LogGrad98
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Two options: 1) go to bed much earlier to be able to get up that early, 2) sleep during the day when you get home.
Presuming that you need 1.5 hours in the morning to get to work (shower, eat, commute, etc.) that puts your start time around 3 AM. This puts a normal day, including lunch or whatever, ending at around 11 to noon. Home at around 1-ish.
For option 1, you would need to call it a day at, say 6 or 7 pm to get a decent amount of sleep, later if you can do with less. 8 would be probably be the max limit though. Then you would sleep until 1:30, but get home at around 1, so that gives you 5 or 6 hours in what is really the sweet spot if you have younger kids, but you would be pushing it to see the Jazz play on TV or whatever, might have to record it. If you have teenagers it would be tough getting to bed before they do, but doable. Biggest downside here is not getting enough sleep as you are constrained on both ends of it.
Option 2 you could conceivably be in bed by say 1, sleep until 7 or 8, then have a later evening with your wife and kids. This might be better with older kids or teens. The plus of this one is you can sleep as long as you want or need , the downside is you will find it harder to sleep unless you can black out your windows and cut down the noise somehow. You will also likely get up earlier most days than planned, so that can cut into sleep, but you could split it and nap from say 11 to 1:30 or something. Still not ideal.
Tough call. You could also mix this up, but for max sleep and for highest quality sleep you will want to adopt one schedule and stick to the sleep schedule as much as possible, with the time you go to bed more important than the time you wake up, really. It is easier to adapt to fluctuating wake times than fluctuating sleep times, and that is not just imo, that is sleep science (I have dealt with apnea most of my life and have been seeing sleep specialists a lot and have done numerous sleep studies).
As far as your body adapting, it won't be that bad really. Moving your schedule around a few hours is no where near as bad as a switch of 6 hours or more.
I would advise that you plan this out before taking the plunge, just to make sure the new schedule does not end up being a deal breaker. Take a couple of days off and try to live the new schedule, like over a weekend or something (keeping in mind it is till imperfect as the adjustment period is usually the toughest and can take weeks), but not to evaluate the sleep part, that will come, but rather the family/social time and noise level during your chosen sleep period to make sure you can make it work the way you need it to.
[source: I have worked probably every schedule you can imagine, as well as insanely long hours with variable start and end times as a warehouse manager with companies like amazon.com and ebay, and have been forced to adapt to new sleeping and family schedules as often as every few months. It can be hell if you don't go into it with the right frame of mind and a bit of preparation.]
Presuming that you need 1.5 hours in the morning to get to work (shower, eat, commute, etc.) that puts your start time around 3 AM. This puts a normal day, including lunch or whatever, ending at around 11 to noon. Home at around 1-ish.
For option 1, you would need to call it a day at, say 6 or 7 pm to get a decent amount of sleep, later if you can do with less. 8 would be probably be the max limit though. Then you would sleep until 1:30, but get home at around 1, so that gives you 5 or 6 hours in what is really the sweet spot if you have younger kids, but you would be pushing it to see the Jazz play on TV or whatever, might have to record it. If you have teenagers it would be tough getting to bed before they do, but doable. Biggest downside here is not getting enough sleep as you are constrained on both ends of it.
Option 2 you could conceivably be in bed by say 1, sleep until 7 or 8, then have a later evening with your wife and kids. This might be better with older kids or teens. The plus of this one is you can sleep as long as you want or need , the downside is you will find it harder to sleep unless you can black out your windows and cut down the noise somehow. You will also likely get up earlier most days than planned, so that can cut into sleep, but you could split it and nap from say 11 to 1:30 or something. Still not ideal.
Tough call. You could also mix this up, but for max sleep and for highest quality sleep you will want to adopt one schedule and stick to the sleep schedule as much as possible, with the time you go to bed more important than the time you wake up, really. It is easier to adapt to fluctuating wake times than fluctuating sleep times, and that is not just imo, that is sleep science (I have dealt with apnea most of my life and have been seeing sleep specialists a lot and have done numerous sleep studies).
As far as your body adapting, it won't be that bad really. Moving your schedule around a few hours is no where near as bad as a switch of 6 hours or more.
I would advise that you plan this out before taking the plunge, just to make sure the new schedule does not end up being a deal breaker. Take a couple of days off and try to live the new schedule, like over a weekend or something (keeping in mind it is till imperfect as the adjustment period is usually the toughest and can take weeks), but not to evaluate the sleep part, that will come, but rather the family/social time and noise level during your chosen sleep period to make sure you can make it work the way you need it to.
[source: I have worked probably every schedule you can imagine, as well as insanely long hours with variable start and end times as a warehouse manager with companies like amazon.com and ebay, and have been forced to adapt to new sleeping and family schedules as often as every few months. It can be hell if you don't go into it with the right frame of mind and a bit of preparation.]
