phase: 1. n. The offset of one's waking-sleeping schedule with
respect to the standard 24-hour cycle; a useful concept among people
who often work at night and/or according to no fixed schedule. It
is not uncommon to change one's phase by as much as 6 hours per day
on a regular basis. "What's your phase?" "I've been getting in
about 8 P.M. lately, but I'm going to wrap around to the day
schedule by Friday." A person who is roughly 12 hours out of phase
is sometimes said to be in `night mode'. (The term `day mode' is
also (but less frequently) used, meaning you're working 9 to 5 (or,
more likely, 10 to 6).) The act of altering one's cycle is called
`changing phase'; `phase shifting' has also been recently reported
from Caltech. 2. `change phase the hard way': To stay awake for a
very long time in order to get into a different phase. 3. `change
phase the easy way': To stay asleep, etc. However, some claim that
either staying awake longer or sleeping longer is easy, and that it
is _shortening_ your day or night that is really hard (see wrap
around). The `jet lag' that afflicts travelers who cross many
time-zone boundaries may be attributed to two distinct causes: the
strain of travel per se, and the strain of changing phase. Hackers
who suddenly find that they must change phase drastically in a short
period of time, particularly the hard way, experience something very
like jet lag without traveling.
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