Sleeping Well When You Work Nights
For anyone working nights or rotating shifts, when sleep has to happen at the wrong time of day. It sets one sleep window, makes the room dark, times the caffeine and the meals, and keeps an hour a week for people.
Shift Work · Sleep · Work · Body · 10 items · once a day
The checklist
- Pick one sleep window and keep it on days off — a body guesses badly when the hours keep moving.
- Make the bedroom fully dark before you lie down — blackout curtains and a mask beat willpower at noon.
- Wear sunglasses on the drive home — morning light tells your body to start the day instead.
- Put the phone in another room on silent — one delivery notification can cost you two hours.
- Eat your main meal before the shift, not during it — a heavy plate at three in the morning just sits there.
- Stop the caffeine six hours before your sleep window — it works long after you stop noticing it.
- Tell the household your sleep hours in writing — people respect a posted time more than a mentioned one.
- Keep one fixed hour a week with people you like — a night schedule quietly empties a calendar.
- Write down how many hours you actually got — a week of numbers shows what a feeling cannot.
- Ask about the pattern before you agree to swap a shift — a swap that flips your days costs more than a favor.
Use this checklist Free account: tick items off and keep each day's record.
How to use it
Run through it once a day, honestly and without scoring yourself. A checklist is a way of noticing, not a test: an item you cannot tick is information about the day, not a verdict on you. Over a few weeks the pattern of what gets ticked and what does not says more than any single pass.
With a free Theraglee account the checklist remembers each pass, so you can look back. Without one, you can still read it here and keep your own copy.