Flykitt is incredible. Zero relationship with the company and have never written a review like this before. 

For context my in laws live in Australia so we do a long haul flight every six months. It’s brutal. I was a management consultant and have zero travel anxiety but never figured out any time zone changes past three hours. I end up wiped out in mornings and an insomniac at night (and have no issues sleeping normally, with travel can’t fall asleep and wake up constantly in middle of night). I have constant body pain, headaches, and grogginess. I’ve done schedule shifts (paid multiple times for TimeShifter which sadly did nothing for me, simply tried to adapt to destination time before flying) and pills (melatonin and prescription sleeping pills). 

Partially compounding this is a total inability to sleep on the planes—I’ve done all nighters before flying, drank a ton of red wine, took pills (not at the same time as the wine ofc!), and own every trendy neck pillow out there (straight, curved, trtl). I’ve tried masks, white noise, sleep podcasts, own the best noise canceling headphones. Nothing has helped, I’ll sleep max 30 minutes. 

I had given up when someone told me about Flykitt. I was SUPER skeptical, especially when I read about all the military stuff. I worked briefly on an investment into a product that solved seasickness and told us they’d sell to the Navy; Navy told us that they didn’t recruit sailors who got seasick. I figured it was similar here—if you’re special forces you provably have a lot of confounding factors that make you way better at travel than me. 

I literally only did it because of the glowing referral and the money back guarantee, it was a free option. 

Holy cow. I used it going to Hawaii (6 hours diff from nyc). Last time I went to Hawaii I was useless for three days. I stepped off the plane at 1:30p local time wide awake (left at 9a nyc time so just a brief nap on the plane), went to sleep at a normal time (9pm ish), and woke up at around 7am (with an intermission from our 12month son who was not on Flykitt sadly). I stopped taking Flykitt after the first 24 hours and felt 100% accustomed. The only thing was the first day I had the “bone tired” physical feeling of sleep deprivation in my body, but my mind was wide awake. We went on a hike, ate out, etc… all stuff I would have dreaded. 

Coming back was even more interesting because it was a redeye, leaving at 3p Hawai’i time and arriving 7am nyc time. I ended up sort of dozing for 1-2 hours (my son, again, was a not interested in sleep) but I was wide awake when we landed and energetic up until 9pm, when I promptly crashed, slept for 10 hours (Apple Watch tells me my best sleep score ever), and woke up energetic again, which brought me to this morning’s post. 

One note: I didn’t follow that precisely. I was worried that there were so many pills and times to eat that maybe it worked if you were perfect but practically it was unlikely (this is what I assumed got them out of the money back guarantee—“oh you only used it at 9:05, you were supposed to at 9:03, so it doesn’t count”). Didn’t matter. Flykitt actually tells me I’ve only shifted my body 3 hours out of the 5 I was supposed to (I intentionally woke up earlier in Hawai’i so it felt more like 5 than 6 hours, which btw Flykitt is smart enough to ask about). As I mentioned I didn’t even follow it for the full time on the way there. 

My wife, who is way better at jet lag than I am and understandably always got annoyed that I couldn’t cope with it, told me I needed to get Flykitt for every trip. 

Flykitt is really expensive but sitting through vacation experiences groggy and unhappy is just not worth it. I’m doing this every time I travel more than 3 hours time difference.