Tarun and I travel abroad two to three times a year on work, to see family, and to chill with the kids. Despite the excitement, the most dreadful part is coming back home and dealing with jet lag in the utter silence of the street we live on. The lack of noise is deafening when we return from the excitement of India or the tightly laid out towns in Europe. We throw ourselves into work which eventually forces our circadian rhythm to sync with EST. In the meantime, we wake up bright-eyed and bushy-tailed at 3 am and get a whole day's work done by the time the rest of our world is stirring. During one of these night-time working sessions, I asked my friend Google about jet lag.
In 2016, Kayak and Airbus did a study on jet lag's impact on productivity and found that the UK loses 240M pounds annually due to the consequences of people working slower after flying across timezones - 61% productivity loss occurs on the 2.2 bookend days. As more of us are long-hauling in our super-connected world, these losses become consequential. Jet lag impacts concentration. I've made some terrible mistakes in the throes of this. Like bumping my coffee cup into the laptop screen, coffee pouring into the LCD panel, and frying it. Since that particular episode, I am careful about stupidity induced by jet lag.
Unable to sleep at 3:30 am after flying across numerous timezones, these thoughts came to me...
My friend where are you when I need you the most
I am awake in pitch darkness feeling like a ghost
Blinking lights of the watch sets a weird rhythm
I close my eyes for a bit but my body feels the schism
Tummy feels hungry when the brain know it’s time to rest
I am up and about but my head is a cuckoo’s nest
Wish the planet to be smaller and the sun to rise at once
To banish dreaded jet lag, oh how I’d love that chance