Rebecca Johnson: Spring Forward

It’s daylight saving time again.
Or: Who moved my cheese clock?

This article originally appeared in the March 2016 edition of INVISION.

It happens every year, just like clockwork (pun intended). One Sunday in mid-March, time “springs forward.” According to Wikipedia, “Daylight saving time in the United States is the practice of setting the clock forward by one hour during the warmer part of the year, so that evenings have more daylight and mornings have less.”

Daylight saving time is rather confusing. To start with, pretty much everyone in the United States takes part in this annual ritual, except Arizona. No, wait: The Navajo Nation lies mostly within Arizona, but it does observe daylight saving time. Alaskans spring forward, but Hawaiians do not.

And that doesn’t even start to address daylight saving time’s impact on individuals and businesses. For instance, is the clock in my car wrong now, or did I ever change it last November, which would make it right? Am I losing an hour of sleep, or gaining an hour of awake?

That phone conference that I scheduled with an Arizona client last month … what time do I call now? Is it daylight saving time or daylight savings time? (It’s the former, even though most people say “savings,” right?) And why can’t I get the song by Chicago out of my head? (“Does anybody really know what time it is? Does anybody really care?”)

While I enjoy having an extra hour of daylight, what I really need is an extra hour of time in the day. It seems that my to-do list is always longer than my hours to get it done, no matter what time of year. In 2013, a Huffington Post poll asked a thousand adults how they would use an extra hour a day. The top four answers were relax, sleep, spend time with family or friends, or enjoy athletic activity/exercise.
I found it interesting that office work came in last, with only 5 percent of people mentioning it. Personally, when I think of needing more time, my mind goes to getting more office work done, but this poll made me stop and think about how I really need to be spending my time. The top picks on this list — see it at invmag.us/time — are more about the quality of life instead of the quantity.

Let’s face it. There are 24 hours in the day, no matter whether you tack the daylight to the beginning or the end. So let’s make the most of each minute, whatever way you choose to spend your time.