The majority of industrial mishaps take place during the early hours when night-shift workers are prone to doze. And increasingly more white-collar workers are working the night shift. Might we all face this change in lifestyle? If so, here are some tips to help adapt to the night shift and stay sane.

While walking to the mass transit station one morning this week, I noticed two fellows walking away from the station. They looked particularly weary, and I suspected they had worked the night shift.

According to PBS, there could be a trend toward more people working such hours: “As more businesses and workforces operate and compete in multiple time-zones across countries’ borders, the 24-hour work day is taking its hold almost everywhere.”

The majority of industrial mishaps take place during the early hours when night-shift workers are prone to doze: the nuclear accident at Three Mile Island started at 4 a.m., Chernobyl at 1:23 a.m., Newsweek noted in October. Unfortunately, as today’s global economy demands more productivity, an increasing number of workers are expected to keep factories (as well as airplanes, hospitals and call centers) going through the night.

“About 26 percent of the U.S. workforce regularly works a shift where the majority of their hours are between 4 p.m. and 8 a.m.,” Janie O’Connor, MEd, president of St. Paul, Minn.-based Shiftworker.com, tells Monster.com. “Shiftworkers need to relate to that demographic. They need to accept their lifestyle as it is and refrain from acting like a day worker when they’re not,’” writes Megan Malugani at Monster.

PBS also notes that increasingly even white-collar workers work the night shift. “By type of shift, 4.7 percent of the total worked evening shifts, 3.2 percent worked night shifts, 3.1 percent worked employer-arranged irregular schedules, and 2.5 percent worked rotating shifts,” according to a U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics news release. In addition, more than half of those working an alternative shift did so because it was the “nature of the job.” Other reasons for working a non-daytime schedule included personal preference, better arrangements for family or child care, better pay and the fact that workers “could not get any other job.”

Might we all face this change in lifestyle? Anticipating our future night-shift-induced zombification, here are 13 tips from Tom Trimble, who works the night shift as an emergency room nurse (plus two tips of our own):

• Sleep well and eat well before the shift.

• Wearing a digital watch is key to accurate charting of day, date, time (24 hour International time) and personal orientation.

• Allow end-of-the-day decompression time before sleeping after work.

• Rotate shifts in a forward fashion (Days to Evenings to Nights to Days) if you must rotate.

• Whether you nap right after work or marathon through your first off day, try to get on your family’s cycle as soon as possible, as it will feel more natural and help preserve your relationship with your family.

• Use mornings for business while you still have your wits about you and when businesses are at their freshest level of service.

• When planning chores, watch out for the “day world’s” lunchtime-and-early-afternoon slowdown.

• When relaxing before naps, avoid time-sucking activities; choose things that you can put down when the time comes to go to sleep.

• Have sleep-preparation rituals that promote good sleep hygiene, as regularity of preparations — even the same go-to-sleep music — will flip your mind to “‘I’m going to sleep now.”

• If it takes a sleep-mask, black-out curtains, ear-plugs or white noise machine or other sleep aid, even silencing the telephone ringer to ensure daytime sleep, do it and don’t feel silly.

• Avoid using intoxicants or sleeping pills to get to sleep except in the most unusual circumstances: the sleep architecture is altered, thus sleep is less restful and you may feel hungover with poor performance at work.

• Avoid excessive reliance on caffeine. It may get you past the occasional slump, but it’s addicting, disrupts even your own semblance of circadian rhythm, and is diuretic.

• Make time for regular exercise (especially if you and your partner are on opposite shifts). It’s easy, when lifestyle consists of long night shifts and revolves around essential functions of work, sleep and eating, to omit keeping the body in tune.

• Discipline yourself to think about safety more often and more comprehensively, as near misses lead to real accidents and real accidents lead to fatalities.

• Finally, make sure you’re awake enough to drive home safely without falling asleep at the wheel.

In manufacturing, factory robots and other machines set an exhausting pace for employees and would work 24/7 if their human helpers were willing to forgo their weekend respite. Workers, however, need the rest. We are not machines.

Source: Night Shift Survival Hints