Three months into Remote Year and I’m finally hitting my stride working the night shift. In Valencia my work day goes from 3 p.m. - 11 p.m. The same as Cape Town, but as the first month, Cape Town was a rough adjustment to the old body clock and a harsh shift from 9 a.m. - 5 p.m. As my body is now acclimated to the time zone shift and the day part shift I realize that one of these nights I’m going to miss working nights.
The night shift really lends itself to the Remote Year lifestyle. I love having my morning and early afternoon free as it allows me time to walk around the city when it’s less crowded. But the greatest advantage is not having a rushed morning. I’m getting the same amount of sleep I did on the 9-5 grind, but the difference is I am not rushing from bed straight to work in a soporific daze. I get up and have the luxury of easing into my day. A cup of coffee on the couch versus a cup in the office because you were trying to shave 10 minutes getting out the door. When I workout in the morning, I am not only awake, but I am not rushing through it trying to get to work on time.
And as much as I miss the ability to go out for dinner, I am starting to wonder if going out to breakfast is even better. I use the word wonder because I can’t tell how much my breakfast bias is at play (it is my favorite meal to eat out) or if it’s because it’s a novelty to do so during the work week. The jury is still out.
Overall, I am really taking to the night shift. The morning benefits have been outlined, but there is also an evening benefit to address. Working nights eliminates TV time. I’m starting to see that as a positive. I’m not one of those antediluvian people who prides themselves on not owning a TV. Make no mistake, I love to watch TV! But what I’m coming to realize is how many of my 9-5 nights back home were spent watching TV.
We’ve all been there. After working a typical 9-10 hour day, you come home exhausted with the primary goal of eating something as soon as possible and the secondary goal of vegging out. Before you know it, it’s time to turn in and do it all over again. And this is the inherent flaw of the 9-5 grind: you are so spent by the time you get home, you don’t have the energy for the other things you enjoy.
In my pre-Remote Year life I used to constantly beat myself up about not finding more time to write. I would tell myself “if you really wanted to be writing, you would find the time.” The reality is I never made the time during the work week. I find myself devoting many a morning to writing now that I am working nights. I have the luxury of writing at the beginning of the day before work has had the chance to deplete me. If anything it energizes me when I make my afternoon activity writing. It also gives me a great excuse to partake in cafe culture and that second cup while I get to do something I love.
It also allows for a guilt free evening. By the time I get home it’s almost midnight so I wash up and stretch out before bed. This is all my energy will allow. And the good news is, it is all I need to do by this time of night. I have had the morning to be at my leisure, worked through the night and now it is simply time for bed. Unfortunately my new night time routine does not include as much reading as before. Reading in bed used to be a part of my nightly ritual that I greatly enjoyed. Now I find that I am too tired by bedtime to even give it 15 minutes.
I’ve spent all my time talking about the personal benefits but there are professional ones as well. The two biggest being the start time and end time of my day. I’m starting my day when it is 8 a.m. CST which allows me at least an hour to get caught up on the email I missed overnight while people trickle into the office. Conversely when I sign off at 11 p.m. it is only 4 p.m. CST. As someone who works in the agency world I know that 5 p.m. meetings are all too common. I also know that your post 5 p.m. time is valuable. You’ve likely spent the bulk of your day between meetings and that time from 5 - 7 p.m. is typically your only time to get actual work done. I now have a reason to sign off before people start scheduling into my evening. I also know that people are too busy cranking out their own work to notice I’m gone.
As excited as I am for my time in South America, I am not looking forward to aligning closer to central time. Ultimately it means that there is a greater chance of work encroaching on my evening. As I currently sit +7 hours ahead of central time, there is a sense of freedom knowing that my morning and afternoon are truly mine. I can enjoy my time knowing that work will not contact me since it is the dead of night. Even our most boundary-less employees will be sleeping during my morning block.
I came on Remote Year to take a break from my normal life and reevaluate my priorities. I wasn’t getting what I wanted out of my daily life. I knew that there had to be more to life than working until 7 p.m., coming home, eating dinner, watching tv, and going to bed. I have had to cancel plans or decline an invite too many times during the work week. I was advancing my career at the cost of my personal life.
Trying to date in this day and age of apps comes at a high cost and low reward. It takes a lot of time and energy to gain momentum and actually get out on some dates. That was time and energy I didn’t have or want to give in my previous life. My office is the kind of place where the only acceptable out to leave on-time is a child. My bumble date not so much.
I didn’t come on Remote Year to meet a man. I came for the experience. All of the experience: the travel, the culture shock, the change, the challenge, the different, the new, and everything in between. It’s interesting to see how quickly the new and the different can become the norm. I don’t know that the night shift would work in real life. But I do know that for the now it’s working.
Most of all I am grateful for the opportunity to live my day-to-day life on a different clock. For perhaps the greatest benefit of the night shift is the day feels longer. I am bone tired at the end of each day, but it’s a satisfied tired. I look forward to the two more months ahead I have of long days on the night shift.
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