Don’t Fall Back If You Want to Leap Ahead – A Daylight Savings Time Hack | Vol. 19

“You will never find anybody who can give you a clear and compelling reason why we observe daylight savings time.”

Dave Barry

On November 6, 2022 at 2am, most of us will set our clocks back an hour. It’s the annual shift from daylight savings time to standard time. In direct violation of the spirit of daylight savings, the extra hour of daylight will almost universally be spent on an extra hour of sleep. With inflation being what it is, it may be the only extra of anything we get for a while.

In all other regards, daylight savings appears to be despised by all. Here’s a short list of the ills the time change bestows on us:

1. Ridiculously early nightfall when we fall back.
2. Sleep deprivation when we spring forward.
3. Bedtime routines disrupted in both fall and spring for parents of small children.
4. And let us not forget the scourge of email reminders to adjust our clocks! This was helpful when we had to reset the VCR clock lest we record a Seinfeld rerun instead of the ER finale. Today our digital clocks adjust automatically.

So today, I’d like to provide you (and Dave Barry) with one compelling reason to embrace daylight savings – a time hack I learned from bestselling author, Gretchen Rubin. I interviewed Rubin just after she published Better Than Before, a book on mastering everyday habits. I noted that the best time to build habits was in the morning when we have more willpower to do hard things. I also noted that many people struggle to get going in the morning. Here’s the hack she shared in response.
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When we fall back, instead of sleeping in, just keep getting up at the same biological time. If you’re used to hitting the snooze button at 7am, your body won’t know the difference if the alarm goes off at 6am. Voila, you just added an hour to your morning routine with zero sleep deprivation!

Starting November 7, you can join the ranks of early risers. This is a big deal. As I wrote in last week’s TwentyPercenter, those early morning hours are fertile ground for cultivating habits. You can work out, get in some reading, or knock out the next chapter of the Great American Novel. And this may be one of the last years to employ Rubin’s hack.

Earlier this year, the US Senate in a rare moment of bipartisanship passed the Sunshine Protection Act to end daylight savings next year. The whole thing started in 1918 to preserve coal during WWI. One hundred and five years later, the sun may set on daylight savings if the bill gets ratified by the House.

One question to ponder in your thinking time: When the rest of the world falls back, will I leap forward?​

Make an Impact!
Jay Papasan

Co-author of The One Thing & The Millionaire Real Estate Agent ​