A paper lantern hanging over a wooden veranda at dusk, a misted moss garden beyond

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Shift Workers & Odd Hours

Rest while the world is awake: rotating shifts, red-eye flights, and the first year of a child.

Start here: three mechanisms explain
most of a bad night

Circadian timing, sleep pressure, and arousal. Almost every piece of sleep advice you have read is a clumsy attempt at one of these three. Once you can name them, you can stop guessing.

Steam rising from a green tea bowl on tatami, an iron kettle in shadow behind

Pieces in this path

Three pieces live in this path.

Sunlight filtering through a linen curtain onto a rumpled bed in late morning

Shift Workers & Odd Hours10 min

The Best Bedroom Temperature for Daytime Sleeping (And Why It's Different)

Daytime sleepers are fighting a rising body clock, not a falling one.

A clock face lit softly in a quiet room, marking a fixed hour

Shift Workers & Odd Hours10 min

Sleep Anchoring for Shift Workers

A fixed sleep window at the same clock time, even as the rest of the schedule rotates.

A simple breakfast set on a table beside a window in early dawn light

Shift Workers & Odd Hours9 min

What to Eat Before Sleeping After a Night Shift

The last meal before day sleep is not a normal dinner in disguise.

Sleeping through a rotating shift

In progress

The first year: sleep with a newborn

In progress

A crescent moon low over a quiet field at dusk

One letter, sent
as the light goes

A single idea about rest, one thing worth trying this week, and one thing worth ignoring. It arrives in time for Sunday morning.

No noise, leave whenever you like.