How to Reset Your Body Clock

The last "job" I worked was rotating shift work, and we went from working 7 12-hour night shifts in a row (6pm-6am) to working 7 12-hour day shifts in a row (6am-6pm) - with exactly 24 hours in between to re-adjust (6am Tuesday - 6am Wednesday).

What worked for me was to stay up as late as I could so that I was really tired. When working the night shift (6pm-6am) I would usually be asleep by 7:30am or so, but on my swing day I would try to stay up until 7pm-9pm. (Sometimes I would break down and take a 30 minute nap, but I tried not to if I could, using whatever it took caffeine-wise.)

It usually helped if I gradually tried to stay up later in the mornings for the last couple days of the night shift just to get my body used to it.

I went to bed fairly early that night (usually before 9pm) to try to get a solid 8-9 hours of sleep that night. Occasionally took melatonin or a sleeping pill but not regularly.

I was usually beat after the first full 12 hour day shift but it reset my body clock pretty quickly. :)

I found this article very confusing and written very poorly.

"My ideal workday usually starts at 3:00 am and ends three hours later"

Drink coffee before taking a nap? How exactly does that work?