Last week I was out in the Bay Area for a company summit. One of the senior members on my team, who travels extensively, gave me a travel tip that at first seemed odd and antithetical to everything I stand for. He suggested that for short business trips to places only a few timezones away, it's actually easier not to adjust to the new timezone. So for a trip to California, which is 3 hours behind New York, he would get up at 4am PST, which is precisely the same time he would be getting up on the east coast (7am EST). He would obviously go to bed much earlier to compensate, do this for a few days, and then come home without having to ever adjust to a new time zone or back to the old one.
Now, I'm all about maximizing sleep, so the idea of waking up 3 hours before I have to is very foreign to me. However, the week in-between my trip to the Philippines and this trip to the Bay Area, I was actually in timezone adjustment hell. I woke up tired every day, desperately wanted to fall asleep in the late afternoons, would go to bed the second I got home only to wake up at midnight and be awake for almost an entire second day until I went to bed again at 5am. Having just experienced the bad effects of timezone adjustment, I decided to try out my colleague's idea. It's not really something that I would have ever dreamed up of, but why not - life's short.
I normally get up at 9am, which meant that for an entire week I got up at 6am. This harkens back to dark times when I would set my alarm for 5:50am during high school - something I've never done since (except to catch a flight). Despite staying up pretty late (past midnight on the west coast), waking up that 'early' was actually very easy. I would hit the alarm twice, just like back home, then finally be awake. Instead of jumping right in the shower and going to work, I would instead use the time to read news articles, code, and watch some downloaded media content. In effect I was shifting the time I did these activities from after work to before work for this one week.
After doing this for a week, when I finally got home there was no adjustment needed. I went to bed and woke up at about the same times I normally would have, and didn't feel any of the effects of a timezone change. Overall I'd say that this was an excellent travel tip. The fact that someone like me was able to pull it off should be testament enough for others to try it out. I'll most likely be doing this again the next time I take a short trip in the western hemisphere.