Do you ever experience a scenario like this…

It’s Friday night, you’re SO excited the week is over and cannot wait to enjoy some amazing weekend plans. You stay up late that night and Saturday morning you snooze as long as possible. Saturday afternoon, you take a nap so you can make up for a bit more sleep and then enjoy another late night. Then on Sunday, you sleep in again, but as you prepare for Monday, you set your alarm. 

When the alarm rings Monday, you’d expect to feel well rested – you spent most of the weekend “catching up” on sleep, after all. So why do you feel like you’ve been hit by a truck and there’s not enough coffee in the world to make you functional to tackle your daily responsibilities?  Shouldn’t you be well-rested and ready to face the week?  

The reason is social jet lag.

What is social jet lag?

If you’ve traveled at all, you’re acquainted with the concept of jet lag. When you arrive at your destination, your body must adjust to the new time zone. Until it does, you’ll find yourself out of step with life in the new location. You’ll be sleeping when everyone else is awake, up in the middle of the night, and hungry at odd times. Slowly but surely, the internal clock that governs your sleep/wake cycle (your circadian rhythm!) will recalibrate.

You readily recognize it when you travel, but do you realize that if you sleep different hours on the weekend than you do during the week you’re asking your body to recover from jet lag on a weekly basis? The same principles are in play!

Social jet lag was a term coined in the early 2000s to describe the mismatch in our sleep schedule between our workdays and leisure days.

On paper, it sounds like a good plan, but social jet lag keeps your circadian rhythm in a perpetual state of confusion. Your body will struggle to adjust and spending too long in this cycle can lead to insomnia, mood swings, trouble focusing, and chronic fatigue, among other things.

Common Misconceptions that Lead to Social Jet Lag

“Sleep is a luxury I don’t have time to prioritize during the week.”

There are only 24 hours in a day and with all the demands, it seems impossible to carve out 7-9 hours to not accomplish anything. And, unlike your boss, your children, or your teacher, sleep doesn’t set deadlines, cry when you ignore it, or give failing grades.

If you stopped to learn all that your body does while you’re sleeping and the ripple effect on your productivity and capacity, I’m confident you’d bump it higher on your to-do list.

“I can pay off my ‘sleep debt’ by sleeping extra on the weekend.”

If you consistently short yourself on sleep during the week, the reality is that extra weekend sleep won’t be enough. Just like with financial debts, sleep debt comes with interest. It’s not as straightforward as getting your weekly average up by logging a few extra hours on the weekend because our bodies are more complex than that. Sleep deprivation impacts your immune system, brain function, metabolism, hormones, etc., which take time to recover.

Think about a rock that’s been on your lawn. If it’s only sitting there for a day, you can pick it up and the grass underneath it bounces back pretty quickly. The longer you leave it there, though, the longer it takes for that grass to recover. Chronic sleep debt is something that takes time, intentionality, and consistency to pay off.

“I operate okay without much sleep.”

It is true, some people don’t seem to need as much sleep as others. More likely, though, is that your body is pretty good at absorbing the consequences of bad habits – for a while. Like the grass under that rock, our bodies are resilient, but the more sleep debt you accrue, the bigger the toll it will take on your body and the harder it will be to pay off. 

The Solution to Social Jet Lag

One of my adult sleep coaching goals is to teach people to listen to their bodies.

Sometimes that has short-term signals. For example, when you’re sick, it’s better for you to sleep than to stick to a sleep schedule because your body needs time to heal. 

There are also long-term messages. In this case, if you’re relying on extra weekend sleep to survive, your body is saying you DO need more sleep, but sleeping extra on the weekend is only a bandaid; something needs to change.

Here are a few suggestions on where to begin. 

• Don’t wait for the weekend – prioritize and protect your sleep daily! Creating a bedtime routine can help with this.
• Keep the same wake-up time, even on the weekends. If you really want to sleep in, keep it less than an hour.
• If you’re trying to get extra sleep, choose an earlier bedtime over sleeping in later in the morning.
• Consider a catnap (10-20 minutes) instead of sleeping in, just be careful that it’s not too late in the day!
• Use weekend mornings to destress from the week and do enjoyable things you might not otherwise have time to do. 
• Zoom out and do some problem-solving – why are you always playing catch-up with sleep?

Prioritizing sleep on a daily basis may feel like a steep investment up front, but it’s worth it! It will restore a level of freedom to your life down the road because you won’t depend on weekend sleep to survive, and you won’t spend the beginning of each week recovering from the weekend.

Also, when you do choose to treat yourself to a late morning or a nap, your body will be better able to adapt because it won’t be in a state of confusion from social jet lag. 

Conclusion

If late nights, sleeping in, and/or weekend naps have been your norm, as well as the “Sunday Scaries” or just really rough Monday mornings, this may all feel really overwhelming. You recognize the need for change and how great it would feel to not regularly be in sleep debt, but it seems impossible to get there.

As you try to listen to your body, if it seems like it’s speaking a foreign language or you need additional help in figuring out how to break free of the social jet lag cycle, I’d love to chat! Sign up for a (free!) Discovery Call so I can learn more about your sleep struggles and figure out the best way to help you regain a more consistent, energizing relationship with sleep throughout the week.

You can also stay up to date on other adult sleep tips and tricks on our blog, by signing up for our email list, and by visiting us on Instagram.

With Grace,

Kathryn