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Travel planner
Plan your pre-flight prep and recovery days based on time zones crossed.
Recovery timeline
Sample eastbound plan — sleep/wake blocks
Recovery
Jet lag is easier to handle when you start before the flight. The strongest use of this page is to decide when to begin shifting sleep, meals, and light exposure instead of waiting until you have already landed. That is where the planner becomes more than a novelty countdown.
Once you arrive, the fastest improvements usually come from anchoring yourself to the destination morning: wake at the local target time, get bright light, and move meals onto the local clock immediately. This is especially important for eastbound trips, where your body is being asked to fall asleep earlier than it naturally wants to.
Variance
The number of time zones crossed matters, but so do flight timing, direction of travel, sleep debt, and how much daylight changes between origin and destination. A six-hour eastbound overnight can feel harder than a longer westbound daytime trip because it compresses both the clock and the sleep window.
That is why this page belongs next to city, compare, and market-hour pages on the site. Real travel timing decisions are not only about clocks. They also depend on when you need to function at the destination and how quickly your body can adapt to the new local day.
A five-step walkthrough for using the planner to map pre-flight prep, in-flight strategy, and day-by-day recovery once you arrive.
Pick the city or zone you are flying from and the city or zone you are flying to. The planner uses the difference between the two zones to estimate how many time zones you are crossing.
Choose the calendar date you are leaving and the date you arrive. The planner uses these to schedule pre-flight prep days and on-the-ground recovery days against your real itinerary.
For trips crossing four or more zones, move your bedtime, wake time, meals, and bright-light exposure 30 to 60 minutes per day toward the destination. Eastbound trips benefit from earlier light; westbound trips benefit from evening light.
On arrival, wake at the local target time, get bright outdoor light immediately, and move meals onto the local schedule. This is the single fastest way to pull your circadian rhythm onto destination time.
Plan one full day of recovery per time zone you crossed eastbound, and roughly two-thirds of a day per zone westbound. Use the day-by-day timeline below the planner to know which mornings to push light exposure and which evenings to protect sleep.
Questions
People also ask
How long does jet lag last after flying east?
What's the best way to recover from jet lag?
Why is east-to-west travel easier than west-to-east?
Does jet lag get worse as you get older?
The science of jet lag
Practical recovery
Reference fields include circadian rhythm terminology, the suprachiasmatic nucleus, the roughly 24.2-hour free-running period, light as the dominant zeitgeber, phase advance and delay, melatonin timing, and the east-west adaptation asymmetry.
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