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Comment by 11thEarlOfMar | Hacker News Reader

After 1.5 million lifetime miles, much of it intercontinental, it boils down to 2 rules for me:

- Flying East to Europe: Get out in the sun after landing and don't fall asleep until at least 8:00 PM local time.

- Flying West to Asia: Stay on US time. Go to sleep at 6:00 PM local time, get up at 2:00 AM. Obviously, avoid evening appointments. If that isn't possible, at least schedule them after you've been in country a couple of days.

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My personal rule is simpler: always land in the evening local time. I'm always tired after a flight, so regardless of what time it feels like, I can usually sleep a full night. So I fly, land, sleep, wake up and am pretty much on local time. That being said this doesn't work at all for my girlfriend, so YMMV.

It doesn't work for large jet lags. When I go from EU to West Coast the toll on me is very high, whereas when I go to NYC I can adapt in two to three days.

Again, it doesn't work the same way for everyone, but I've actually been from NYC to Hong Kong several times and always land at night both times. I am usually slightly tired the next day, but nowhere near as bad as landing at 7 AM would make me.

I once flew to Japan from SFO. I took 2 Dramamine an hour before take off. When I got on the plane I was drowsy. I asked for a blanket and remember the take off but nothing more. I woke up an hour or so before landing and it was 6am in Narita. The most amazing experience flying I've ever had.

I did that flight to Haneda last year. Slept most of the way there. Had a bit of caffeine and generally kept mobilising. I was in Tokyo time on Day 2. Fantastic flight.

Not watching your total but I have done a couple 200k BIS years...

Mine is simpler. Once I get to the airport, I act as if I am on destination time. I plan flights around that, try and get overnight flights so I can sleep, land in the morning, and just have a full day. If I am on a daytime flight...have to stay up and stay active

I try to do the same thing, except I'm continually fighting flight attendants that insist all the cabin windows be closed and dark for the entire span of the flight, so they can then flip the cabin into full blasting sun and overhead light 90 minutes before landing when the breakfast service begins. I shoot for a window seat and try to crack my shade a bit, just so I can get morning sunrise light as we cross over.

I realize this darkness is what the majority of the passengers want on their eastbound transatlantic flights, and I'm sure the crew wants the passengers asleep and inert over the 4-5 hours, but IMO that just generates more jet lag than less. They want their sleep NOW even if it means screwing up their sleep for the next 2-3 days.

That type of stuff just drives me nuts...I do understand it but just the shear dormitory like treatment from (mostly US) carriers on international flights is beyond frustrating to me.

Small adjustment: flying East on a long flight, you should sleep 4-5 hours during night-time, which will happen naturally on the plane. That will make you want to go sleep earlier that day when you land, but also make you functional until then.

The difficulty is flying Westward. You're going to turn into an early bird for a while. Since you're going to sleep hours later than usual, you should take a nap during the day, as you would do locally if you had to stay up on New Year's Eve for example. Then you "crash" as late as possible and you wake up on normal time.

Think of it as switching from being an early bird to a night owl locally, and vice versa.

i have a similar routine with a sprinkle of melatonine. i found that melatonine makes all the difference, but i also heard that it doesn't work at all for some people.

I've taken it several times and it does nothing for me :-(

You may be taking too much, and too late. Shoot for 0.3mg, three hours before 'bedtime'.

You may need to break up the pill yourself.

EDIT: That was supposed to be 0.3mg

Trader Joes sells some that are .5mg that I find to be the perfect dose.

And for some, it is very powerful.. I recommend first-timers start with a half-tablet!

Melatonin works great when you're trying to adjust your bedtime to be much earlier than when your body is expecting.

Yes, I don't use it often, but when I do, .25mg is plenty. I don't know why they even sell the 3mg tablets.

I don't know why they sell the 3mgs either because nothing less than three of them has any effect on me. Thank god for 10mg tablets.

I've seen speculation that the reason you never see melatonin pills less than 1mg is this patent:

http://www.google.com/patents/US5449683:

"the dose of melatonin administered ranges from 0.1 to 1.0 mg of melatonin"

The larger dosages supposedly have less risk of running afoul of the patent.

In addition to shifting my schedule and getting sun in the destination, I've found melatonin to be extremely helpful in reducing jet lag. When flying to Asia, I start taking 5mg the evening before I fly and try to go to bed early. In both Europe and Asia I take it for the first few nights.

after traveling to London (from Boston) every third sunday night for two and half years (arriving heathrow at ~6am, shower at airport and arrive at work for first meeting), I still could not handle meetings after 3pm (London) on monday -- tuesdays I was right as rain, but i needed a nap at 3pm if I had to be active that night.

The flights home were much easier -- arrive thursday evening, dinner and go to sleep.

rules: don't drink on flights you need to sleep, eat before you get on the plane (eating on the flight is a waste of time) melatonin is your friend.

I found that on flying East to Asia, I didn't have a choice but to go to sleep around 5-6-7 and wake up at 2AM. Mind and body simply shut down, especially after a ~13h flight.

I'm curious: what's the idea behind waking up at 2:00 AM? Are you the sort of person who can't easily sleep more than 8 hours?

Not the above poster but I find you just tend to wake up about 2am because your body thinks it's 10am and time to get up.

It's only mildly awkward to go to bed at 6pm, and then when you fly back east, you don't have much jetlag in that direction either. 2am in China is 11am in SF.

(I'm assuming the OP is flying from the US, based on the destination choices.)

EDIT: removed bad NYC math.

Did you get SF and NYC mixed up? Isn't 8am SF == 11am NYC?

Yes, also the offsets are wrong. China (East coast time right now is 9 hr diff from West coast usa. After daylight ends it's another hr diff. It is never a 6 hr diff.

> China (East coast time right now is 9 hr diff from West coast usa.

BTW, all of China is on Beijing time.

True, though if you go significantly to the west, many people will keep track of a more sane local time too.

Yep; ironically, that's what I get for doing math while jetlagged.

Yes, I don't have a choice. My body wakes me up at 2:00 because it is past my normal wake up time in my home time zone. I've tried going back to sleep, but wind up just lying in bed awake.

That happened to me on my last trip to Europe. Both my wife and I woke up every night at 2:10am for the first few days. The precision of it was crazy. However, we would take a few ambient and be right back asleep and feeling great the next day. Amazing what twelve hours of sleep can do!

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