Daylight saving time (and no, it’s not daylight “savings” time) is set to end Nov. 7. Under federal law, daylight saving time always begins on the second Sunday in a given March, and ends on the first Sunday in November.
When you set your clocks back on the first Sunday in November, people always like to say you get an extra hour of sleep. Of course, the first Sunday in November usually coincides with deer hunting season for a certain crotchety Above the Law writer, and neither deer nor the sun give a crap what the clocks of we puny humans say. So, I’m still losing the hour of sleep in the spring but also sacrificing my extra hour of sleep in the fall by being out on the deer stand half an hour before sunrise. It’s total bullshit.
Nobody even remembers the real reason daylight saving time exists. Everyone sort of knows that maybe it has something to do with saving energy. Or something to do with farmers being able to get more work done perhaps? (Again though, let me remind you that the sun doesn’t care about our human crap, so if you rise with the sun it doesn’t matter if the clock says 7:16 a.m. or 6:16 a.m., because you still have the same amount of time to get your work done during the daylight either way.)
Managing Partners are Navigating the AI Inflection Point.
New executive research from Ari Kaplan explores how law firm leaders are responding to changing client expectations, evolving economics, talent transformation, and AI governance.
Historically, many countries experimented with daylight saving time during World War I as a wartime measure to conserve fuel. The United States was among them, but daylight saving time was soon abolished because it’s objectively awful and everyone hated it. Year-round daylight saving time came back during World War II, although it was referred to as “war time” by Franklin Roosevelt at that point. Once again, after the war ended, so did daylight saving time.
Daylight saving time as we know it came about only in 1966 with the Uniform Time Act. According to the Department of Energy, it was “seen as a means to help reduce electricity use in buildings,” but many studies since have shown that daylight saving time doesn’t actually reduce energy use in buildings.
There were various local tweaks and a few experiments, but that 1966 version is basically the same daylight saving time that the vast majority of Americans suffer through to this very day. In modern times, studies continue to demonstrate that whatever energy saved by reducing the use of light through switching the clocks for daylight saving time is offset by an increased use of energy for indoor climate control, making this all truly pointless.
We also lose a lot of economic value for no damn reason at all. Some economists estimate that sleepiness brought on by daylight saving time costs the U.S. economy at least $430 million per year, according to University of Oregon professor David Wagner.
Beyond Recall And Precision: Strategic Oversight Of AI Managed Review
AI can accelerate document review, but metrics alone aren't enough. Learn how Managing Attorney oversight turns AI-driven review into a more adaptive, strategic and defensible process.
This includes costs created through things like “cyberloafing” (looking up sports teams or whatever online instead of doing your damn work), which has been found to go up by 6 to 7 percent due to time change-related tiredness, and through things like on-the-job injuries, which have been found to be both more likely to occur and more likely to be severe following disruptive daylight saving time shifts.
The legal system is not immune either, according to Wagner: If you are unlucky enough to be being sentenced for a crime on the Monday after daylight saving time ends, you are going to be facing on average about a 5 percent increase in your sentence simply because it is being handed down by a cranky judge who probably really needs a nap.
None of that adequately captures the many longer-term health consequences either. Among other things, heart attacks, strokes, miscarriages, drug overdoses, and suicides go up because of the time change. And don’t think I’m just picking on “spring forward,” because “fall back” has been linked to an increase in depressive episodes.
Although it seems relatively clear that daylight saving time is costing us at least hundreds of millions of dollars every year, and is horrible for our health, just like on every other issue, we haven’t been able to agree on a solution (with a few notable local exceptions). Even among proponents of ending the time charge, debate has raged for years over whether it’s preferable to make daylight saving time permanent, or to make standard time permanent.
There has been some federal and state movement around the “lock the clock” movement in recent months — some of it has even been bipartisan. Yet, I suppose only time will tell (see what I did there?) whether we can finally stop switching our clocks twice every year, which would be helpful, would plow hundreds of millions back into the economy, would save and improve lives, and would cost nothing.
Jonathan Wolf is a civil litigator and author of Your Debt-Free JD (affiliate link). He has taught legal writing, written for a wide variety of publications, and made it both his business and his pleasure to be financially and scientifically literate. Any views he expresses are probably pure gold, but are nonetheless solely his own and should not be attributed to any organization with which he is affiliated. He wouldn’t want to share the credit anyway. He can be reached at [email protected].