How to beat jet lag when flying east (a day-by-day plan)

How to · Updated 2026-11-10

Move your bedtime about an hour earlier each day for 3 days before you fly, get morning light and keep evenings dim. Worked plan for London to Singapore.

Flying east is harder because your day gets shorter, and your body clock would rather run late than early. The fix is to start moving your sleep earlier, about an hour a day, before you leave, and to use bright morning light and dim evenings to pull your clock forward. The jet lag planner builds that schedule for your own route, dates and usual sleep times. This is general information for healthy adults, not medical advice.

What you need

• The time zones you are flying from and to. The planner lists them by region and city, such as Europe/London or Asia/Singapore.
• Your flight date. The hour difference can change with daylight saving, so the date matters.
• Your usual bedtime and wake-up time on a normal day at home.
• Three spare evenings before the trip when you can go to bed early.

Step by step

The body clock shifts only about an hour a day, so the plan splits the time difference:

Hours to shift = destination offset − home offset

Shift before you fly = the smaller of (hours to shift) and (3 days × 1 hour)

Whatever is left over gets made up after you land, an hour a day. For a flight east, each move makes your bed and wake times earlier. Light helps in a definite way: bright light soon after waking moves your clock earlier, while bright light in the hours before bed pushes it later, which is the wrong way for this trip.

1. Open jet lag planner and pick your Flying from and Flying to time zones.
2. Set the Flight date, your Usual bedtime and your Usual wake-up time.
3. Leave Shift per day at 60 minutes unless you find early nights very hard (you can choose anything from 30 to 120).
4. Set No caffeine for to the number of hours before bed you want to stop coffee, tea and cola. Six is the starting value.
5. Read the headline: how many hours ahead the destination is, and that you need earlier nights.
6. Follow the Your plan table row by row. The three days before the flight are in home time; the days after landing are in destination time. Each row gives bed, wake, when to seek bright light, when to avoid it and your last caffeine.
7. Press Swap directions to get the plan for the trip home, which runs the other way.

To get a sense of how many sleep cycles fit between the new bed and wake times, try the sleep calculator. To count down the days to the flight, use the date calculator.

A worked example

Sam lives in London, usually sleeps 23:00 to 07:00, and flies to Singapore on Tuesday 8 December 2026. In December, London is on UTC+0 and Singapore on UTC+8, so Singapore is 8 hours ahead: a flight east.

At 1 hour a day, 3 hours of shift happen before the flight and 5 remain. The planner gives:

Each caffeine cut-off is 6 hours before that night’s bed. After day 3 Sam’s clock is still about 2 hours behind Singapore time, so the planner says to keep moving an hour a day until bed and wake are back at 23:00 and 07:00.

Check your answer

• Add up the shifts. 3 hours before the flight plus 1 hour on each of days 1 to 3 is 6 hours, and 2 more to come makes the full 8.
• East means earlier. Every bedtime before the flight should be earlier than your usual one. If they are getting later, the from and to zones are the wrong way round.
• Check the gap on the date. Compare both cities’ clocks on your phone; daylight saving can change the gap by an hour.

Questions people ask

What if the difference is more than 12 hours? The planner shifts the shorter way round. A 14-hour jump east is treated as 10 hours west, which takes fewer days to adjust to.

Should I sleep on the plane? Sleep if it is night at your destination, and stay awake if it is day there. Set your watch to destination time when you board so the choice is easy.

Does flying west need the same plan? The steps are the same but reversed: later nights before you go, and evening light rather than morning light. Most people find it easier.