Free tool
A personalised day-by-day adaptation plan — sleep, light, and melatonin timing calibrated to your direction of travel. Based on published circadian research.
Gear that supports the plan
The schedule above tells you when to sleep, seek light, and dose melatonin. These tools make execution practical on a real flight and at the destination.
OLLY
0.5 mg matches the dose used in circadian-shift research — most over-the-counter melatonin is 5–10× too high. Marketed for kids, but the dose is the same one used in adult jet lag studies. Not a pure isolate (also contains L-theanine, chamomile, lemon balm), so source elsewhere if you want clean melatonin only.
View on Amazon
Manta
Contoured cups sit away from eyes — no lid pressure, no interference with REM movement. Adjustable for most face shapes. Full blackout. Stays in place when you turn.
View on AmazonEastward shifts: melatonin matters more. Westward shifts: skip the melatonin, the mask still helps.
Two nights before departure. Shifting your bedtime by an hour or two on the two days before your flight does the bulk of the adaptation work. After that, the post-arrival schedule takes over — it's calibrated in your destination's local time.
The human circadian rhythm runs slightly longer than 24 hours, so delaying sleep (westward) is naturally easier than advancing it (eastward). For shifts beyond 9 hours east, the calculator may treat the trip as an equivalent westward delay, since going the 'long way round' can be easier than forcing a large advance.
Low-dose melatonin (0.3 – 0.5 mg) taken 30 minutes before target bedtime has strong evidence for eastward jet lag. Higher doses (3 – 10 mg) are not more effective and can cause grogginess. Consult a doctor if you take other medications, are pregnant, or have a medical condition.
If you're travelling less than 48 hours and can keep a schedule close to your home time zone, don't bother adapting — just stay on origin time. Time-sensitive meetings might warrant a partial shift, but full adaptation isn't worth it for short stays.
Yes. UTC offsets are resolved at your specific flight date using the IANA timezone database, so if you fly across a DST boundary (either at origin or destination), the calculation reflects the actual offset in effect on that day.
Yes — every result has its own URL. Bookmark it, send it to yourself, or share it with a travel partner. The route and date are encoded in the link so the page always loads the same schedule.