How To Effectively Prevent The Effects of Jetlag In 3 Simple Steps

You’ve arrived at your destination, after a 12 hour flight which brought you to cross 8 time zones. You’re in your room and you just can’t sleep. Does this wring any bells? Yes it’s jetlag travel’s evel sister. If you’ve reached this point of sleeplessness it’s too late. So let’s work on avoiding this situation from repeating itself in the future.

Person jet lagged that can't sleep at destinations

Step 1: Where To Start To Fight Jet Lag Effects?

To avoid being sleepless at your destination, you’ve got to work on things very early. First thing to do is to study your departure time and arrival time well before your journey. This is key, because by studying these aspects you’ll be able to effectively plan the best sleep pattern and strategy for the flight.

Waking up at the right time is the first step to fight the effects of Jet lag in the most effective way.

Step 2: Get Ready Before The Flight

So let’s say that you are flying from Rome (Italy) to Seoul (South Korea), a very familiar route to me. You’ll be departing at 9:30 PM (Italian Time) and arriving at 4 PM (Korean Time). Start thinking in your destination local time and avoid oversleeping the morning before your departure from Rome.

Korean Air Airbus A380-800 during boarding at airport. At boarding you should already have your strategy to fight jet lag already laid out.

Actually getting up a little early will be helpful in your sleep stategy. This ensure that by the time you get on the flight you are tired and ready to sleep. The goal for this particular flight time is to be tired enough at landing to sleep 5/6 hours after landing.

Step 3: Once Onboard What to Do To Avoid Jet Lag?

Once onboard apply the sleep strategy. As we said the goal is to be tired enough 5/6 hours after landing at your destination. To reach this goal the best thing to do is settle in have a bite to eat and sleep not more than 4-5 hours out of the total flight time of 12.

Plane landing at destination when you need to start fighting the effects of jet lag.

By doing so you’ll get a bit of sleep not to be sleep deprived, but at the same time not too much keeping you tired enough once you arrive in Seoul.

Change The Strategy If…

Of course, if you arrival time is in the morning at your destination you’d have to try to sleep as much as possible on your flight. In this case you’d have to adjust differently your sleep strategy, before and during the flight.

This is my personal strategy to reduce to a minimum the effects of jetlag that I’ve studied over years of travelling to visit family and as a cabin crew for work. Let me know if you have a different stategy or if this one works for you. I’m really curious to know.