Donlight Savings Time (the Solution to Daylight Savings Time)

Here’s something I never really thought about … Daylight Savings Time. When I was a kid, we did the “Fall Back” in the Fall and then “Spring Forward” in the Spring. Teachers told me it was invented by farmers, or created for farmers so they would have daylight when working outside.

That was good enough for me.

And I liked when one morning I would walk to school in the dark and the next morning … poof … I was walking to school in daylight.

For some reason, over the past decade, something I’d never thought about has become some sort of polarzing, Political football tossed around and how you feel about Daylight Savings somehow paints you a liberal or a conservative and “it’s dumb” or “other countries don’t have it” or “some states don’t have it” and “who is this for” and anger, anger, anger.

Show me someone with time to “talk about” Daylight Savings Time and lecture and monologue about it, and I’ll show you a boring person with nothing really to say and nothing really interesting going on in their lives. Or, if someone has time to pontificate about the evils or rightousness of Daylight Savings Time, you better tell me that this person is in great shape, has the best job that makes them happy every day, has great friends, gives to charity, journals, creates art, has uplifting hobbies, and pretty much has the perfect life and, therefore, the only thing keeping their universe from complete perfection is the twice a year time change.

NOTE: But, Don, aren’t you writing an entire Blog about Daylight Savings so aren’t you “that guy?”

NOTE ON THE NOTE:  No. I’m about to “solve” Daylight Savings.

For me, I love the “Fall Back” where we gain an hour in the Fall. I hate the “Spring Forward” because for a couple days, my internal clock hears my alarm at 6:00 a.m. but my brain and body know I’m up an hour early. That lasts, oh, until about Wednesday. Not a big deal, but I notice.

So, there’s angry people who hate Daylight Savings and I don’t like feeling tired for 1 or 2 days, so I have the solution…

Donlight Savings

Why do we move the clocks ahead, or backward, by an hour twice a year?

• March 8th, Spring Forward
• November 1st, Fall Back

Instead, beginning daily on 3/8, let’s move the clocks ahead by 15-seconds every day. There’s 238 days between 3/8 and 11/1.  Over the course of the 238 days, we’ll  have moved our clocks ahead by 1-hour. Then on 11/1, every day we set our clocks back by 28-seconds. Thereby in the 127 days between 11/1 and 3/8, we’ll move our clocks back by an hour.

But, Don, you ask … this seems too confusing and something’s not quite right? Well, you’re right and actually, I have an even better idea.  Let’s start the daily clocks-ahead every year on the Summer Soltice (June 20th) and start the clocks-back on the Winter Solstice (December 20th). Just about exactly 6-months. The longest day of the year (meaning the longest time between sunrise and sunset) and the shortest day of the year.

Summer Solstice and Winter Solstice are just about exactly half-a-yaer apart so using “Donlight Savings”, every day we’d change the clocks by 19- or 20-seconds. Which means, beginning on June 20th, every morning we set our clocks back by 20-seconds. Then on December 20th, every morning, we start setting our clocks forward by 20-seconds.

By doing this (a) we’ll never have the anger-inducing, one-day, one-hour clock adjustment and (b) even for a guy like me who sorta kinda doesn’t like feeling tired for a few days … the daily 20-second adjustment will make everything nearly imperceptible. Days will get shorter and longer, but mostly we’ll feel like yesterday wasn’t much different than today and tomorrow won’t be much different, either.

It’s 2026. We all use our iPhones to tell us the time. Apple and Android and Google and Microsoft (I have a clock in the bottom right part of my computer screen so Microsoft Windows would have to be on board with this, too). In the old days, when we all told time by our wrist watches or on the clock tower in the town square, my idea would’ve been crazy.

Now?

My idea is a quick algorithm written by AI and …poof. Daylight Savings controversy solved.

It’s not crazy. At some point, someone decided to make a calendar with months of varying lengths. Also, at some point in history, we decided “60” was a good, sensible number of “minutes” and “seconds” and that a day is “24” hours when we could probably easily figure out a way so that everything is divisible by 5s and 10s (like a “metric system” for time). Maybe that will be my next “fix”.

But for now …it’s enough that I have a fool proof plan to fix Daylight Savings.

Donlight Savings. Small, daily 20-second fast-fowards and rewinds to forever fix my groggy couple of days at work and give that a-hole at your office 8-minutes of his life back when he doesn’t have Daylight Savings to complain about anymore.

Of course, I’ll expect him to use those 8-minutes to say how “Don Kowalewski is one of the most brilliant people who ever lived.”

Write your Congressman.

 

Then