Nothing should change in routine, safety-related procedures. They need to be the same every time, so that pilots can carry them out automatically and smoothly from memory. Mixing things up guarantees that very bad things will happen. Before anyone gives me the usual speech about how flying is different, no, it's not different from operating other vehicles and machines in this respect. There's no point in training to do something if the actual way of doing it will change each time it's done … that's just an invitation to disaster.
However, I've been thinking that one partial solution for sleeping in the cockpit could be video games, integrated directly into aircraft systems. You could offer pilots a choice of simple games. The common traits to all the games would be that they require a reasonable intellectual effort and high level of alertness, they would be easily interruptible, they wouldn't be so complex that they would entice a pilot into diverting his attention from other matters, and perhaps they would exercise the same skills that a pilot needs for flying.
One example of this is Tetris. If you've played this, you know how addictive it is. It's a simple game that's easy to interrupt, but it still requires clear thinking, fast reaction, and intellectual effort. It's easy to play Tetris for long periods, but it's also easy to stop if something else comes up. It is too fast to bore you to sleep, but it's easy enough to play that you don't have to concentrate exclusively on the game (you can even talk to people while you play).
When there's nothing to do in the cockpit during a long cruise, the pilot can enable the games, and play a selection of games to give himself something to do so that he doesn't nod off from boredom. No game can prevent a person from sleeping if he is well and truly fatigued, but if it's just very light fatigue, or simple boredom, a few games could help.
Since the games would be integrated into the aircraft systems, any anomaly would stop the game and alert the pilot. The games could be designed so that only one pilot can play at a time. You could even design "games" that require the pilot to do his job to play the game—for example, a game could periodically ask the pilot to enter the current altitude shown on his altimeter, just to force him to do an instrument scan.
There are many possibilities. I suspect there is a general taboo about "playing games" on the flight deck, but playing a game doesn't mean that someone isn't serious about working. It could just be a way to maintain vigilance on long trips. I think it would be better than reading a magazine, which is more passive and isn't integrated in a way that would guarantee that the pilot would become aware of any unusual situations.
I can also imagine these being integrated into an electronic flight book that a pilot could bring with him. If boredom threatens to put him to sleep, he pulls out this gadget and selects from a long list of games specially designed to keep him alert.