I’m a nurse and I don’t do night shifts. The few times I did it I earned a 150% differential but it’s not worth the money: I’d go back home and have to use noise cancelling headphones to sleep, 'cause people are loud, I’d wake up rested at 04:00 pm, but completely destroying my circadian rhythm. I’d need a whole day or 2 to recover my regular rhythm because otherwise I’d be a zombie.
I hear my coworkers who do night shift complaining about this same issue, but they still pick up night shifts, which I don’t understand.
To me it was impossible to have something akin to a life while working night shift, but I’ve met some people that only do night shifts: the housewife that only works 4 nights shifts per month, the single mother or young wife or husband who work 14 night shifts per month and have the next 2 weeks for him/herself…
I don’t understand why they do it. It’s extremely taxing and not worth it imho.
But if you do, how do you have a life? And how do you keep yourself healthy?
The “having a life”-aspect isn’t applicable to me, as I worked night shift while I was offshore. This inirially meant midnight->noon. But since this was isolated from the rest of the world, the only real difference was that midnight snack served as breakfast, breakfast as lunch, and lunch was dinner. Afterwards the rest of the shift and I would usually watch a movie.
After a while I started doing a special shift from 1800 to 0600 (nicknamed Vampire Shift), so that I could cover for the chief tech during his off hours. I loved it: It was quieter, cooler temperature (I’m an Arctic guy, and we were operating in a tropical climate), generally a lot more relaxed.
As for circadian rhythm, it didn’t matter, as it was five weeks straight. And I was normally severely jetlagged after traveling to/from work anyway.