Scorpy's blog

How to minimize perfomance losses from huge timezone changes?
By Scorpy, 11 years ago, translation, In English

  This year, IOI will be held in Brisbane, Australia. I'm from Ukraine. Brisbane's time differ at (+7) hours from my time. Contest starts at 1:00am by my local time. If you have similar experience — share your tips, please. Specifically interested in two points:
  1) How much is it affects on problem solving abilities?
  2) How can I maximize my perfomance after changing timezone?

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11 years ago, # |
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I have not been through any huge changes in timezone, yet I still want to share some of my experiences. I have participated in contests at many different times, from ideal 9-10 pm to unfavourable 2 or 7-8 am. What I can conclude is that my performance is proportional to how good I feel, not the time itself. Specifically, I often screw up in the morning since I stay up kinda late. However, if I suddenly want to sleep for some hours after my dinner, then I will do badly afterward, even it is my ideal time. I know this may sound somewhat general but if I were you, I would try to take a full sleep on the night before (nervous is always there though) and wake up a bit early. Get yourself a good physical condition and the timezone change won't matter much :)

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11 years ago, # |
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I think it's possible to shift your sleeping time after arriving at Brisbane. Most contestants arrive at Brisbane in 6th July,so there will be two times to sleep at night in Brisbane before the first competition. Even if you can't sleep at first night,you should wake up next day (Sunday 7th)early — then, you would have a good sleep at 2nd night.So the affect on solving abilities would be next to nothing.

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11 years ago, # |
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Drink coffee before contest, then you will be ok.

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    11 years ago, # ^ |
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    I prefer tea, and Baklazan prefers mate :D This really seems to help. At least when I drink tea before a contest, I always do very well at it (although I drink tea before a contest so rarely that it's hardly valuable statistics :D).

    I've never really had timezone problems, but that might be because my daily regime is, in fact, nightly regime. This might help too: sleep at home at the time you would in Australia...

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11 years ago, # |
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Not a problem for anyone undergoing three hours back. I think...

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