How to Hack Daylight Saving Time and Gain 7 Extra Hours Every Week
By: Jennifer Graham
Tags: Daylight Saving Time, Morning Routines, Morning, Life Hacking, Productivity

On Being a Dissident

I got my inspiration from a little girl I heard about, who happily went along with her First Communion, until she got to the part when the priest held out the consecrated wafer and said, “Body of Christ.”

At that, she reconsidered and said, ever so politely, “No, thank you.”

A brief discussion ensued, and after a few minutes, to the relief of her parents and everyone else gathered, the child acquiesced.

As for me, I’m not so compliant.

No, thank you, I will not change the sleeping schedule to which I rigidly adhere because health experts say we’re healthier when we establish a sleep routine and stick to it. (No Ambien for me, no thank you, not needed.)

No, thank you, I will not dutifully go around the house and change my clocks twice a year for reasons most people can’t even explain.

No, thank you, I will not participate in a scheme that most people loathe but persists because national lawmakers can’t bring themselves to enact change.

A Standard Time strike is a small, hopeful act of rebellion that actually has plenty of precedences. As David Prerau explained in his 2005 book Seize the Daylight, people have been ignoring state-ordered time changes for most of Daylight Saving Time history.

King Edward VII, for example, was a supporter of the first Daylight Saving Time act proposed in the UK because he was already observing his own version of it, having moved the clocks ahead 30 minutes at his castle and palaces.

And of course, the United States has a checkered history of observance, with many states and municipalities opting in or out at will, most comically in 1965 when St. Paul, Minnesota, and neighboring Minneapolis began Daylight Saving Time on different schedules, throwing the metropolis into dysfunction that required first responders to wear two watches in order to navigate the Twin Cities.

Benjamin Franklin was an early proponent of changing clocks to save money. He hated to see people asleep when it was light and later burning expensive candles and lamp oil in order so they could be awake and do things when it was dark.

Later, an English home builder by the name of William Willett campaigned for a national Daylight Saving Time plan because he believed being outside in light after the workday made people healthier in body and spirit. “While daylight surrounds us, cheerfulness reigns, anxieties press less heavily, and courage is bred for the struggle of life,” Willett wrote in 1907.

That remains true today, possibly even more now than then.

As someone who lives in New England, where it is fully and cursedly dark at 5 p.m. during winter, I’d be fine with changing our clocks every week if it meant that it was light until eight.

But that won’t happen, and our current system sucks and everyone hates it. The only benefit of having twice-annual time changes is that we have a national reminder to install new smoke alarm batteries. But we could do that on Arbor Day. The nation will one day abandon the madness, but until then, there’s nothing to stop us from doing it on our own. Go forth and ignore the time change. You’ll thank me in March, if not before.

There’s one more thing I should warn you about. You might still dread the day in March when the rest of America (save Hawaii and Arizona) “springs forward,” not because you are “losing” an hour of sleep, but because you are losing your productivity edge.

Yes, if you join me in a Standard Time strike, there will come the day, specifically March 14, 2021, when you will have to operate on the same clock as everyone one else again. You will have to re-join the herd. You will lose seven hours of productivity, not one hour of sleep.

This may be disappointing, as you likely will have enjoyed the sense of moral superiority that comes from getting up an hour earlier, not to mention all the wonderful things you’ve been accomplishing during it.

Fear not: November is coming. And I, for one, can’t wait.