Jet Lag Sleep Planner with Step-by-Step Daily Adjustments

The Jet Lag Sleep Planner with Step-by-Step Daily Adjustments is designed to translate your itinerary into a practical routine you can actually follow. This planner creates a simple, realistic routine to help your body clock land where your flight does. Tell it how many hours you are crossing and whether you are heading east or west. Eastbound trips usually require advancing your sleep (earlier bed and wake), while westbound trips favor a delay (later bed and wake). Choose gradual if you want a gentler ramp at roughly an hour per day, or fast if you prefer a bolder two-hour step. The schedule shows target bed and wake times in the destination clock, plus light guidance and a caffeine cutoff to avoid pushing sleep later than planned.

Light is the strongest everyday signal for your internal clock. To shift earlier, seek bright light soon after the new wake time and avoid it before the new bedtime. To shift later, focus your bright light in the evening window and keep mornings dim for a few days. If you check the optional melatonin box, the plan suggests a small-dose timing window tied to the new bedtime. This is general information, not medical advice, and you should skip it if melatonin isn’t right for you.

Use the pre-adjust switch to start shifting at home the night before departure. Even a single hour of head start can make the first morning less groggy. Adding your flight times lets the planner mark an in-flight rest window and a first-morning light block after landing. On red-eyes, prioritize sleep over screens and aim for dim light during the last two hours of the flight on eastbound routes. On daytime westbound flights, brief naps are fine if they end at least eight hours before the new target bedtime.

• Caffeine: set a cutoff several hours before the target bedtime to avoid drift.
• Meals: align the largest meal with the destination lunch or early dinner to reinforce the shift.
• Consistency: protect the wake time; the bedtime will follow within a couple of nights.

Results are plain language on purpose. The headline states how many days the plan spans and whether it is an advance or delay. A compact summary lists hours to shift, the daily step size, and the arrival day markers if provided. The table then spells out each day: target sleep window, best light window, caffeine cutoff, and quick notes. If you are traveling with kids or have an unpredictable schedule, shorten the plan and keep the first two rules only: time your light, and anchor your wake time. Those two habits do most of the work.

Finally, be kind to your future self. If a short trip is under three days, consider staying mostly on home time and simply scheduling bright light in your alert hours. For long eastbound moves, blackout shades and morning outdoor light help more than any app. For long westbound shifts, keep the bedroom dim at dawn and enjoy a bright walk after sunset on the first nights.

The planner converts your home sleep window to destination clock time, then applies a daily shift: about one hour per day on gradual mode and two hours per day on fast mode, advancing for east and delaying for west. The bright-light window centers near the first third of wake time for advances and the last third for delays. The caffeine cutoff is set relative to the target bedtime. If you entered flights, the tool adds an in-flight rest suggestion and moves the first light window to a practical time after arrival.