You just finished a 12-hour shift, it's 7am and you're finally on your way home, the sun is coming up, and you're having a tug of war with your brain. Should I go to bed right away? Should I take a nap? I'll just do some chores then sleep. Sound familiar? If you're here, you've probably been working night shift and everything you've tried hasn't worked. In this article you will get answers to all those questions. I will also give you some actionable steps that took me years to figure out. The absolute first place to start is finding the best sleep/wake cycle that works with your schedule.
Our bodies run on a set circadian clock governed by light and dark. As you probably may have noticed by now, working all night and sleeping during the day works counter to that clock so there will be resistance from your body to return to that schedule. But you can override it.
26 years as a flight attendant, I tried a lot of sleep schedules and eventually naturally came to what is now called: The Anchor Sleep Method. Let's start by looking at some of the science in simple language, because we cannot change what we don't understand. Anchor sleep works by having a block of usually 2–4 hours every day where you are always sleeping, whether you are working or on days off. This block of time is the constant or anchor by which your body clock can be reset and stabilized. This is the best way to prevent crushing exhaustion and fatigue that quickly spirals.
The Two Forces Fighting Over Your Sleep
Let me break down the science behind why it works — because once you understand the mechanism, the method makes complete sense. Understanding these two processes is key to understanding how to retrain your sleep/wake cycles.
The Homeostatic Sleep Drive
Have you ever been in a situation where suddenly you feel so sleepy that you could practically fall asleep mid-sentence, literally while standing? That is what this process is. It's governed by a brain chemical called adenosine. The longer you stay awake, the more sleep pressure is built up by this brain chemical — whereby you absolutely cannot stay awake any longer.
The Circadian Rhythm
This is our biological, internal 24-hour clock. It decides when we sleep based on, among other things, cortisol and melatonin. Have you ever worked a long shift, you are tired and finally home but you are so wired you just cannot seem to sleep? Chances are your cortisol is too high — that's the hormone that wakes you up — which cancels out melatonin, that's the hormone that puts you to sleep. Just like angry exes, the two can't coexist in the same space at the same time.
Sleep deprivation has been well studied across multiple professions including aviation, military and healthcare. The findings showed that lack of sleep is like working with an elevated blood alcohol level — the less you sleep the higher that impairment gets. We can all agree that we want well rested pilots and brain surgeons.
The closer you can keep that anchor window to half of your regular block of sleep, the better you will feel and the more you will be able to mitigate collateral damage to your body — like high blood pressure, weight gain and depression to name a few. As an example, if you routinely sleep 8 hours a night, keeping your anchor window to 4 hours is the sweet spot. If you sleep 6 hours then 3 hours is the goal and so on. As promised, here are some actionable steps.
Step 1Calculating Your Sleep Window
On this site you will find a sleep calculator built around the anchor sleep model. It does the calculating for you. It's the best place to start because once you have a sleep schedule, you can easily plan everything else in your life around it. I can't emphasize enough how important this first step is. Sleep has to become the thing you protect, not sacrifice — and if you do just that, it will give you back a chunk of your life that has been sacrificed because you work nights.
Use the Sleep CalculatorStep 2Preparing Your Room for Sleep
In a previous article I wrote about having tools for the job that you do. If you are sleeping during the day, the room that you sleep in is a tool that will help you do just that. These are the tools you will need:
The steps above are a solid foundation that you can easily build on as you get comfortable with your schedule and space.
The Science of Sleep Rituals
Now you may be wondering: "what do sheets have to do with sleep?" I am going to answer that by asking you a question — what do all the following have in common? Warm milk, warm bath, clean comfy pjs, bedtime story, favourite stuffed animal. The answer is: bedtime rituals.
We have perhaps forgotten that we have been preparing for sleep since we were born. But we forgot because we had caregivers that did it for us. Warm bath before bed, sometimes a warm cup of milk, soft clean pjs, a comfy cozy bed with clean sheets and blankets, a bedtime story — they calm the nervous system (reduces cortisol), and the rituals signal to the brain that it's time for bed and it's safe to relax and go to sleep.
Sleep preparation is going to be even more important as adults when we are trying to sleep counter to our internal clocks. Temperature, darkness, comfy sheets and PJs etc. signal to the nervous system it's time to sleep. Anything you can do to enhance that only works in your favour. The most important part of the bedtime ritual for us night owls is setting all this up on autopilot — because then you can start to take back the time and energy that the unrelenting fatigue has taken from you, and put it back into your life outside of work.
My Real Post-Shift Routine
As you all know by now I worked as a flight attendant, so changing schedules were part of the job. Consistent rituals and tools were even more important for me. I personally want to share what my post-shift routine actually looked like. Not the ideal version, the real one. So whether I was going home or to a layover hotel, my rituals were pretty much the same:
Sunglasses immediately. Right after I walked off the aircraft, sunglasses and eventually blue light blocking glasses would go on depending on the time of day.
The thermos ritual. As soon as I got to my car or the transportation to the hotel, I always had a small thermos of hot water that I had prepared on the aircraft before landing. I carried a small empty thermos in my flight bag that always had a medicinal tea bag and magnesium bisglycinate powder in it — so all I had to do is add water and let that steep. Once in the car I added passionflower tincture, ashwagandha tincture or California poppy tincture, which I would alternate between depending on how long and far I was flying. The tea contained: passionflower, camomile flower, catnip herb and hop strobile as the main medicinal ingredients. I would sip on that all the way home or to the hotel.
First layers. At the hotel, the first layers were my eyeshades, earplugs, comfy pjs out of the bag. Then set the room temperature to 19°C. (At home, this was already waiting for me.)
A warm shower. This was crucial for me. This is how I washed off the day and left it all behind to prepare my mind and body for relaxation and sleep.
The final sweep. Just before lights out — one last look around the room making sure the curtains were closed, a facecloth over the clock radio if there was one, no lights from coffee makers, TVs, or air conditioning units. You would not believe how often that little green light from the heating system would irritate my nervous system enough to wake me up. Some of my colleagues would travel with dark masking tape to put over all the tiny lights from appliances — it seems the irritation from them was universal.
Food rule. I generally don't eat before bed. I don't sleep well with a full belly. BUT if I arrived home or at the destination hungry, I would have a handful of raw nuts or seeds or a cube of cheese — just a little something fatty to satiate and take the edge off without derailing my sleep.
Follow the sleepy signal. If I was sleepy at this point I would just go to bed and not waste the signal my brain was giving me. Sometimes a warm shower was all I needed.
If I still needed to decompress or was a little too wired, one or a combination of these would generally land the plane:
On the days when none of these worked, I would get up and change location. My secondary location was the couch — for some reason when I lay on the couch I fell asleep almost immediately, sometimes with a podcast running on low in the background.
There were days of course where nothing was working and maybe I only got 3 hours sleep and had to deal with that — usually with a nap at some point in the day to take the edge off. These rituals did not happen overnight. In those days not a lot had been written about how to deal with shift work.
Let me give you the benefit of all my years of trial and error so that you can begin to create your own rituals. Once this routine is habit, it costs you nothing in energy or decision-making. The routine does the work for you — and the payoff will be more time outside of work that you never thought you could get back.
References
Van Dongen, H. P. A., Maislin, G., Mullington, J. M., & Dinges, D. F. (2003). The cumulative cost of additional wakefulness: Dose-response effects on neurobehavioral functions and sleep physiology from chronic sleep restriction and total sleep deprivation. Sleep, 26(2), 117–126. https://doi.org/10.1093/sleep/26.2.117
Minors, D. S., & Waterhouse, J. M. (1983). Does 'anchor sleep' entrain circadian rhythms? Evidence from constant routine studies. The Journal of Physiology, 345, 451–467. https://doi.org/10.1113/jphysiol.1983.sp014988