I switched to the overnight shift to accommodate some summer classes I’ll be taking. I’m looking forward to the change, mostly because when I finish in 4 months I’ll have the next level of certification I need to advance in my career. My family is not so sure the new schedule will be good for us. Our particular situation is complicated, but to be honest I think this schedule will be BETTER for my family than swing shift was. We’ll see how it goes. Wish me luck!
My advice, as a long time nightshift worker?
On your days off, as much as it sucks to do so, you need to maintain at least a semi nocturnal schedule. It will make it MUCH easier on you.
Example: I used to work 11pm-7am. I would get off work, go home, and be in bed by 9:30, sleep till 4:30pm, then be up and doing all my family stuff until it was time to go to work.
On my days off, I would still stay up until 4am or so, then crash until 11 or 12. Still plenty of time to do family stuff on the weekends, and I could always push it if I had to.
But doing the “get off work, stay up until normal bedtime, and then sleep a normal schedule until the day you go to work” is a recipe for disaster, imo. YMMV of course.
I did it for a long time and currently my temp job has me nights.
It can be very difficult if you have family. It also is very tough in the summer, 'cause you want to not sleep, and instead go out and enjoy the day.
The hardest part of working overnights is it feels like you only get one day off a week.
I remember when I first started overnights I worked Sun - Thurs.
My thinking went:
I get off at 7am on Friday so it’s like getting Friday off, I’m off Saturday and I don’t have to be at work till 11pm on Sunday so it’s like getting Sunday off. It’ll be like getting THREE days off.
WRONG 
What it feels like is:
You are at work on Friday and you are at work on Sunday. OK just for a few hours but the fact is you are only not at work, one day per week. So it FEELS like only one day off. Yes, I know it’s the same thing, but it doesn’t feel like that.
I would disagree. It still feels like two days off. If you count the nights as your days. Of course, I don’t have a family or anything so it’s much easier to maintain a nocturnal schedule the whole week through.
After sixteen years on nights, I wholeheartedly agree. Also, try to keep up your hours of sleep during the workweek. Nothing sucks more than being half comatose while at dinner or at a park with your family.
Staying on a semi-nocturnal schedule is definitely the physically easiest thing to do.
Highly recommended but not consistent with what I generally did. Although I was working four 10s so that made it a little different.
I worked 4p-3a and on my weekend would get 3 hours of sleep or so, up with the family around 7. Stay up all day - turning into a zombie at some points - and then go to bed at 10 or 11. Have the weekend, then try to catch a nap before going into work on Sunday. Generally that didn’t work so I’d be a zombie at some point early Monday morning too (although those never seemed as bad as the Thursdays).
If you try it you basically you end up losing half to a whole night’s sleep every week and it has a cumulative effect.
But it is so tempting to do in the summer.
I worked graveyard for ~15 years ( first few 11-7, then 10-6 ). After much experimentation I found the best way to sleep was to go to bed immediately upon getting home and sleep as uninterruptedly as possible for as many hours as possible. Staying up dilly-dallying around for an hour or so, will, in the daylight, often trigger a “second wind” of sorts and keep you from settling in. You’ll rue that later.
Everybody is different but over the years I generally have found that the people who must successfully handled graveyard were those that followed that pattern. “Broken” sleeping in two or more chunks and staying up and sleeping in the evenings before work, both seem less effective IME. Sometimes drastically less so.
I also strongly endorse the advice to, as much as possible, try to hold to your graveyard schedule on the weekends.
Being a deep sleeper helps. I rarely needed ear plugs and never needed darkening, but completely blacking out your bedroom with heavy window coverings and either using a white noise generator of some kind ( I like having a fan blowing ) or ear plugs are necessary crutches for many.
Best of luck :). My own experience with graveyard is that a few people tolerate it pretty decently ( I did for many years ). A few more get by okay at first but eventually hit a wall ( I find the four to six month mark is common ) and start going into zombie-mode. But a solid majority just do not function well at all for whatever reason, some self-inflicted, many unavoidable. It can take awhile to shake out the first category from the second, but if you’re in the third you should figure it out pretty quick.
Did the vampire thing for 5-6 years when I worked for Safeway. What I’ll add to what others have said is I found it pretty easy to get accustomed to reversing AM/PM, but it was surprisingly difficult to switch back.
It was also quite annoying when everyone assumed I was free all day every day, or getting up and heading to work when everyone else was going out partying or whatever.
Best thing for you is it’s only 4 months; it does get kind of depressing if you do it too long.
I wish you nothing but the best working nights - I get sick as a dog trying to work nights. Bleah.
I loved working the mid shift.
I got home around 8:30 AM. slept 2 to 4 hours. got up did stuff around the house. I would take naps through out the day. I liked to get an hour nap just before going to work. I kept track of the time that I slept each day, to be sure that I did not run short of sleep. Working nights I found I needed 6 1/2 hours sleep every day. When I went to days I was still tired with over 8 hours at one setting.
I got off Saturday at 8 AM had all day for family things. Sunday all day for family or my self. Then Monday I had to make sure to get a nap before going to work.
Working nights can work out for the family. My dad worked the mid shift my whole life. My dad told me after he had retired that he felt bad about not being able to there for us kids because of working nights. I told Dad he was wrong, he was there for us in more ways than a day working Dad.
When I got sick as a kid at school, my Dad just just had to get up and come to the school to get me. He did not have to arrange someone to relieve him before leaving the job. If there was a field trip at school he would just change his sleep time and be there. I was the only kid at school with both of their parents at all field trips. My dad was there because he could without having to dake a day off work.
Like some of the others have said, it works better if you keep to at least a semi-nocturnal sleep schedule on your days off. I found that working graveyards worked much better with family life than evening shift did. Now that I’m by myself, I work nights by choice.
I’m a weird duck, in that I voluntarily keep a semi-nocturnal schedule. I work 5-11PM, but then I stay up until 6AM or so. I wake up around 2PM. This way, it feels like I am going to work in the morning. Also, because I get off at 11, I can still hang out with friends in the late evening, and I have the rest of the night to myself. Waking up at 2 in Florida also means I get plenty of sunlight. It really is heaven to me.
Oh, that whole diatribe was meant to affirm the ‘keep a nocturnal schedule’ point.