What I learned from practicing Daylight Savings Time for an entire year
Or, why we need to rethink seasonal time change for good
Hopefully you're aware that tomorrow, Sunday March 8th at 2AM, will mark the beginning of Daylight Savings Time (DST) in North America.
It’s always been funny to me how people don't seem to complain as much about “springing forward” beyond that groan of needing to get up an extra hour early for work, but come autumn, the thought of having to again lose that extra hour of daylight, plunging us back into the darkness of winter, becomes a national crisis of conscience. Despite the fact that a large number of countries leave their clocks as-is all year around, we in the United States (except for Arizona, Hawaii, some parts of Indiana, and most US territories) still embrace this odd tradition of moving daylight hours around twice a year (almost arbitrarily if you look at the history of DST).
Beyond the logistics of literally changing time every six months, Daylight Savings Time (or more so, the lack of DST) has become a semi-annual source of real frustration for many around the world. Less sunlight during the day creates whole host of problems, from an increases in depression, heart attacks, and traffic accidents to losses of hundreds of millions of dollars from the economy, and a lot more crime, specifically robberies.
But on a more personal level, choosing to discard that extra hour of daylight in the fall is just plain stupid, it’s an imposition we begrudgingly accept every year for no reason other than “that’s just how we've always done things”. A solution to a problem, based on assumptions, for circumstances which don't exist anymore and which were never effective at their intended goal: conserving energy during wartime.
So in the spirit of experimentation and the pursuit of disregarding things that make little to no sense, I triumphantly refused to set my clocks back an hour on November 2nd, 2014 of last year (which also worked out well for me considering I still wear a wristwatch). By the end of today the rest of North America will be synced back up to my schedule, but as we approach the beginning of Daylight Savings Time I can't help but reflect on my time spent the last few months living life an hour ahead of the rest of the world:
1) It’s incredible how such a small change can have such a dramatic effect
I've always been at odds with the winter time, not for the weather necessarily but because of how much darkness the season brings. Being where I am on the northern hemisphere I get fewer hours of daylight to begin with, but in addition to that, my extra hour of artificial daylight is taken away in the fall.
I can still remember being a kid and waking up at 7AM to get ready for school, being greeted by nothing but dark skies. You really come to appreciate your lamp on days like that, and at the time I didn't understand what was going on with me but I knew that for some reason I felt really bad in the winter. My mind didn't seem to work as well, my thoughts were foggy and I felt less enthusiastic about going about my day, not to mention how demoralizing it felt to get home from school and having it be just as dark outside as when I woke up.
Seasonal changes as well as changes in sleep patterns and disruptions to the circadian rhythm are known to have a detrimental effect on people’s well being in everything from mood to mental clarity. Though less daylight in the winter is unavoidable unless you move close to the equator, it would stand to reason that we should take advantage of exposing ourselves to as much daylight as possible in the winter months.
Avoiding the seasonal blues was one of the main reasons I wanted to pursue this experiment, to see if being 60 minutes ahead really made a marked difference on my winter mood. But now having lived through it, I can say with full satisfaction that I actually did feel noticeably more cheerful in the months leading up to the winter equinox than I generally I would have otherwise.
I attribute this in part to realizing some of the expected outcomes of my experiment so early into the season, namely that I wasn't succumbing to the creeping depression of watching the days get shorter, nor did I find myself having to adjust my sleep schedule to suit the time change. Also being aware of my situation, the fact that there was increasingly less daylight to be had, helps you appreciate the little bit of light that can be squeezed from the day. With my new schedule I was able to get in just enough time for a walk most evenings right around when the sun was beginning to set, and having that small sliver of sun most evenings gave me something to smile about.
2) It’s easy to remember you’re an hour ahead, but your mind never really adjusts
I woke up at 8AM on November 2nd and felt like any other 8AM I would have experienced prior to DST ending. I’m not a morning person by any stretch of the imagination, but being an hour ahead of everyone else almost tricked me into thinking I could be. Even though it’s 8:15AM for me and I'm just getting a pot of coffee started, it’s 7:15AM for the rest of the east coast and they're just beginning to stir from sleep. I guess this is what seizing the day feels like!
Though I had no adjustments to make for myself going into the end of DST, there is still some adjusting to the world around you which takes place. If you can subtract an hour from your current time then you have the cognitive capacity to deal with such time changes (not to mention international travel), but something I did not realize going into the experiment was just how often I'd be reminding myself of what time it was for everyone else.
As a freelancer web developer and I work with clients in many different timezones so it’s nothing new to me to schedule a meeting at 3PM PST and have to pick my phone up at 6PM my time. One might say I'm well adjusted, and as an extension of that I felt at ease putting myself an hour ahead of everyone else, but despite my watch, cellphone, and computer all telling me one thing I couldn't help but think to myself “It’s 11AM right now which mean it’s actually 10AM right now”.
This line of reasoning never subsided regardless of if I was meeting someone for lunch or trying to get to a movie on time, and while it wasn't much of a strain on my daily life, having to keep a constant reminder in the back of my head became somewhat of an annoyance. And not only that, but at times I found myself justifying my schedule relative to the world at large (“well it’s 2AM for me, but that mean it’s actually 1AM so I guess I can stay out for another drink”). Despite it being such a slight offset, being an hour ahead is still an offset, so needless to say, and I'm looking forward to getting back in sync with everyone else ASAP.
3) Being on the early side of things has its advantages
In the last five months I have never been late to a meeting. I've showed up to every one of my scheduled appointments either on time or vastly ahead of time. This is a sea change from my normal habit of procrastination, waiting just long enough to make it into the office as the clock sweeps past 9AM.
When you live life an hour ahead of everyone else you begin to adopt a mindset of preemption. This mostly happened to me because I found myself more sensitive to time and scheduling, having to re-think about when appointments were or even what time of the day it was. Your mind becomes more cognizant of the fact that time is of the essence. The other factor that mentally prepared me to face an appointment was that, relative to my own schedule, the chosen time of an event had already come and gone. I've been ready for the 3PM meeting for an hour already!
Even though the start time of an event is just a number, there’s some kind of mental conditioning that goes on when you arrive at something “on time” yet are still an hour early. We've all experienced this in some form or another, getting at the airport an ahead of schedule so that you can get through security without having to worry about missing your flight, for example. In a way, you might be able to consider this a form of reverse procrastination, but regardless, I will certainly miss being an accidental early bird come March 8th.
4) Time is all relative, sort of
Even though I might look at the clock and say it’s noon but someone else looks at the clock and declares it’s 11AM, the sun is still at the same position in the sky. Neither of us are necessarily wrong about what time it is we just happen to have different perspectives on the time relative to the devices which help us determine what time it is. The invention of time is not a new concept but the invention of the clock is, relative to how long time has existed (forever).
For as long as we've observed the position of the sun we've assigned a value to where we are at any given point during the day. We know that the cycle of day and night repeats itself every 24 hours (roughly), so within that cycle we can divide up portions of the day and this has been the basis of timekeeping ever since people decided to start keeping time. Though these portions of the day have taken on a significance with numbers (“it’s 4PM right now, soon it will be 5PM”) time still have a relative flow about it which has no regard for AM, PM, or any of the ways we have found to mark time.
It has always been apparent that time exists beyond any one thing, it will continue to exist long after anyone reading this article is gone, yet, time as we conceptualize it is relative to an observer. Right now it’s dark outside for me, but somewhere in India the day is just beginning. Time is still fixed, the position of the sun hasn't changed, but because I'm experiencing different phenomena than a guy in India, our perception of what time it is differs.
I’m leaving a lot of discussion out here, but these are just some of topics you consider when your schedule becomes fundamentally different than the rest of the world around you. The experience of not setting my clock back this season was worth it if only for the metaphysical aspects of the universe which you start to consider due to such a situation.
5) Societies follow a lot of antiquated rules which can be realistically challenged
Say what you will about Daylight Savings Time (I certainly have), but despite its intention in helping us save coal and fuel resources during World War I and World War II, those days are through. As such, other countries, governments, and even individual states have opted in and out of this system as it has suited them.
Why we as a nation still follow this policy of falling back and springing forward is still a bit of a mystery. Sure there are laws on the books which mandate the rules of Daylight Savings Time as well as some industries which lobby Congress over the issue (sporting goods manufacturers love DST, the cable television industry not so much), but on the whole the system is able to continue as it is because we as a society fail to place any real challenges on the issue.
Certainly the system receives more scrutiny just before and right after we flip the clocks around, yet those are the only times of the year during which we consider it a problem. Once we've had a little breathing room we get comfortable enough with the change and quiet down once again, but maybe we should see this complacency as a problem and not as a normal routine.
Unlike laws which prevent you from taking someone else’s property and calling it your own, you really have no legal obligation to abide by the end of Daylight Savings Time beyond your own ability to adjust a schedule accordingly. It can even be fun (and a little devious) to buck such a trend and live life true to the values which make the most sense to you. I’m talking about personal values in the least subjective sense of the word here, you should still be paying taxes, get your kids vaccinated, and stopping your car at red lights, but it can be a healthy exercise to take into account what external factors affect you in everyday life and how mitigating them could potentially impact your world for the better.
If anything, I encourage more people to think rationally about some of the ideas we knowingly or unknowingly accept in life as everyday values and challenge them in your own personal way (again, imposing that value on yourself, not others). I would hope to see others try out such an experiment for themselves and live on Daylight Savings Time all year around (perhaps writing about your own experiences with the adjustment, I'd certainly want to read them).
So for those who are still following the system, remember to set your clocks forward one hour tonight, but who knows, maybe tonight will be the last time you choose to ever reset your clock again (for me it certainly was last year). And maybe, just maybe, with enough people who are willing to buck the trend and have their voices heard on the issue, we can push to make 2015 the last year in which we ever have to worry about losing that extra hour of daylight for good.
