away what I don’t want. I kept busy at the right times because my environment was more suitable for me to be awake than sleeping.
And sleeping 6 hours helped. Why? Because I knew, falling asleep, that I would sleep HARD. Coma sleep. 15 minutes and I am out.
And 6 hours is exactly 4 full REM sleep cycles. So I wake myself when my body is happy to wake up, right after my deepest state of sleep.
Then I hop to it and DO STUFF.
That’s how I did it. Not too complicated. Just determination, activity, and a good diet.
Try it out. Sleep 6 hours and DESERVE to sleep like a rock. Ensure you get the most out of your sleep by not napping even if your body wants to seduce your mind to do so. No. Walk around. Active. Go go go.
Try it out. Pretty cool stuff.
Tags: beating jetlag, jetlag
