YOU ARE GETTING VERY SLEEPY Plenty of products exist that promise to address travel fatigue and other sleep issues, but few will help make sure you don’t fall asleep while waiting for your checked luggage.
RICK HOUGH, 53, has suffered from jet lag since his first trip to Paris in 1988. The CEO of an asset management company in New York City would try to get as much sleep as he could before, during and after flights, to no avail. In 2019, he discovered an app called Timeshifter, which uses your flight itinerary to provide a personalized schedule of when you should sleep, drink caffeine and avoid light. Now, even multi-leg trips don’t phase him—last summer, he went through Copenhagen, Greenland, San Diego, New York and Alaska in three weeks. Despite shifting forward six time zones, then back another four from New York, “I missed nothing,” he said.
Despite success stories like Mr. Hough’s, some seasoned globe-trotters maintain there is not much you can do to solve your jet lag. Bob Robotti, 69, an investment adviser in New York City, has been traveling regularly for business since 2004 and surpassed a million in-flight miles a decade ago. On one trip to London, Mr. Robotti recalled, he fell asleep three different times in a one-on-one meeting that lasted all of an hour. “You know it’s going to be hard,” he said of dealing with sleep issues while traveling internationally. “But it’s just a matter of buckling down. I power through.”