Jet Lag from a Pilot’s POV - DTNS Weekend

**Tom Merritt** (0:05)
Welcome to yet another Daily Tech News Show weekend edition, gratefully provided to you in thanks for your support of this show. And today I'm very excited to welcome back Brian Hoffman to the show. Brian, good to have you back, man.

**Brian Hoffman** (0:18)
Thank you, Tom. Glad to be here.

**Tom Merritt** (0:20)
If you explain to folks what you do, who you are. I mean, you're a pilot is the easiest way. But how do you usually explain it?

**Brian Hoffman** (0:30)
I'm a pilot that flies a lot of different schedules.
But I also like my solar projects. I like my farm. I like all the stuff. So I have to integrate everything into my life.

**Tom Merritt** (0:40)
Yeah. Usually we're talking solar technology when we've had you on in the past. But I wanted to talk to you about jet lag, because we did a great episode a couple of weeks back with Dr. Nikki about the app that called TimeShifter that will try to adjust you to flying across time zones. It was actually built for astronauts on the International Space Station who are flying very fast through many time zones all the time. And I thought it would be really interesting to compare that to what you have to do when you're flying across time zones on a regular basis, maybe not as fast as the astronauts. But, you know, what are the patterns and ways of dealing with this that you have had to develop?
And first of all, explain to us how your relationship with jet lag differs from the typical vacationer like me, who, you know, once a year has to take a big trip across time zones.

**Brian Hoffman** (1:38)
Well, depending on how I fly and depending on where I'm going to go, if I'm going to stay in the United States, I plan one way. If I'm going to fly around the world, I'll plan a different way. Because the number of time zones you travel across matters. And so if you're flying north and south, that's a lot easier because you're staying in a time zone. Yeah, right. But let's just say you leave Seattle to go to Miami. While you're doing it at 8 o'clock in the morning, and you get there at 4 or 5 in the afternoon, or you're leaving there at 11 o'clock at night and going to get there at 7 o'clock in the morning the next morning.
You have to plan differently. And so knowing what you're going to do drives your plan.

**Tom Merritt** (2:16)
And I imagine you do it regularly. And it's not something where it's like, okay, once a year or maybe twice a year, I have to think about this. Or even a business traveler who's crossing a couple of time zones multiple times a year, you're doing lots of different variations on this.

**Brian Hoffman** (2:33)
For decades now, yep.

**Tom Merritt** (2:34)
Yeah.
So where do you start with? What are some of the typical things you look at?

**Brian Hoffman** (2:39)
What you're going to do first is you're going to figure out your sleep pattern. So if I need to sleep earlier to be prepared to go fly a trip, then I want to do that two days early.
If I'm going to be sleeping, if I'm going to get up and fly a really, really early trip, maybe I just want to go to bed a little bit earlier, just to slightly move. If I'm going to go fly to Europe, I actually sleep differently than if I'm going to go to Asia. If you take off, go to Asia, you get there in the morning. And so you want to be ready when you get there.
But you also are leaving 12, 13 hours prior. So that makes it really hard. So the next thing you think about on sleep is, am I going to take a nap when I get there or not? I know travelers want to get there, they're going to sleep the entire flight. I'm not. But then they're going to want to get out and do something. I may have to take a nap, a 20 minute nap, a 45 minute nap, or a three hour nap. Depending on where you're going and what you're doing really can help a lot.

**Tom Merritt** (3:40)
And on those longer flights, do you sleep during the flight?

**Brian Hoffman** (3:44)
If you're flying over eight hours, it's mandatory that you have a third pilot. If you're over 12 hours, it's mandatory to have a fourth pilot. And then we rotate sleep schedules to be able to take a nap when you're not in the seat.