Anyone of you might have ever worked or even now be working night shift. Did you find troubles to manage your routines? YES! I can feel you. I worked in shift for 4 years and experienced working night shift for some periods of time. Each period normally lasted for about 3 moths.
Well, at work, my company provided some wellness programs one of which is a group session where a coach or counsellor, that was how we called him or her, to provide some ways in handling night shift work. This topic was repeated all over again and again, but guess what? Still many colleagues complained about their problems with their sleep during night shift. Some of them were lack of sleep. Some others had some sleep, but with low quality, while the others could not even sleep at all for 2 days which ended up with he or she took one or two days of sick leave to have some sleep at night time. Trust me, even though we had 2 day off every week, it was a kind of dilemma. Well, it felt good to spend the night by sleeping, but if we did, we would ruin the routine we had built before for staying up at night during work.
Anyways, if we talk about problems, it is never going to end, but here are what I did to make myself stay positive, healthy and happy during night shift work.
Eat and drink properly and healthily
Trust me, working night shift makes us lazy to prepare our own meal. And, we can get hungry at anytime unexpectedly, for example in the middle of the night during work. As a result, only fast food store is available for 24/7 to be an option such as McDonald. That is what I see on the pantry table every day.
But then, we can do something about it. We can cook something in the evening for let's say an early dinner and spare half of it in a meal box, carry it to the office and eat it later. By cooking or preparing our own meal, we can manage what we eat. We can have some vegetables with any dish you like, maybe chicken, beef, fish. We don't have to cook something complicated which takes a long time as long as it suits our taste and healthy. We can also have some little snacks with us such as some biscuits or fruits to bring to the office. In the morning after we finish work, we can have something light before sleep such as one or two slices of bread with some spread before sleep. Oh, stay hydrated. Drink, drink, drink. Sometimes we might be lazy even to drink some water, but our body needs it. DRINK!
Decide when, I mean what time, we have our meal and have it regularly everyday. For example, I normally had an early dinner at around 7-9 PM. At work, I had another meal maybe at around 3-4 AM. Then, as soon as I finished work, I ate something light before sleep, a slice of bread. That's all.
Exercise even a little
Before working night shift, I had already had a routine. By the way, I worked mid shift from 1-10 PM previously. I used to start my morning with 30 minutes to 1 hour of yoga under morning sunlight and it always made me feel really good. Then, what about night shift work from 11 PM to 8 AM? I couldn't do my morning routine anymore. I was lost. I love morning sunlight and enjoy it so much that I do yoga under it. In the first few days, I tried doing this morning yoga routine, but what happened was I struggled to sleep. My body became active and fully awake due to the exposure to sunlight, and I had a difficulty to get my body calm down to sleep. So, I stopped it and changed my routine.
I went to bed as soon as I got home. I had warm shower and went to sleep. I was thinking about doing yoga at another time, but when? A coach at the office mentioned that the exposure to sunlight could be done in the evening and any exercise was not necessarily to be done in the morning. I took this advice and decided to do short and simple yoga in the evening after I woke up. Trust me, working night shift makes our mood so bad that all we want is to be in bed and not to do anything at all for the rest of the day. That's why, at least doing a yoga would do something good for our body. Well, it doesn't have to be yoga, we can choose any exercise which is exciting for us such us Zumba or weightlifting at the gym. Don't let laziness hold ourselves back from keeping our body healthy.
Schedule your sleep and get yourself ready to rest
How can I schedule my sleep? My sleep is messed up. You must be thinking this way, but trust me, I cant agree more. Now, let's take a moment to talk to ourselves that we do need some sleep. It is for our health. We may not be able to have a good sleep at night, but still we and our body deserve some rest and sleep. That's why decide and tell our body to slow down, calm down, and get to sleep. You could do the following steps to help.
I started to commit to sleep right away as soon as I got home from work. Sometimes I took warm shower before sleep, sometimes not. The point is that I had to go to sleep as soon as possible. To do this, we need to get ourselves ready first.
A coach once told me that we need to reduce the exposure to sunlight before going to sleep, and that's why I kept my hoodie on on the way home. If we like, we could even wear sunglasses. But, I wouldn't do that.
My window was covered by 3 layers of clothes to make it completely dark inside as soon as I got into my room. I kept it dark. No light. Turned the AC on. Let the room cool down.
Oh, NO PHONE, please. If it is too hard for you to not play with the phone, reduce it at least. Put it away. Or, turn it off. Or, put it in silent mode. Or, put it in time for bed mode. Believe me, once you are engaged with your phone, you will never get to sleep. If it's not never, at least a lot harder. Enjoy the cool and dark room on the cozy bed, with no trigger or attraction to your phone. We will have a nice sleep.
Also, NO ALARM, please. Sleeping in the day time is not easy, so shocking ourselves with an alarm, maybe in the middle of our nice and deep sleep, would be irritating. Better not set it on. Let our body wake up at its own time.
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I know and I can totally understand that everyone handles this situation differently. I am here not trying to say that all those tips and tricks I did would work for everyone, but there is no harm in giving it a try, right? One more thing, the most important thing is that to manipulate our mind a little bit.
"It is okay to work night shift. Days are still in 24 hours and we have them all. It is not going last forever. It will be just for a while. All is well. We will be okay."
Well, I hope our mind and perspective are always positive. May God bless us all. Stay safe, happy and healthy.
