The DuPont roster runs a 28-day cycle: four nights, three off, three days, one off, three nights, three off, four days, then seven off. Search for it and you get workforce scheduling software explaining the pattern. None of it mentions sleep, which is a problem, because this roster contains the single worst transition in common use.
WHAT THIS PAGE WILL NOT TELL YOU
This page explains how the timing works and why. It does not print your six times, because they are not printable: they move with your finish time, your commute and the hour you wake with no alarm. Four questions, about forty seconds, no account.
- Your crash window
- Bright light: start and stop
- Sunglasses on: start and stop
- Main sleep: in bed and up
- Pre-shift nap: and when to set the alarm
- Last caffeine
FREE TO SEE YOUR CRASH WINDOW · NO ACCOUNT · 40 SECONDS
The one day off between days and nights
Three day shifts, one day off, then three night shifts. That single day is asking you to move your body clock roughly twelve hours in twenty four. It cannot be done, and trying is how people arrive at the first night already wrecked. Treat that day as a controlled partial move rather than a flip: sleep in late, stay up later than feels natural, get light in the evening and block it in the morning. You will start the night run partly adapted, which is the honest best case.
Everything below is the mechanism. The six clock times it produces depend on your finish time, your commute and how early you wake unaided, so this page cannot print them. Get yours in about forty seconds.
The four-night run is where adaptation actually happens
Four consecutive nights is long enough that the light timing pays off properly. By night three your worst hour has moved out of the middle of the shift. This is the part of the cycle where following the plan returns the most, and where skipping the sunglasses on the drive home costs the most.
Rotate forwards where you can
Your clock moves later far more easily than earlier. Days into nights is the easy direction. Nights back into days is the hard one. Where the roster gives you a choice about which end of a break to move on, move late rather than early, and use the longer breaks for the direction that fights you.
The seven days off
Seven days is genuinely enough to return to a day schedule and enjoy it. It is also enough that you will start the next cycle from scratch. That trade is worth making, because a seven-day break spent half nocturnal is a break you did not get. Flip properly: short sleep after the last night, daylight as soon as you are up, early bed, then live like a day worker for the rest of it.
What the schedule cannot fix
A 28-day cycle with a single-day turnaround is a hard roster, and no timing plan makes it easy. What a plan does is stop you making it worse: no daylight on the drive home, caffeine early in the shift rather than late, and a nap before the first night of each run. Those three are most of the available gain.
Common questions
+ − How do I handle the single day off between days and nights on DuPont?
Accept that you cannot do it fully. One day is being asked to move your clock about twelve hours, and it will not go. Treat it as a controlled partial move: sleep in late, stay up later than feels natural, get light in the evening and block it in the morning. Starting the night run partly adapted is the honest best case.
+ − Which direction should I rotate on DuPont?
Forwards wherever the roster leaves you a choice. Your clock moves later far more easily than it moves earlier, so days into nights is the downhill direction and nights back into days is the uphill one. Spend the longer breaks on the direction that fights you.
+ − Should I flip back during the seven days off?
Yes. Seven days is long enough to return to a day schedule and actually use it, and a week spent half nocturnal is a week you did not get. The cost is starting the next cycle unadapted, which is a fair trade for a real break.
+ − Is the DuPont schedule hard?
The four-night run is not the hard part; four nights is long enough for the light timing to actually work. The hard part is the single day off between three day shifts and three night shifts, which asks your clock to move about twelve hours in twenty four. It cannot. Plan that one day as a controlled partial move and the rest of the cycle is manageable.
What this is based on
Every rule the plan runs on, and where each one comes fromRelated
ShiftDawn is a scheduling and education tool built on published circadian research. Not medical advice, not a diagnosis. If you suspect a sleep disorder, see a clinician.