Shift work can make sleep feel like permanent jet lag — minus the passport stamps and poolside lounging. You’re powering through a shift when your body’s begging for sleep, then finally hitting the hay at the same time most people are brewing coffee. It’s exhausting for the 11 million Americans who work the night shift.
And that’s just one type of shift work people perform. Shift work schedules can also involve rotating shifts (where a schedule changes from week to week), gig work (where long shifts at odd hours might be the only way to eke out a living), or something else entirely. Each type of shift work creates a unique set of challenges for the body’s circadian rhythm, leaving workers struggling to get restorative shut-eye on a consistent basis.
In an ideal world, everyone would have a work schedule that aligns with their sleep preferences. But since many jobs don’t come with a dream schedule, understanding how different types of shift work affect sleep and what you can do about it can help you work toward sound slumber — even if you’re not on from 9-to-5.
How Shift Work Disrupts Sleep
A regular 9-to-5 work schedule (or a version close to it) generally aligns with the body’s circadian rhythm, which can go a long way toward supporting healthy sleep habits. This internal clock regulates the body’s sleep-wake cycle and it’s highly sensitive to light. A blast of sunlight in the morning is the cue to wake up, while the darkness of night signals that it’s time to wind down. The changes in light trigger your brain to adjust the levels of certain hormones (like melatonin) so you feel alert during the day and sleepy at night. Plus, it helps keep you on a consistent sleep schedule — a critical component of getting quality sleep, per the National Institutes of Health.
But when shift work flips your schedule, it confuses this system, making it harder to fall asleep, stay asleep, and feel truly rested. It can even lead to shift work disorder, a circadian rhythm sleep disorder that can cause excessive sleepiness at unwanted times and insomnia. This condition affects between 10 percent and 40 percent of people who have nontraditional work hours, per the Cleveland Clinic.
“It’s not just the shift work that throws things off,” adds Leah Kaylor, PhD, a licensed clinical psychologist who served in the sleep clinic at a Veterans Affairs health center and now works with law enforcement. “It’s also you wanting to be part of normal society.”
She explains that many shift workers sacrifice even more sleep just to keep up with everyday life — whether it’s cheering on their child at a baseball game, running errands at the pharmacy or bank, or grabbing dinner with friends who stick to a standard schedule.
“Trying to fit in shift work and continue to have a normal life can lead to chronic sleep deprivation,” explains Kaylor, who covers this in her forthcoming book, “The Sleep Advantage,” set to be released later this year.
Not only does that limit the hours available for you to sleep before your next shift begins, it also creates another issue: an inconsistent sleep schedule. A 2009 study published by BMC Public Health found a link between irregular bedtime schedules and poor sleep quality.
You might know you need to go to sleep by 10 a.m. to get enough rest before you start work at 8 p.m., but instead, you stay up until noon to squeeze in a doctor’s appointment after your night shift. That kind of disruption can throw your body’s internal clock even further out of sync, making it even harder to get quality sleep on a regular basis.
The same challenges apply to shift work with irregular hours. Rotating shifts might have you working nights for part of the week, then flipping to daytime hours the next. Gig work often means long or unpredictable hours, depending on the demands of the job. And if you’re on call, your sleep could be interrupted at any time — making it even tougher to maintain a healthy rest routine.
How Each Type of Shift Work Impacts Sleep (And What You Can Do About It)
While all shift work can interfere with sleep, the type of schedule you work plays a big role in how much it affects your rest. Here’s how different types of shift work can affect your sleep, plus specific strategies to get better shut-eye on any schedule outside of 9-to-5.
Night Shift
Night shift forces you to function completely opposite to what our circadian rhythms are designed for. You’re required to be awake and alert in the middle of the night, then try to get some sleep while the sun is shining.
Kaylor says this type of schedule can be more disruptive for some people’s sleep than others.
“Night owls are more naturally drawn toward night shift work, so it might be slightly less damaging, but I still don’t recommend it,” she says.
Research from 2017 notes that night work can significantly increase your risk for sleep disturbance, which can harm both your physical and mental health. And 51 percent of people who work night shifts have at least one sleep disorder, such as sleep apnea, insomnia, or restless leg syndrome, according to a 2023 study in Frontiers in Psychiatry.
The good news? Sleeping at odd hours becomes a bit easier when your schedule is consistent week after week, even if it involves working overnight.
Kaylor recommends carefully managing your exposure to light to help train your brain. More specifically, she suggests wearing very dark sunglasses when you’re driving home from work in the morning (so you’re not exposed to as much sunlight, which tells your brain it’s time to be alert), and using a sunrise alarm clock to help the brain stop melatonin production and wake up feeling ready to go when it’s time to get ready for work.
Another thing that can help is finding a consistent way to switch “off” from work mentally, says Daniel Vasilevski, director and owner of Bright Force Electrical, who sometimes needs to work late at night.
“The adrenaline from a late-night job is still there, and if I try to sleep right away, I just end up starting at the ceiling,” he says.
To cope, he stops looking at his phone, dims the lights, winds down in a quiet room, draws the curtains, and turns on a white noise machine. This helps reduce distractions and tell his mind that it’s time to sleep — even if it’s daytime outside.
“When you work irregular hours, you have to be intentional about making sleep a priority, or exhaustion builds up quickly,” he says.
Rotating Shifts
Rotating shifts — where your work hours change from week to week or even day to day — can be especially hard on sleep. You get all the challenges of night shift work, plus the added difficulty of constantly adjusting to a new schedule just as your body starts to adapt.
“Rotating shifts are absolutely the hardest for sleep compared to other types of shift work,” Kaylor says.
She continues: “Not only are we confusing the brain once by having our sleep schedule thrown off, but as it’s continually changing, the brain has such a hard time keeping up.”
In fact, an early report from 1992 found that workers on rotating shifts were three times as likely to suffer from poor sleep compared with those on a fixed-shift schedule, including night shift.
Despite the challenges, rotating shifts are a reality for many workers, including police officers, transportation employees, doctors and nurses, manufacturing professionals, hospitality staff, and emergency responders. For these folks, Kaylor suggests talking to your manager about rotating your shifts forward, like working a few days or a week of day shift, then transitioning to afternoon shift, then night shift.
“It’s a lot easier for the body to do than rotating backwards,” she notes.
She also recommends gradually shifting your sleep and wake times by 15 to 30 minutes each day ahead of a shift change to make the transition less abrupt.
Gig work
Gig work often comes with unpredictable hours, inconsistent income, and the pressure to take on whatever jobs are available — no matter the time of day (or night). That kind of unpredictability can wreak the same kind of havoc on your sleep quality as rotating shifts, especially when your work schedule varies wildly from one day to the next.
Kaylor recommends trying to keep a consistent sleep-wake schedule to the extent that you’re able to. If you usually sleep until 2 p.m. so you can work late into the evening, try to stick to that schedule even on your days off to avoid confusing your internal clock.
Where you can, avoid working at night. “It’s just so bad for the body,” says Kaylor.
No matter when your bedtime occurs, finding a consistent way to wind down after your gig work can help you drift off a little more easily. For Mariana Mendoza, who does double duty working as a local tour guide during the day and writing for Vibe Adventures travel agency at night, that often means turning on an ASMR video an hour before bedtime.
“Whether the artist is telling a story, anecdote, or making almost inaudible relaxation sounds, it really calms me down and gives me a sense of peace, like a lullaby,” she says.
Compressed Workweeks
Compressed workweeks condense a conventional 40-hour work week into fewer than five days of work. You might work four 10-hour days in a row, or even longer shifts in fewer days, depending on the arrangement at your job.
The biggest sleep-related concern with compressed workweeks is fatigue. A 2023 study on alternative work schedules found that even though compressed work weeks improve work-life balance, they often resulted in more fatigue, especially with longer shifts. While fatigue might sound like a positive thing for sleep (after all, can’t you drift off more easily when you’re super tired?), it might mean you don’t feel refreshed after you sleep, notes the Cleveland Clinic.
Prioritizing good sleep hygiene can help increase the chances of getting quality sleep when you’re on a compressed workweek schedule.
“Try cutting caffeine off a good several hours before you’re getting ready to go to bed,” Kaylor says.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), other sleep hygiene tips that can be helpful for those on a compressed workweek (or any other type of shift work) include:
- Dimming lights an hour or two before bedtime
- Practicing a consistent bedtime routine, such as slipping into cozy PJs and doing relaxing activities
- Finishing exercise at least 3 hours before bed
- Avoiding spicy meals, alcohol, and nicotine several hours before bedtime
You might also consider catching some extra Zzz’s ahead of your next compressed workweek. Peter Murphy Lewis, who pulls long hours working as a fractional chief marketing officer and creating a documentary series, calls it his “Sunday sleep bank trick.”
“I front-load my rest on Sundays with a nine-hour sleep time to recover in advance from the Monday-to-Wednesday meat-grinder,” he says. “It prevents me from crashing midweek.”
Will Shift Work Wreck Your Sleep?
We’ll be honest — working odd hours like night shifts, rotating schedules, or unpredictable gigs isn’t exactly a dream scenario for your sleep health. But that doesn’t mean you’re doomed to endless grogginess when you’re awake and tossing and turning when you need to settle down. With a few smart strategies and a bit of consistency, you can reduce the toll shift work takes on your sleep and feel ready to go when it’s time to clock in for your workday (or night).
