When we get the downlink, we have to analyze it immediately and decide how to respond to whatever it tells us. We tend to have several hours preparing for a science team meeting, a science planning meeting. We go into this meeting with our current understanding of what Mars is about, our current understanding of the health of the instruments, our suggestions for what to do next, and even some sequences that we've already written that will help us do what we want to do. The science planning meeting is going to be forty minutes later every day. On the first few days, that doesn't seem to matter.
Martian time is completely out of phase with the Earth at the beginning of the mission.
It just goes around the clock like that and pretty soon the science planning meetings at six in the morning. Now, you have to adjust your life so that you get your sleep, but you have to meet those deadlines. You're clocking forty minutes a day with everybody else on the team, but that puts you in a complete disconnect with your normal life. Your dinnertime is at two in the morning and there are no restaurants open. All of a sudden you realize you're not living the same life everyone else is living.