When you go on vacation, does your sleep schedule get all screwed up?

I don’t really have a work schedule. My schedule today was wake up 11am. Work for a bit. Nap at 6pm until 1am. It is now 2:35am and I will probably be awake until 9am. And from there your guess is as good as mine.

I haven’t owned a alarm clock in over a decade.

I actually have a more regular schedule when I am on a vacation. ¯\(ツ)/¯

@johnpowell: Yeah no alarm clock here, either. I use the sun or in the winter, just my internal alarm clock.

Not really. I will get a bit of jetlag at first, but then I settle down and I sleep pretty much as I do at home. I can be a bit of an insomniac at home, so sometimes I am when I’m away. It’s no worse though.

Vacation is when my sleep schedule gets back to normal. I work at a job where I am on east coast time despite living in California, so I am in the office at 6, sometimes at 5. So I often feel sleep deprived during the week. And when I wake in the middle of the night, I often get anxious about oversleeping, or start thinking I have to be up soon anyway.

On vacation if I wake I can roll over and go back to sleep because I have no need to worry about being up soon or oversleeping.

Usually not – I wake up at 6–630 every day, work or weekend or vacation, and I go to sleep around 11–1130. Doesn’t really matter what I am doing.

What is disruptive to me is flying to the west coast and staying for several days. I’m off by 3 hours. It takes almost a week to adjust, and by then I am on the way home.

My body synchs itself to light pretty easy so not really. It’s my stomach that messes me up, cause I eat so much on vacation. Not that you could tell by looking at me, but god I love good food. I mean really good food.

My sleep schedule shifts around all in it’s own so I’m used to having night turned into day and vice versa.

I’ve been an insomniac since childhood so I’ve never really been a regular sleeper.

Even the switch to and from DST twice a year throws my sleep out of whack for the next 2–3 weeks each time.

I grew up on a farm and nature controlled our lives, so I wonder if that made a difference?

Not really. I don’t have a sleep schedule. I just go to sleep when I can’t stay awake anymore.

@AshlynM That sounds like the best scheduling system I’ve ever heard of.

No TV, alarm clock, and the electricity service is unreliable. I get to sleep about 3 or for hours after sunset and wake up when the sky begins to pinken in the east. When I was in medical research—which I loved—sometimes I had insomnia so bad that I’d joke about going up to the psych unit to admire the narcoleptics.

Travelled to Korea for a few weeks. Jetlag lasted 1.5 weeks! It was absolutely tiring.

Nope. I learned how to adjust for the time difference. I take several short naps on the plane so I am wide awake when I arrive to my destination and yet can get tired enough by the time it is night there. And I do the same thing coming back. The secret is don’t sleep through the whole plane ride. For instance I did that when I left early morning to go to japan. On my last flight I took several short naps. I arrived noon in Japan which was mid night my time. By the time I got to my hotel and checked in and had dinner, I was back in my room by 9 pm. Asleep by 10 and up by 5 am. Only I stayed resting another 2 hours. By the next night I was in bed by 11 and up by 7. Coming back I arrived by night time and left during the day. So I took some early naps on my flight and stayed awake on the last hours of the day so I would be so tired when I got home. I arrived about 8 pm and kept awake till about 12 and I went to bed till about 10 am the next morning. Took it easy that day, just did wash, and put stuff away and went food shopping and I was in bed by 11 later that night.

The secret is to plan your naps according to your arrival. If its day, you have to be well rested on the flight. If it’s night get the good rest early on the flight so you are dead tired when you arrive and ready for bed.

It really depends where you travel to

In my youth I worked swing shifts and had real problems adjusting my sleep cycle. Now that I am retired and use medication to regulate when I go to sleep, I believe I could travel the world and pop my meds and sleep at least 6 good hours every time.