Shift work: how to sleep when your schedule changes every week

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Nursing, factories, hospitality, security, transport, call centres: an enormous slice of workers live on rotating schedules. And they pay for it in the most expensive currency — sleep. The human body has an internal clock tuned by daylight; asking it to sleep at 9am is rowing against millions of years of programming.

What shifts do to sleep

Daytime sleep is typically shorter (1 to 3 hours less) and more fragmented — light, noise, doorbells, family life. Constant rotation prevents the body clock from adapting to any schedule at all. Over time, many shift workers develop a pattern of their own: sleepiness at work, insomnia at home, and a background exhaustion that days off do not repay.

Strategies with evidence behind them

• Protect the darkness — sunglasses on the way home from a night shift (morning light tells the brain "wake up"); full blackout in the bedroom; phone out of the room.
• Sleep anchors — even on rotating schedules, try to keep one fixed block of sleep that repeats on most days, topped up with a strategic nap.
• A nap before the night shift — 90 minutes in the late afternoon reduces the debt you carry into the night. And, if possible, a 20-minute nap during the break.
• Caffeine with a closing time — it helps at the start of a shift; in the last 4-5 hours before sleep, it sabotages.
• A landing ritual — the body does not switch from "shift mode" to "sleep mode" at the click of a finger: 30-45 minutes of winding down in low light before bed.
• Negotiate quiet at home — daytime sleep only works if the household treats it as real sleep, not an interruptible nap.

When to seek help

CBT-I (Cognitive Behavioural Therapy for Insomnia) adapts to shift schedules — you do not need a "normal" timetable to treat your sleep. In HICOA's Sleep Better Programme the plan is designed around your actual roster, with online sessions booked outside your shifts.