Working the Night Shift as a Digital Nomad
I work as a software engineer in the Pacific Time Zone. After the pandemic, I never had to return to the office so I decided to make the most of it by staying with my parents for a couple of months who live halfway across the world. That meant working on an opposite schedule because my team has core working hours and I’m needed for meetings and questions. For five months I worked from 6 pm to 3 am or longer. Most of this time was spent doing focused work like writing code.
Get as much Daylight as Possible
My education and profession have always kept me indoors, but in a morning shift routine, when your cycle is driven by the sun, you don’t realise the positive effect of seeing the sun on your health and mood. I went to Finland for a conference and was surprised to learn that it's quite common for people to start their office workday at 4 in the morning because they want to soak up as much sun as they can during the winter.
Try to sleep before sunrise
When you’re used to the normal cycle, your brain sees the light and assumes it's time to get to or stay at work. That’s why looking at the phone if you wake up in the middle of the night, makes it harder to fall back to sleep. So, invest in blackout curtains, or a sleep mask and try to sleep before the sun comes up.
Keep your desk well-lit
For a portion of your work day, sunlight is not going to flood the room. Having a good night set up helps in that case. I bought a programmable light strip and changed the light bulbs in all of the fixtures in my room to warm ones.
Create a Routine and stick to it.
When the weekend rolls around, you will want to participate in morning activities with your friends and family. You will try sleeping early and fewer hours so you can make it. If you do this, you’ll have a tough time staying up on Monday night. It's up to you how you want to manage your morning and early afternoon commitments but know that there will be consequences.
How to Shift Your Cycle
If you just flew to a different timezone and want to keep working, just don’t get over your jet lag. If you already have a proper cycle, on the first day at your job take a long afternoon nap. That will help you stay up longer but you absolutely will have problems focusing. Coffee helps but remember that you need to go to sleep as soon as your workday is over so don’t overdo it. Splashing your face with cold water or taking a shower helps give you a boost. It will take you on average two weeks to get used to your new routine but this varies from person to person.
Dont
If you can avoid it, avoid it. I was never the kind of person that’s productive at night time and forcing myself to work the night shift took weeks in terms of an adjustment period. Working nights also meant that either I was sacrificing sleep for morning social events or skipping them altogether.
I had very little time to interact with people and there is something quite unsettling about taking a break and walking around in a dark and empty house or neighbourhood. Depending upon how much a lack of social interactions affects you, you could begin experiencing loneliness and demotivation.
Conclusion
Remote work has been great for getting the time back that would be spent during commute and being a digital nomad offers you more freedom. That does come with a cost though. There is the cost of lost productivity and creativity at work but working from different timezones has challenges. It can negatively impact your health and make it tougher to plan your personal life around your work.
