Blog1 min read
Music for jet lag
When the body and the clock disagree, the music has to take a side.
Jet lag is a small civil war between the body and the clock, and music has to take a side. The wrong music will side with whichever one is wrong for the local hour, and the war goes on longer.
When the body wants to sleep and the local clock says don't, what helps is lo-fi at moderate volume, something with a faint pulse to keep you upright. Coffee disagrees with this and tends to make things worse; music does the same job more gently and with no second-half crash.
When the clock says sleep and the body says no, the sleep playlist, started earlier than usual, with the lights cooperatively low. The body argues, but if the room is doing all the right things, the argument runs out of energy sometimes around the third track.
What I avoid in either direction: anything that announces the time. Bright tracks during the day-fight, melodically pretty tracks during the night-fight — the body is already hyper-aware of cues. The music has to be small, even, and have no opinion about what hour it is.