A Musician’s Guide to Making Jet Lag Work for You

I’ve been traveling a lot lately and using it as an opportunity to continue testing of the Namba Gear bags, so I thought that I would talk a bit about preventing jet lag. But I realised that there are a ton of articles and blogs on preventing jet lag and you guys probably already know about resetting your watch to local time, no alchohol or caffine on the plane, and taking melatonin. So I thought I’d tell you a story about a friend of mine and how she uses jet lag to her advantage.

My friend is an entertainment attorney based in New York, who always schedules her negotiating sessions in London to start after lunch. She takes a red-eye over from New York, arriving about six in the morning. She gets to her hotel by seven, sleeps until one in the afternoon, has “breakfast” and starts her negotiating at 2:30pm (which would be 8:30am New York time). The negotiation goes on straight through into the evening, with dinner being sandwiches brought in about seven. After dinner when her London adversarys begin to flag, she’s still going strong. She may keep the negotiations going until one or two in the morning, by which time the Londoners are completely worn out.

The next day, she sleeps again until one in the afternoon (while her opponents have to go into their offices in the morning to do other work) and starts the negotiations again at 2:30pm.

By forcing the other side to conform to her own time zone, she effectively inflicts the jet lag on them rather than herself.

So maybe you aren’t in any heavy negotiations and are just changing time zones to do a gig. Keep this example in mind, let the time zones work for you, and you’ll feel fresh and at your best to “rock the house”.

Got any good jet lag tips or stories? Feel free to share…

READ RELATED ARTICLES: Musician Resources

Get Your NAMBA GEAR