Two weeks on, two weeks off, offshore

Started 22 January 2025 · 13 replies · 155 hearts · read 1.9k times

OrrinGlasgow, UK · 22 January 2025

1.5 years ago

Two weeks on, two weeks off, offshore Writing it down partly to work out what I actually think.

The logistics of this are defeating me more than the medicine is.

I have a plan for the ordinary weeks and no plan at all for the unusual ones, and the unusual ones are where everything has gone wrong.

What I am after is the version of this that works when nobody is helping, because that is my situation and most accounts assume otherwise.

I would rather hear one person's actual arrangement in detail than five general suggestions, if anybody is willing to write theirs out.

Putting the figure in the title felt slightly dramatic, and then I counted, and two weeks is simply what it is.

Thank you. This circle has solved four practical problems for me already and I am hoping for a fifth.

LulaBournemouth, UK

I do mine straight after my last night, before sleeping, and that has been the most consistent slot I have found in four years.

BethanPontypridd, UK

My storage question was the one I asked here first, and I got a practical answer within an hour from somebody on a similar rota.

KikiFacilitatorGlasgow, UK

If you come back later and say what you actually ended up doing, that is the post the next person reads. Threads that stop are the ones that leave somebody stranded.

NoahHull, UK

I have found the guides here more usable than most because they do not assume a nine-to-five, which is rarer than it should be.

14me too 9

YannickBrussels, BE

The thing I would say to a new shift worker is: pick your anchor day and protect it. Everything else can be flexible.

AshSunderland, UK

Gently disagreeing with Noah, or rather adding the other half of it.

Somebody here suggested treating my rota as the calendar rather than the month, and reorganising my planning that way solved several things at once.

PrueChester, UK

Holding this with you rather than answering it.

TobySwindon, UK

I asked for my review appointments to be after a run of days rather than nights, and it made them considerably more useful.

SamPortland, OR

What I underestimated was how much the tiredness compounded. A rough week on top of a rota change was much worse than either alone.

12me too 7

TorinBelfast, NI

#10

Here, reading, and glad you posted.

MattNottingham, UK

#11

Gently disagreeing with Toby, or rather adding the other half of it.

What I would say is to talk to your prescriber about your actual working pattern. Mine adjusted things once she understood it.

KikiFacilitatorGlasgow, UK

#12

Facilitator note: the guides cover the practical side of this reasonably well, and what this thread has that they do not is somebody's actual Tuesday.

21me too 4

BoazHaarlem, NL

#13

My appetite on nights is completely different from my appetite on days, and I stopped trying to make one plan cover both.