A Modest Proposal for the Saving of Daylight
On the occasion of the "spring forward" time shift.
This weekend will see the start of Daylight Saving Time in most of the US, with the clocks moving forward an hour in the wee hours of Sunday morning. This is a little counter-intuitive, as the “Standard Time” portion of the calendar is actually the smaller stretch from the shift back in November to the shift forward in March, but it’s a long-established annual ritual at this point.
The practice of shifting clocks forward in the spring dates to WWI, as an energy conservation measure. The logic was that by moving the time of sunset later, it would reduce the need for artificial lighting, and thus for electricity generation that would consume fuel needed for the war effort. It was intermittently employed for a long stretch after that, before being formally imposed in its modern form in 1966. The non-standard term has been extended a few times, most recently in 2005, moving the fall shift later and the spring shift earlier.
The energy-use case is probably less compelling now, in the age of widespread air conditioning, than it was in the early 20th century— indeed, that’s one of the justifications given for the state of Arizona not participating in the shift at all. Their energy usage is mostly for cooling homes, not lighting them, so extra daylight is actively counter-productive. These days, most of the reason for making the switch is psychological: there are three good things that come out of the DST clock switches.
The first of these is the benefit that will be most obvious starting Sunday, namely later sunsets through the summer. In a blink we’ll go from darkness falling during dinner to having an extra hour of light, and the number of families out for strolls, walking dogs, etc. will skyrocket (weather permitting). In May and June, this means long evenings for kids to play outdoors after school and on into the summer break.
The second is the benefit we’ll lose on Sunday, namely early winter sunrises. As the caregiver for an active dog and a ten-year-old whose school bus picks him up at 7:23am, I spend most of the cold months getting up while it’s pitch dark, and the last couple of weeks of relatively bright light have been a real mood boost. Starting this weekend, I’ll be back to needing to carry a flashlight on morning dog walks for a couple of weeks, which is a bummer.
On the good side, though, the sun has mostly been up by the time the bus arrives. Not entirely— there are a couple of weeks in December and January when the official time of sunrise is after the nominal pickup time. But that’s so much better than it would be if we stayed on DST year-round. If we didn’t make the shift back in the fall, we’d be well into April and still waiting for the bus before dawn.
There’s a third benefit most appreciated by college students and parents of small children, namely that “fall back” shift in November that buys you an extra hour of sleep (or whatever else you might be up to at 2am…) on one Saturday night. It’s really nice to have that one morning when you can move extra slowly, to release a little of the stress that builds up through the fall. There’s a little discombobulation that comes with the change, but mostly of the not-that-bad form (particularly in a work context) of being too early for things.
Really, the only bad part of the Daylight Saving Time system is what happens this weekend, when you lose an hour of sleep when the clocks “spring forward.” This leads to one Sunday that’s extra harried, and the bad kind of discombobulation where you’re an hour late for stuff on Monday. This is the part that people want to get rid of, and why DST remains a slightly controversial subject.
And that’s why I’m putting fingers to keyboard this morning, because, Dear Reader, I have a solution to put forth. A suggestion of a minor tweak that would let us keep the features we like from the existing system— late summer sunsets, early winter sunrises, and an extra hour of sleep in the fall—while eliminating the one feature we hate, namely the dislocation of the “spring forward” transition.
Here’s the plan: We keep the fall piece of the schedule as it is, dropping the clocks back a full hour one weekend in November. But instead of springing forward a full hour in March, we spread it out: we shift the clocks forward by five minutes each Saturday night for twelve consecutive weekends starting with the first Saturday after the December solstice. So, for example, in 2021, we would’ve moved the clocks forward by five minutes during the night between Christmas and Boxing Day, again the night between New Year’s Day and January 2nd, and every subsequent Saturday until this very weekend. This gets us back to Daylight Saving Time for the spring and summer on the same schedule, but without the trauma of losing a full hour all in one go.
“But that means we lose sleep for twelve consecutive weekends!” you say, to which I reply: Pshaw. You lose more than five minutes of sleep on a day when the Wordle is particularly difficult, and think nothing of it.
“But that’s twelve Mondays when we’ll be running late!” you say, and again I reply: Pshaw. There’s at least five minutes of wasted time in every meeting anyway, even leaving aside the fact that every office has That Guy who’s five minutes late for everything. We can absorb the minimal dislocation it causes without any significant effort.
“But that complicates the synchronization of meetings with people in Arizona and other foreign countries!” You can guess my reply, I’m sure. This system is so eminently sensible that everyone worldwide will want to adopt it immediately. And, really, do we want progress to be held back by the kind of people who don’t recognize the obvious virtues of this plan, or who live in Arizona? I think not.
Finally, you say “But this requires me to re-set all my clocks thirteen times a year, rather than just twice!” First of all, if that genuinely presents an insurmountable obstacle, that’s a you problem. It’s just not that complicated to move clocks forward by five minutes, and the extra practice will help you learn and remember how to do it. More importantly, the clocks that really matter— on smartphones and Internet-connected computers— will update themselves automatically, without you needing to do anything active. This also greatly simplifies the corrdination problem mentioned and dismissed above.
So: Problem solved. If we all buy in, and lobby our leaders, there’s plenty of time to make the shift to this new and improved system in time for next year’s “spring forward.” Let’s get on it.
And there you have it, my entree into the political side of timekeeping. If you would like to shower me with cash as a demonstration of gratitude, feel free to use this button to sign up for a paid subscription (and, as a bonus, get my next brilliant idea directly in your Inbox):
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You miss the obvious solution: Spring forward at 3pm on a Monday. Done and done.
As an IT person, for whom clock-switching is a biennial pain in the ass, this idea made me throw up in my mouth a little.