All night long you’re thinking: Am I asleep? Have I slept?
This concludes the social-work experiment of how I react when I work night shifts. Six days of sleeping in the afternoon, breakfast at 10AM and 4PM are coming to an end. One day I even had a beer at four in the afternoon, which would have been my ‘morning’.
Besides a beer for breakfast one of the biggest perks was no traffic. I could get home in the same time it took me to get to work, which is never the case during rush hour. A parking spot was also not an issue. When I did go to Tim Hortons it was quiet and I got my coffee fast.
I also liked the solitude of nights. There are few distractions so you are able to concentrate on your job. Although the little distractions throughout the day are nice. The reason why I was working nights was pretty successful too. The page saw great traffic and the European market we wanted to reach were the top countries on page views.
Post It Notes: InsomniaI was getting about 5-7 hours of sleep a day so that is no worse than my idea of a rough week but the hours were rarely in a continuous stretch. Several times I had a nap at 9PM just so I could make it through the next twelve hours.
Being woken up from an hour nap at 10PM is like waking a bear during his hibernation and then you tell him there is no honey. I think torture techniques could easily take advantage of sleep deprivation and taunting the subject for a nap only to take it away at the last moment.
Post It Notes: WeekendI do not think I completely adjusted to working nights, so this should benefit me when I move back to normal hours. I will have a long weekend to sort myself out for Monday morning and get back on track for sleeping for seven to eight hours regularly.
Even then, sleeping during the afternoon was not as big of a problem as I had anticipated. I did buy a sleep mask, and even used it a few times. I found the mask was helpful, with the aid of ear plugs, to not be affected by the outside world.
I may not enthusiastically jump at the opportunity to work nights again, but I can say I have tried and survived.
