Switching to night shift....best way to prepare?

So, how is it going with working nights?

 

You need a minimum of 4 nights to switch over sleeping by days.

Prepare your bedroom with thermal black out curtains so that all daylight is OUT. It should be pitch dark in there.

DUMP all technology out of that room. No phones, no computers no no and no. It's a enforced stone age era sleeping zone only.

Toss a towel under that door.

Get to sleep in the day time stay there.

By the time your 4th evening rolls around you should be raring to go in the night.

 

It takes a heck of a alot longer than 4 nights to really get adjusted. You may feel fine at 9 or 10 but wait until 3 or 4 am rolls around, you'll be nodding off. Ive switched back and forth between days and nights multiple times. It takes around 4-6 weeks to get to the point that 1) actually sleep all the way through the day and 2) stop getting super sleepy between 2-4am.

Everyone is different and some will acclimate faster than others, but its important for a night shift rookie to know when to pull off and grab a short nap and a coffee. Trying to power through a drowsy spell isnt worth ending up in the ditch or worse.

 

That hour of around 4 to 5 am is the most dangerous time.

I believe deep in my heart of hearts to be awake that hour is to tempt death to come for you. We as human beings without getting into all the basic stuff about the sun, moon and the cycles of life on this planet, have to be hard wired to be asleep at 4 to 5 am for sure.

Hell, We did not have a night shift unless it is a most critical mission job such as running a power plant. Even in the 70's everyone closed up at 7PM and will open in the morning. There were places to go out and eat, party etc for nightlife and social to like midnight and one am maybe, but even those places closed up. There was no taco bell open to 3 am or any waffle houses open all the time. None of that foolishness. Everyone was in bed asleep unless you were a trucker rolling down that US 40 through the 76 in them days fueling and getting ready to make that delivery downtown early in the morning.

I used to trip plan around large cities to where I am in bed at 5 am until about 9 for my 4 or 5 hours sleeper time. In those days HOS allowed you to split 5 hours sleeping and 4 hours driving forever without interrupting or break until you maxed your 70 hours out. This is known as the rhythm method. Its a great way to sleep through the dangerous hours of 5 am and bypass the aggravation, stress and over all being mean in rush hour traffic like that around DC.

I think you see where I am going with this. Even today I don't like to be up too early. I pull enough all nighters as it were and what with the heart where it is, 5am is not a good time to be up even though there is no stress anywhere, or anything to do or places to be. I don't like it.

When you are younger you can do alot of allnighters. And awesome too. I did too many. And that probably did some damage on me. But I will do it again if I had to all over again. No regrets.

 

I live working nights, but I'll admit freely that it's not an easy transition, and I've been doing it for 4 years now.

If you're single, it's a little easier. If you're married, especially if you have kids, then it's critical that everyone is on-board with this change. This was an issue for me even before I started working nights. My soon-to-be ex never understood the importance of a driver getting a critically important good night's sleep (I was a driver for 10 years before we met). It got worse after I made the switch. Everyone must be on-board!

You may also possibly end up fighting yourself as well. My issue has always been that my mind doesn't want to shut down when it's time to go to sleep. I have to constantly work on training myself to shut everything off, out, etc. No phone, no computer, no movies, etc. Everything gets shut off. It can wait until I wake up.