This is all a product of decoupling hours of operation from seasonal cycles.
People are worried about waking up in darkness to have to go to work (rightfully), and the actual solution is not to shift the clock around, it's to shift starting hours later in the day, and end working earlier, in the winter.
We're arranging our entire lives around the convenience of corporations, and doing studies to figure out which way of doing so is least detrimental to us, rather than just not doing so in the first place.
> People are worried about waking up in darkness to have to go to work (rightfully), and the actual solution is not to shift the clock around, it's to shift starting hours later in the day, and end working earlier, in the winter.
Or you can perhaps use an old school Japanese system where hours are not of fixed length (3600s) but variable:
Except you're not going to be more productive working those additional hours in the summer, so as unless you're willing to take the respective pay cut for working less hours, this proposal is a non-starter. Personally, I'd argue that more (smaller e.g. 15 minute) shifts would be better (and you could more closely track sunrise), and avoid the hard shift which it feels is the main complaint people have with switching timezone.
It's a non-starter in your mind, because you have already accepted that businesses get to dictate it be so, and that instead we must pass laws (e.g. daylight savings) to govern all people to conform to their wishes.
We can also let people dictate that it will be my/another way, and pass laws to govern businesses instead.
And it's wild that so many people nowadays don't seem to realize this is perfectly normal and expected.
We didn't used to have 5-day workweeks. Or 8 hour days as the norm. Or worker's comp. etc etc etc etc...
Anyone looking at this with an ounce of willingness to research it would have chosen permanent standard time but they never even offered that in any of the referendums across the provinces that switched. I'm getting the high end bright wake uplights for my kids this winter. Pretty annoying.
All of the science supports permanent daylight time.
Even this article, while stating the opposite conclusion, directly scientifically supports permanent daylight time as beneficial for most people.
It points out sunrise being at 0751 versus 0851 for Toronto. That's the anticipated sunrise time on 1 January 2027. The anticipated sunset time is 1651.
That means that someone working in a cubicle for a standard 0800-1700 schedule will get 9 minutes of possible daylight under winter time, versus 51 minutes under daylight time (sunrise 0851, sunset 1751).
Lack of sunlight leads to terrible circadian rhythms. There is absolutely zero scientific support for the proposition that nine minutes of daylight is healthier for our circadian rhythms than fifty-one minutes of daylight. No person could possibly argue such a thing in good faith.
(Also, I have a terminology quibble with "Standard Time," since Daylight Time is the actual standard, and we observe it eight months of the year.)
> Even this article, while stating the opposite conclusion, directly scientifically supports permanent daylight time as beneficial for most people.
From the published paper:
> Findings suggested that pDST and pST offered health advantages compared with the current twice-yearly clock changes, but the health benefits of pDST were lower than those of pST by a third. Notably, the comparative benefits of pST were greatest in northern regions of the continental US, which are similar to the latitudes in which most people in Canada reside.
It is completely ridiculous to say that someone working 9-5 doesn't see any daylight during that period. Go for a walk at lunch time.
Conversely, getting up in the pitch dark and leaving the house in the pitch dark when the sun isn't going to rise for another hour is a horrible prospect and I hope I never have that inflicted on me. The evidence in the article is clear: our bodies need light in the morning more than we need it in the evening. Yes, winter sucks in northern latitudes, but we've just got to make use of the little daylight as best as we can. The flip side is by using DST we get these lovely long evenings in the summer.
I am not able rightly to apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question.
What possible meaning could the phrase "noon happens at noon" have? That's tautological and meaningless.
And if your solution requires a wholly independent, newly built mass coordination mechanism rather than just a minor tweak to the existing one, then I think the burden you bear for arguing your position is extremely high.
My post did not ignore the position of the sun. Indeed, it's governed by it.
I am not interested in whatever you've got going on right now. Being dishonest about others' positions is bizarre. Refusing to clarify your own is bizarre. Let me know when you're willing to engage in good faith.
If the work schedule should change, that can be done in either case of the time adopted and the debate would not matter. But with the current schedule, daylight time savings makes much more sense. Where I live in deep winter you just don't see any light at all if you work a normal schedule. If there was daylight savings in the winter instead, you could at least get some light after work.
The studies are saying it is more important for you to get that limited daylight before work rather than after. It's much better for kids sleep and school for them to walk to school in the daylight.
Right, so let’s change expectations for what a “normal” schedule should be. Perhaps stock market, banking, school, and government hours could change and this would be enough to move everyone else.
You can have (almost) permanent daylight time - you just have to relocate regularly between (let's say) Iceland and the southern tip of South America. Or even further north/south for even more daylight (albeit even lower temperatures).
Both are the same. You either change the clock twice a year or you don't. Society will adapt to it either way.
With standard time you eat at 12 and with daylight saving you eat at 1, either way you eat when the sun is highest or around that time.
The thing is that the biannual dance of the clock hands wrecks any notion of time and schedules as this month you eat/wake up/leave work too early and the next too late.
Just curious. Do you prefer then daylight during early morning rather then in the afternoon?
It’s interesting for me because early morning means for me: dealing with duties (prepare for school, commute to work, etc) so I don’t really mind doing that in the dark. But afternoon time means for me: free time (school/work is finished ) So if there’s daylight I can decide to go to the park, or play outside, or go to a terrace to eat something. Doing that in the dark is just not feasible
> It’s interesting for me because early morning means for me: dealing with duties (prepare for school, commute to work, etc) so I don’t really mind doing that in the dark.
Your circadian rhythm does not care about whether you are doing duties or fun stuff. It is being triggered/reset (or not) depending exposure to light. The more light you receive during the morning, post-wake-up, regardless of activity, the better your biology will run.
> Anyone looking at this with an ounce of willingness to research it would have chosen permanent standard time but they never even offered that in any of the referendums across the provinces that switched.
Manitoba did, and 58% wanted pDST and 34% wanted pST:
People don't even know if it's currently daylight savings time or not, and I certainly don't. All I care about is whether or not I need to change the hours. And I think most people care about that too. They don't really care about the label. They just don't wanna have to change the time every year.
I live in Ireland too, and I would hate permanent DST in the winter. I have to get my kids to school in the morning and the sun is just barely rising in the winter months by the time I drop them off. If I had to wake them and drop them to school in the pitch black I would lose my mind.
By the time it's winter it's dark in the morning regardless of DST. Still can be a pain in Autumn I'm sure, the cold wet mornings for me are tough regardless.
The age old morning people versus evening people. Sounds like the kids aren't morning people either.
Young kids are often morning people, but teenagers biologically have something going on that makes them almost universally not morning people. Forcing teenagers to go to school in the dark for several months of the year can make it very difficult for them to get to school, and leave them half asleep during school. This will have an impact on their grades, which can have a follow-on impact on their whole life.
We should probably start high school later in the morning even if we stay on standard time ; it's way more important if we switch to permanent daylight time.
> What makes no sense to me, is that secondary school starts earlier than primary school?
It starts earlier so it can end earlier so that there is time for sports and other extra-curricular activities?
Teachers spend time with students doing these activities, and the teachers have lives too. If high school ends at (e.g.) 2:30 pm, there's 60-90 minutes that stuff can happen and teachers still have 'regular work hours' of 8-4 (a shifted 9-5) so they can do things in their lives.
It is dark, but it is starting to get light. If it isn't even going to start getting light for another hour after you leave the house you might as well be getting up in the middle of the night. It would be horrible.
This is the existing graph for Dublin. Sadly it already feels like that to me waking up in winter regardless. You can see the Twilight phase is much less prominent in the mornings.
The acceptance that life has to be primarily work as a sociatal norm is the true issue. If the norm was ~20hrs/wk work this issue would vanish. I have no illusion it will improve from here.
This doesn't really match my experience living in Canada. Most people I speak to in the winter are most concerned about losing an hour of daylight in the evenings - the immediate darkness after work is obvious after the change.
If we’re going to adopt unnatural time standards to manipulate people, like permanent DST, let’s at least do something interesting like China does and set the whole country to one time zone. At least that way we can all ignore the “official” time and set business hours to whatever works best.
Humorous, but why is this person “calling” someone in 2026?
Anyway, China manages somehow. I obviously think keeping our time zones and moving them to standard time (noon ~= actual noon) would be best, I was just offering a farcical alternative that would be better than permanent DST.
I thought we wanted to prevent imposing unnatural time standards? "China manages somehow" seems nowhere close to that.
The point of the article is that timezones solve practical problems that will keep existing if you remove timezones - no matter if you do it globally or only in one large geographic region.
People have a use for a time grid that is relative to when they're awake, and the article I linked to goes into great detail why. Don't worry about telephones, people can still interact without them.
Yes, but if we’re going to impose an unnatural standard (year-round DST), which I do not prefer, let’s at least make it an interesting one. That’s been my point all along and I don’t know how to make that more clear. I’m demonstrating a preference for standard time and offering a tongue-in-cheek (though possibly slightly better somehow) alternative to universal DST, which would be horrible.
(For the curious, Chinese businesses just adjust their actual working hours locally, it’s not really an issue.)
Not really, as its a pretty shallow and trite article about abolishing ALL time zones around the world, not just within a country, totally different thing
Not entirely, if the country covers enough time zones, like China suggested above. 4 hours of difference is already half the working day, and a sizable chunk of daylight.
Discussions on daylight savings time are pointless without stating your lattitude.
[Here in London at 51 Deg North, DST is much more relevent and appreciated when the summer sun rises so early, and the winter sun so late; it helps keep ones body somewhat in line with nature].
Not only that but east-west position in the time zone. That’s the problem with DST… those on the west side of a time zone are going to work and school in complete darkness. We’ve tried this before and it was a disaster.
Latitude is only half the picture, when someone wakes up and how they spend their days also matters. I was really unhappy with DST when I had to wake up at an ungodly hour to school in the dark most of the year (except for the few days/weeks in March before the clock change).
I used to live in Spain, about one time zone West of Greenwich, but the actual time was set one hour East of Greenwich. A two hour difference.
That is to say, in winter we would wake up in pitch black darkness, commute in the dark, and the sun would finally rise while we were at school. It sucked. When I moved to London I was shocked to see how bright it was in the mornings because of that, even in winter.
Would have taken permanent BST in a heartbeat. There's little so depressing as getting out of work into the dark for months at a time, IMHO.
I remember being vaguely on board with the a radical proposal that did the rounds about 20 years ago there - Single winter, Double summer. Keep changing the clocks but shift the whole thing an hour later so we got lighter evenings.
Open-access link to the study in the Canadian Medical Association Journal:
> In this analysis, we focus not on whether seasonal clock adjustments should end, but on which policy should be adopted if time changes are eliminated. We explore the public health implications of pDST and pST — with attention to mental health and broader determinants of health — and propose measures to monitor and mitigate the impacts of policy change on population health.
The _other_ option is to shift, perhaps in two x half-hour stages over a month or longer, but around the equinoxes - the 'standard operating hours' for services and businesses.
This is often overlooked as an alternative to shifting everyone's timepiece at the same instant -- I've never understood why there's so much much emotion and/or inertia around clock changes.
I'd much prefer this option; businesses open an hour after sunrise, close an hour before sunset. That's more natural and human, to actually follow nature's cues.
But you know, why inconvenience social constructs for wealth generation when you can just literally inconvenience every human alive instead?
I don’t get it. Every time-change feels like such a huge relief to me.
In the fall, it means brighter mornings, making getting up so much easier for the entire family. It’s worth giving up the evening light so we’re not waiting for the morning schoolbus in the dark.
And likewise; I don’t want it to be sunny at 4am in June.
I never really understood why not just shift schedule. Set a certain date and move all schedules of public institutions. Inform this early enough to allow rest who want to follow. Then later fix as needed.
I fully support permanently moving to correct time. Meaning not summer time. And then just fixing schedules as needed.
We already have UTC, which is almost always used as the legal basis for all local timezone definitions. In many industries (such as in many aviation and maritime operations), UTC is used almost exclusively to synchronize things worldwide and to avoid any local timezone confusion that might cause problems.
So using UTC works great in situations where participants span multiple timezones. But I think the intuition of maintaining a local clock for local things, with solar noon kept somewhere approximately around clock noon, is still useful, since many day-to-day scheduling concerns remain entirely within one's local timezone. The key is that participants must be aware of their local timezone's offset from UTC. Not having to change their clocks twice a year would hopefully also make this easier.
But then you are the same place. You don't change the clock, but you change the schedule, so, the time is the same, but, for example, schedule starts at 7am instead of 8am. People have to get up an hour earlier.
You can't have a fixed schedule, because the time of daylight changes during the year.
Exactly, time zones exist (and have always existed, they only appeared once you needed to coordinate time across different places) as a coordination mechanism. Who and what you need to align with (e.g. where you sit on the international date line, your latitude and longitude for the solar phase) is the important part, not the actual number that appears on the clock (or on someone else's clock for that matter).
I couldn't see anything in the article about early vs late risers.
My impression when looking at this kind of research, is that it, like everything else around this subject in society. Is from the perspective. That early risers are the only valid type, and us late risers are anomolies, that should not be catered to, and our challenges are a moral failing.
For me living in Norway, one of the hardest things every fall, and that makes me depressed for weeks, is when one weekend, when the days are already getting shorter fast. One hour of evening day light gets janked overnight. It is imo. horrible.
> one of the hardest things every fall, and that makes me depressed for weeks, is when one weekend, when the days are already getting shorter fast. One hour of evening day light gets janked overnight
Same! Though you have it way worse.
I live in Belgium, I mostly get up around 08:00/08:30. I already feel quite guilty for not making the best of use of daylight in spring and summer. Around the summer solstice, the sun comes up around 05:30 over here. I can't imagine it coming up at 04:30 in the middle of summer. (Which is probably already what happens in Norway?)
How about, pick a time and stick with it. Then, if it turns out people should be getting up with the sun, we change the stupid school and business hours to accommodate humans?
> The health evidence points to standard time, largely because morning light matters for our body clocks, sleep, and mood
Depending on where you live, depending on how long your commute is and by what time you have to be at your job, ... a lot of people don't get that anyway in the winter. There is no one solution, and you're going to piss of a bunch of people anyway.
At a minimum we could do it on the same day in the UK as in America. All the meetings moving by an hour four times a year is deeply unhelpful. I have no idea when the clocks change but I definitely missed a lot of meetings by an hour.
I would rather the planet run on UTC time and no "savings" time stuff either. It would take a while to get used to, but it would make working with my teammates across the world easier, the constant time zone conversion, oh are they on DST, oh they don't honor it.. way more exhausting than hours of light or dark on one side of my work day or another.
Most of the comments so far are pushing or pulling the clock in whatever direction their personal preference is. Call me crazy but the time should be a constant, unchanging reference.
If it's dark in your location earlier in the evening, don't mess with the clock. Agree as a local society that instead of working 800 to 1700 at some point in the calendar most people transition to 700 to 1600, if that's a local issue.
Edit: Or negotiate that with your boss. Most of my team works 8 to 5, I work 7 to 4, as long as its consistent no one cares. Obviously retail employees can't do that, but customer-facing people are working past dark no matter what if it's an afternoon shift.
Yeah. I think we need to get back to a life that revolves around natural cycles and healthy circadian rhythms. It’s stupid that I have to get up in the dark to take my kid to school. Unquestionably, my kid should be sleeping until the light naturally wakes her.
This is all a product of decoupling hours of operation from seasonal cycles.
People are worried about waking up in darkness to have to go to work (rightfully), and the actual solution is not to shift the clock around, it's to shift starting hours later in the day, and end working earlier, in the winter.
We're arranging our entire lives around the convenience of corporations, and doing studies to figure out which way of doing so is least detrimental to us, rather than just not doing so in the first place.
> People are worried about waking up in darkness to have to go to work (rightfully), and the actual solution is not to shift the clock around, it's to shift starting hours later in the day, and end working earlier, in the winter.
Or you can perhaps use an old school Japanese system where hours are not of fixed length (3600s) but variable:
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_clock
There were six "hours" (time periods) between sunrise and sunset, and six between sunset to the next sunrise.
:)
That is exactly the same as timezones, except uncoordinated, so even more of a mess.
Read ang_cire’s comment again. It is describing shifting hours around across the year, or reducing them, not shifting them around across the day.
No it's not! Under this proposal you work shorter days in winter, longer days in summer, to match the natural light.
Except you're not going to be more productive working those additional hours in the summer, so as unless you're willing to take the respective pay cut for working less hours, this proposal is a non-starter. Personally, I'd argue that more (smaller e.g. 15 minute) shifts would be better (and you could more closely track sunrise), and avoid the hard shift which it feels is the main complaint people have with switching timezone.
It's a non-starter in your mind, because you have already accepted that businesses get to dictate it be so, and that instead we must pass laws (e.g. daylight savings) to govern all people to conform to their wishes.
We can also let people dictate that it will be my/another way, and pass laws to govern businesses instead.
And it's wild that so many people nowadays don't seem to realize this is perfectly normal and expected.
We didn't used to have 5-day workweeks. Or 8 hour days as the norm. Or worker's comp. etc etc etc etc...
Anyone looking at this with an ounce of willingness to research it would have chosen permanent standard time but they never even offered that in any of the referendums across the provinces that switched. I'm getting the high end bright wake uplights for my kids this winter. Pretty annoying.
Nobody wants permanent standard time. People want later daylight hours in the evening. All of the science behind it be damned.
> Nobody wants permanent standard time.
34% of respondents in a Manitoba government poll wanted it:
* https://news.gov.mb.ca/news/?item=73919
* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CQcMhLF183w
I want it (in Ontario). Every chronobiologist and sleep research society wants it: see comments with link dumps on their position statements:
* https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30691158
* https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30691237
All of the science supports permanent daylight time.
Even this article, while stating the opposite conclusion, directly scientifically supports permanent daylight time as beneficial for most people.
It points out sunrise being at 0751 versus 0851 for Toronto. That's the anticipated sunrise time on 1 January 2027. The anticipated sunset time is 1651.
That means that someone working in a cubicle for a standard 0800-1700 schedule will get 9 minutes of possible daylight under winter time, versus 51 minutes under daylight time (sunrise 0851, sunset 1751).
Lack of sunlight leads to terrible circadian rhythms. There is absolutely zero scientific support for the proposition that nine minutes of daylight is healthier for our circadian rhythms than fifty-one minutes of daylight. No person could possibly argue such a thing in good faith.
(Also, I have a terminology quibble with "Standard Time," since Daylight Time is the actual standard, and we observe it eight months of the year.)
> Even this article, while stating the opposite conclusion, directly scientifically supports permanent daylight time as beneficial for most people.
From the published paper:
> Findings suggested that pDST and pST offered health advantages compared with the current twice-yearly clock changes, but the health benefits of pDST were lower than those of pST by a third. Notably, the comparative benefits of pST were greatest in northern regions of the continental US, which are similar to the latitudes in which most people in Canada reside.
* https://www.cmaj.ca/content/cmaj/198/34/E1335.full.pdf
There are benefits to pDST. There are more benefits to pST.
It is completely ridiculous to say that someone working 9-5 doesn't see any daylight during that period. Go for a walk at lunch time.
Conversely, getting up in the pitch dark and leaving the house in the pitch dark when the sun isn't going to rise for another hour is a horrible prospect and I hope I never have that inflicted on me. The evidence in the article is clear: our bodies need light in the morning more than we need it in the evening. Yes, winter sucks in northern latitudes, but we've just got to make use of the little daylight as best as we can. The flip side is by using DST we get these lovely long evenings in the summer.
> Go for a walk at lunch time.
Quite the entitled, unreflected comment. Not everyone works in an office or somewhere where this is a possibility!
Yeah, ok. If you are working on an airplane, or a submarine this doesn't apply.
Why is that the “standard” work schedule? Isn’t that the problem, not the fact that noon happens at noon?
I am not able rightly to apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question.
What possible meaning could the phrase "noon happens at noon" have? That's tautological and meaningless.
And if your solution requires a wholly independent, newly built mass coordination mechanism rather than just a minor tweak to the existing one, then I think the burden you bear for arguing your position is extremely high.
What do you think it means? I think you’re feigning ignorance.
If we’re going to ignore the position of the sun, let’s just set a single “American time” to follow DC like China does and be done with it.
My post did not ignore the position of the sun. Indeed, it's governed by it.
I am not interested in whatever you've got going on right now. Being dishonest about others' positions is bizarre. Refusing to clarify your own is bizarre. Let me know when you're willing to engage in good faith.
Funny since you’re the one who isn’t engaging in good faith. Judging by votes I received, I think others understand what I mean.
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If the work schedule should change, that can be done in either case of the time adopted and the debate would not matter. But with the current schedule, daylight time savings makes much more sense. Where I live in deep winter you just don't see any light at all if you work a normal schedule. If there was daylight savings in the winter instead, you could at least get some light after work.
The studies are saying it is more important for you to get that limited daylight before work rather than after. It's much better for kids sleep and school for them to walk to school in the daylight.
Right, so let’s change expectations for what a “normal” schedule should be. Perhaps stock market, banking, school, and government hours could change and this would be enough to move everyone else.
Noon doesn't actually happen at noon
It’s close enough to solar noon in most places under standard time.
Daylight in the evening is not equivalent to daylight in the morning if a healthy circadian rhythm is the goal
You can have (almost) permanent daylight time - you just have to relocate regularly between (let's say) Iceland and the southern tip of South America. Or even further north/south for even more daylight (albeit even lower temperatures).
Both are the same. You either change the clock twice a year or you don't. Society will adapt to it either way.
With standard time you eat at 12 and with daylight saving you eat at 1, either way you eat when the sun is highest or around that time.
The thing is that the biannual dance of the clock hands wrecks any notion of time and schedules as this month you eat/wake up/leave work too early and the next too late.
Based on what exactly?!
“Nobody”
My entire household wants it.
Just curious. Do you prefer then daylight during early morning rather then in the afternoon?
It’s interesting for me because early morning means for me: dealing with duties (prepare for school, commute to work, etc) so I don’t really mind doing that in the dark. But afternoon time means for me: free time (school/work is finished ) So if there’s daylight I can decide to go to the park, or play outside, or go to a terrace to eat something. Doing that in the dark is just not feasible
> It’s interesting for me because early morning means for me: dealing with duties (prepare for school, commute to work, etc) so I don’t really mind doing that in the dark.
Your circadian rhythm does not care about whether you are doing duties or fun stuff. It is being triggered/reset (or not) depending exposure to light. The more light you receive during the morning, post-wake-up, regardless of activity, the better your biology will run.
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chronobiology
I want permanent standard time
> Anyone looking at this with an ounce of willingness to research it would have chosen permanent standard time but they never even offered that in any of the referendums across the provinces that switched.
Manitoba did, and 58% wanted pDST and 34% wanted pST:
* https://news.gov.mb.ca/news/?item=73919
* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CQcMhLF183w
Get ready for a December 21 sunrise at 09:24 (17:30 sunset) in Winnipeg.
Ok, I was thinking of BC Alberta
People don't even know if it's currently daylight savings time or not, and I certainly don't. All I care about is whether or not I need to change the hours. And I think most people care about that too. They don't really care about the label. They just don't wanna have to change the time every year.
It depends where you live. In Ireland it makes a world of difference if the sun sets before 5pm or 6pm.
Staying on Summer time means additional sun after work for an extra month. Can go for a walk or do something outside in the sun.
And for those further South it doesn't matter anyway.
I'd like to see what the additional vitamin D from that extra sun does to sleep etc. I imagine that's not part of the study.
> In Ireland it makes a world of difference if the sun sets before 5pm or 6pm.
It also makes a world of different how earlier you get exposure to light in the morning:
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chronobiology
I live in Ireland too, and I would hate permanent DST in the winter. I have to get my kids to school in the morning and the sun is just barely rising in the winter months by the time I drop them off. If I had to wake them and drop them to school in the pitch black I would lose my mind.
By the time it's winter it's dark in the morning regardless of DST. Still can be a pain in Autumn I'm sure, the cold wet mornings for me are tough regardless.
The age old morning people versus evening people. Sounds like the kids aren't morning people either.
Young kids are often morning people, but teenagers biologically have something going on that makes them almost universally not morning people. Forcing teenagers to go to school in the dark for several months of the year can make it very difficult for them to get to school, and leave them half asleep during school. This will have an impact on their grades, which can have a follow-on impact on their whole life.
We should probably start high school later in the morning even if we stay on standard time ; it's way more important if we switch to permanent daylight time.
What makes no sense to me, is that secondary school starts earlier than primary school? Or am I out of touch.
> What makes no sense to me, is that secondary school starts earlier than primary school?
It starts earlier so it can end earlier so that there is time for sports and other extra-curricular activities?
Teachers spend time with students doing these activities, and the teachers have lives too. If high school ends at (e.g.) 2:30 pm, there's 60-90 minutes that stuff can happen and teachers still have 'regular work hours' of 8-4 (a shifted 9-5) so they can do things in their lives.
It is dark, but it is starting to get light. If it isn't even going to start getting light for another hour after you leave the house you might as well be getting up in the middle of the night. It would be horrible.
This is the existing graph for Dublin. Sadly it already feels like that to me waking up in winter regardless. You can see the Twilight phase is much less prominent in the mornings.
https://cdn.worlddata.info/graphs/sunshine/ireland-m2.png
https://www.worlddata.info/europe/ireland/sunset.php
and not only in ireland.
It is so depressing to wake up, go to work in the dark and go home in the dark.
The acceptance that life has to be primarily work as a sociatal norm is the true issue. If the norm was ~20hrs/wk work this issue would vanish. I have no illusion it will improve from here.
This doesn't really match my experience living in Canada. Most people I speak to in the winter are most concerned about losing an hour of daylight in the evenings - the immediate darkness after work is obvious after the change.
100% agreed. Stick to either. Stop changing it.
> People don't even know if it's currently daylight savings time or not,
Can't blame em: Daylight Saving is a terrible name for something that happens during the time of year when there's more daylight
If we’re going to adopt unnatural time standards to manipulate people, like permanent DST, let’s at least do something interesting like China does and set the whole country to one time zone. At least that way we can all ignore the “official” time and set business hours to whatever works best.
Seems relevant: https://qntm.org/abolish
Humorous, but why is this person “calling” someone in 2026?
Anyway, China manages somehow. I obviously think keeping our time zones and moving them to standard time (noon ~= actual noon) would be best, I was just offering a farcical alternative that would be better than permanent DST.
I thought we wanted to prevent imposing unnatural time standards? "China manages somehow" seems nowhere close to that.
The point of the article is that timezones solve practical problems that will keep existing if you remove timezones - no matter if you do it globally or only in one large geographic region.
People have a use for a time grid that is relative to when they're awake, and the article I linked to goes into great detail why. Don't worry about telephones, people can still interact without them.
Yes, but if we’re going to impose an unnatural standard (year-round DST), which I do not prefer, let’s at least make it an interesting one. That’s been my point all along and I don’t know how to make that more clear. I’m demonstrating a preference for standard time and offering a tongue-in-cheek (though possibly slightly better somehow) alternative to universal DST, which would be horrible.
(For the curious, Chinese businesses just adjust their actual working hours locally, it’s not really an issue.)
Not really, as its a pretty shallow and trite article about abolishing ALL time zones around the world, not just within a country, totally different thing
Not entirely, if the country covers enough time zones, like China suggested above. 4 hours of difference is already half the working day, and a sizable chunk of daylight.
STOP.
Discussions on daylight savings time are pointless without stating your lattitude.
[Here in London at 51 Deg North, DST is much more relevent and appreciated when the summer sun rises so early, and the winter sun so late; it helps keep ones body somewhat in line with nature].
Not only that but east-west position in the time zone. That’s the problem with DST… those on the west side of a time zone are going to work and school in complete darkness. We’ve tried this before and it was a disaster.
You can have smaller timezones.
Latitude is only half the picture, when someone wakes up and how they spend their days also matters. I was really unhappy with DST when I had to wake up at an ungodly hour to school in the dark most of the year (except for the few days/weeks in March before the clock change).
In this case, the analysis focuses on Canada, which does have a few population centres around the same latitude as London.
It's all relative to how much shifted you are to the solar time anyway.
Large areas in Europe are permanently away from solar time already (regardless of DST).
And your longitude as well. Being at the extreme east or extreme west of your timezone is a very different experience.
I used to live in Spain, about one time zone West of Greenwich, but the actual time was set one hour East of Greenwich. A two hour difference.
That is to say, in winter we would wake up in pitch black darkness, commute in the dark, and the sun would finally rise while we were at school. It sucked. When I moved to London I was shocked to see how bright it was in the mornings because of that, even in winter.
> in winter we would wake up in pitch black darkness, commute in the dark, and the sun would finally rise while we were at school. It sucked.
But you had that extra daylight time in the afternoon (which in London wouldn’t be the case). Wasnt that better? Just curious. For me it would be
No, it was not better. Waking up in pitch black darkness messes up your circadian rhythm. Just as the linked article says. Speaking from experience!
Lived in London for 10 years.
Would have taken permanent BST in a heartbeat. There's little so depressing as getting out of work into the dark for months at a time, IMHO.
I remember being vaguely on board with the a radical proposal that did the rounds about 20 years ago there - Single winter, Double summer. Keep changing the clocks but shift the whole thing an hour later so we got lighter evenings.
Permanent whatever time is better than changing times. Standard or daylight saving doesn't matter, society will adapt schedules to either.
Open-access link to the study in the Canadian Medical Association Journal:
> In this analysis, we focus not on whether seasonal clock adjustments should end, but on which policy should be adopted if time changes are eliminated. We explore the public health implications of pDST and pST — with attention to mental health and broader determinants of health — and propose measures to monitor and mitigate the impacts of policy change on population health.
* https://www.cmaj.ca/content/198/34/E1335 / https://doi.org/10.1503/cmaj.261089
* PDF: https://www.cmaj.ca/content/cmaj/198/34/E1335.full.pdf
The _other_ option is to shift, perhaps in two x half-hour stages over a month or longer, but around the equinoxes - the 'standard operating hours' for services and businesses.
This is often overlooked as an alternative to shifting everyone's timepiece at the same instant -- I've never understood why there's so much much emotion and/or inertia around clock changes.
I'd much prefer this option; businesses open an hour after sunrise, close an hour before sunset. That's more natural and human, to actually follow nature's cues.
But you know, why inconvenience social constructs for wealth generation when you can just literally inconvenience every human alive instead?
I don’t get it. Every time-change feels like such a huge relief to me.
In the fall, it means brighter mornings, making getting up so much easier for the entire family. It’s worth giving up the evening light so we’re not waiting for the morning schoolbus in the dark.
And likewise; I don’t want it to be sunny at 4am in June.
So changing the clock suits me perfectly.
For context: I’m at 45latitude (Toronto)
I never really understood why not just shift schedule. Set a certain date and move all schedules of public institutions. Inform this early enough to allow rest who want to follow. Then later fix as needed.
I fully support permanently moving to correct time. Meaning not summer time. And then just fixing schedules as needed.
I agree. There is no reason we have to be at work 9-5 or eat dinner at 7, it's just convention.
In fact, I have considered whether it may not make sense to just have a single timezone. Would make planning internationally much easier.
> just have a single timezone
We already have UTC, which is almost always used as the legal basis for all local timezone definitions. In many industries (such as in many aviation and maritime operations), UTC is used almost exclusively to synchronize things worldwide and to avoid any local timezone confusion that might cause problems.
So using UTC works great in situations where participants span multiple timezones. But I think the intuition of maintaining a local clock for local things, with solar noon kept somewhere approximately around clock noon, is still useful, since many day-to-day scheduling concerns remain entirely within one's local timezone. The key is that participants must be aware of their local timezone's offset from UTC. Not having to change their clocks twice a year would hopefully also make this easier.
But then you are the same place. You don't change the clock, but you change the schedule, so, the time is the same, but, for example, schedule starts at 7am instead of 8am. People have to get up an hour earlier.
You can't have a fixed schedule, because the time of daylight changes during the year.
Exactly, time zones exist (and have always existed, they only appeared once you needed to coordinate time across different places) as a coordination mechanism. Who and what you need to align with (e.g. where you sit on the international date line, your latitude and longitude for the solar phase) is the important part, not the actual number that appears on the clock (or on someone else's clock for that matter).
I couldn't see anything in the article about early vs late risers. My impression when looking at this kind of research, is that it, like everything else around this subject in society. Is from the perspective. That early risers are the only valid type, and us late risers are anomolies, that should not be catered to, and our challenges are a moral failing.
For me living in Norway, one of the hardest things every fall, and that makes me depressed for weeks, is when one weekend, when the days are already getting shorter fast. One hour of evening day light gets janked overnight. It is imo. horrible.
> one of the hardest things every fall, and that makes me depressed for weeks, is when one weekend, when the days are already getting shorter fast. One hour of evening day light gets janked overnight
Same! Though you have it way worse.
I live in Belgium, I mostly get up around 08:00/08:30. I already feel quite guilty for not making the best of use of daylight in spring and summer. Around the summer solstice, the sun comes up around 05:30 over here. I can't imagine it coming up at 04:30 in the middle of summer. (Which is probably already what happens in Norway?)
> Around the summer solstice, the sun comes up around 05:30. I can't imagine it coming up at 04:30 in the middle of summer.
5:15 in Chicago, so 4:15, but also the sky starts lightening up 30 minutes earlier so it would effectively be more like 3:45 instead of 4:45.
How about, pick a time and stick with it. Then, if it turns out people should be getting up with the sun, we change the stupid school and business hours to accommodate humans?
> The health evidence points to standard time, largely because morning light matters for our body clocks, sleep, and mood
Depending on where you live, depending on how long your commute is and by what time you have to be at your job, ... a lot of people don't get that anyway in the winter. There is no one solution, and you're going to piss of a bunch of people anyway.
At a minimum we could do it on the same day in the UK as in America. All the meetings moving by an hour four times a year is deeply unhelpful. I have no idea when the clocks change but I definitely missed a lot of meetings by an hour.
I want permanent standard time. Few people seem to prefer that, although it is apparently popular in some states not well represented online.
Can't we settle somewhere in the middle? Like occasionally sleeping an hour longer, but never shorter?
I would rather the planet run on UTC time and no "savings" time stuff either. It would take a while to get used to, but it would make working with my teammates across the world easier, the constant time zone conversion, oh are they on DST, oh they don't honor it.. way more exhausting than hours of light or dark on one side of my work day or another.
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Can we just stop changing the clock?
Most of the comments so far are pushing or pulling the clock in whatever direction their personal preference is. Call me crazy but the time should be a constant, unchanging reference.
If it's dark in your location earlier in the evening, don't mess with the clock. Agree as a local society that instead of working 800 to 1700 at some point in the calendar most people transition to 700 to 1600, if that's a local issue.
Edit: Or negotiate that with your boss. Most of my team works 8 to 5, I work 7 to 4, as long as its consistent no one cares. Obviously retail employees can't do that, but customer-facing people are working past dark no matter what if it's an afternoon shift.
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Confoundingly, not having permanent daylight savings time could harm sleep and mental health, @inanutshellus says.
If it benefits you to have DST timing, you'll want permanent DST. If it benefits you to ditch it, you'll want to ditch it.
The effects of being on the "wrong side" affect mental health and safety.
Thus... whichever way you want to be true, is true.
It turns out that humans evolved in hyper local environments and are not designed to serve the needs of corporations and schedules.
Yeah. I think we need to get back to a life that revolves around natural cycles and healthy circadian rhythms. It’s stupid that I have to get up in the dark to take my kid to school. Unquestionably, my kid should be sleeping until the light naturally wakes her.
You are on the other side of the line, that's all.
No matter which way the government goes, someone's "mental health and safety" WILL be affected... just... somewhere else.
Implying only one side has those effects (like this topic's headline) is underhanded.