In your opinion what's your best use of time on a long flight?
Sleeping, the more, the better.
Given that you are leaving at 2pm and arriving at 10am, I'd suggest that you start shifting your day earlier a few days before leaving. Get up early and go to bed early. That will start your body getting used to the time change.
Earplugs or noise cancelling headphones with nothing playing and a mask to cover the eyes help as well.
- I prefer a place next to a window. I can put my head on the wall.
- I try not to drink too much. Definitely no coffee or alcohol. Not having to pee will make me sleep longer. Going to a toilet in a plane is difficult.
- Before I go to sleep I read for 1 to 2 hours. I try to avoid something that is exiting to do (playing video games, doing intense difficult programming, ...)
- I take somewhere between 0.5 and 3 mg of melatonine one hour before I want to go to sleep. This helps me getting tired in areas where you have a lot of light.
- I wear earplugs during sleeping.
- I cover myself with as many blankets as possible. It can be cold in airplanes, and getting too cold will wake me up.
Good luck!
I think personally I'd want to finish eating and start to sleep at 8:00pm or so origin time, and hope to get 3-4 hours in. This is basically what I do in flights from the east coast to europe, give or take a couple hours.
For me, I am too big to even consider really sleeping in economy and I try for business class if it's affordable or premium economy for overnight flights. I do drink alcohol, because I think it puts me to sleep faster, and while normally it disrupts my sleep, if I'm only sleeping a few hours me sleep is disrupted anyway so might as well enjoy myself and get to sleep a bit.
That all said, I wish I had a system and the discipline of the parent commentor to be able to deal well with it, I am always exhausted the next day
Going to try the tips above for sure
I'm not very proficient in python so just need to make sure I have enough offline resources