Mind Muscle with Simon de Veer
Mind Muscle with Simon de Veer
The Clock Change Conundrum: Daylight Saving Time Debated
Time's ticking on daylight saving debates, and we're here to unravel the complexities of this contentious practice. Discover the unexpected history and vested interests of clock-changing in our latest Mind Muscle episode. It's not the farmers clamoring for that extra hour of daylight, contrary to popular belief - so who benefits, and at what cost? We delve into the origins of this century-old tradition, the economics of evening light, and the surprising advocates for and against the time switch. From golfers to retailers, the players in this game of hours might just surprise you.
Is the extra sunlight worth the lost sleep? We're examining the pros and cons of making daylight saving time a permanent fixture. Hear how the bipartisan push for endless summer evenings stacks up against the scientific preference for standard time—with our health and circadian rhythms hanging in the balance. The debate is laden with unexpected allies and opponents, from ski resorts to schools, and we're breaking down their arguments to see where the hands of the clock should rightfully point.
Join us as we ponder the broader implications of our time-keeping traditions and how they resonate through our daily routines. The conversation doesn't stop at whether we should abandon clock changes; it extends to reimagining our societal structures. Could we be on the cusp of a synchronization with the sun that reshapes work, school, and play? Share your thoughts and experiences with us as we question, learn, and grow together in search of a harmonious future that respects both the sun's journey and our well-being.
Producer: Thor Benander
Editor: Luke Morey
Intro Theme: Ajax Benander
Intro: Timothy Durant
For more, visit Simon at The Antagonist
Welcome to the Mind Muscle Podcast. Here's your host, simon Devere, and welcome back to Mind Muscle, the place we study the history, science and philosophy Behind everything in health and fitness. Today I am Simon Devere and there is nothing new except all that has been forgotten. All right, it's about that time of year, so I'm going to take a deep dive into daylight savings time. We just flipped our clocks last weekend, so it's kind of an antiquated saying, if you think about it. I didn't flip any clocks. Most of my clocks just adjust without me doing anything and, to be honest, I didn't even notice that we had shifted clocks until somebody mentioned it later in the day, because my phone, my watch, everything adjusts. So, yeah, Anyway, got to retire that I didn't flip any clocks, in all honesty.
Speaker 1:But this is a topic we've actually touched on A little bit. On the show we talked of kind of how to sink your body to your circadian rhythm for optimum health and fitness, if you will. Actually, that's another word. We should strike the optimum health and fitness. I'm on a roll today, but yeah, this is a topic that we touched on in a previous episode. We're going to make sure to come at it from a different angle. So we will touch on a little bit of the chronobiology, if you will, the study of the biological rhythms, how the light cycles affect our health. But today I want to focus more on a relevant aspect of this, which is just the debate between whether we stop shifting our clocks twice a year and then, if we do that, whether we choose to do that on standard time or daylight savings time. So, yeah, this is actually something that's been passed in a majority of states. It's going to actually require federal legislation for anybody to actually really make any significant changes to our clocks, but this is something that is in consideration. So I just thought, rather than we're not going to really talk about having to sink your routines to circadian rhythms today We've already done that I want to just actually look at the science on how health is impacted by the various protocols, so that we can choose to do, potentially, what the best path forward is.
Speaker 1:And obviously, though, before we do that, one thing that always has driven me crazy is people still say that we do this for farmers. Probably touched on this last time, but the myth about this starting from farmers is actually funny, as pervasive as it is, because farmers are one of the groups, when this has been put up in the past, that consistently lobbies against it. So we're going to discuss all of the lobby groups. But I just want to mention that upfront that farmers are actually one of the groups that consistently lobbies against changing the clocks. So I'm not sure why that misconception has lasted so long. But yeah, I actually think let's just jump right in. We're going to start with that history and then we'll get into the various strategies.
Speaker 1:But the first thing to put to rest is just that Daylight Saving Time was never instituted in order to help farmers, and on a farm you are kind of driven by the sunlight regardless of the season. But Daylight Saving Time actually presented another challenge for farmers to bring their goods to market because, again, typically they get up with the sun, they're not looking at the clock. So when you adjust the civil time, if you will, so that there are fewer morning hours when the farmers are awake, it actually makes it harder for them to get their crops to market or their wares to market. So that's kind of why, historically, farmers have actually lobbied against extending Daylight Saving Time. So, yeah, this wasn't done to help out farmers. The first time that we actually did. It was in the World Wars, world War I. We did it in order to save energy. We were using coal, so having more daylight hours would mean that people would burn less coal. Prior to that it had actually been advocated by a few people. The war was actually what made it get put in.
Speaker 1:But another common misattribution Ben Franklin was not one of the people who invented it. I guess he jokingly proposed that perigions because he economized their candle use by rising earlier. But he wasn't the real architect of Daylight Savings. One person that could possibly be would be George Vernon Hudson, a New Zealand entomologist. So he actually proposed a two-hour Daylight Savings shift to the Wellington Philosophical Society. The idea was to have more daylight hours for leisure activities and work. This did not immediately take root, but obviously that's kind of why we have it to this day. That's a big reason why it actually still persists beyond the World Wars.
Speaker 1:There was actually another big early advocate, british guy, william Willett. That's fun, but he actually wanted more time for golf. So it's the same motivation. He wanted more afternoon leisure hours. So he had proposed this at one point. Again, it wasn't adopted, but the golf industry, which now brings in about $70 billion annually in the US has lobbied for daylight savings times. Expansion in multiple iterations happened in the 80s and in 2005. So there have been various groups. The golf industry has been big in lobbying to expand daylight savings time. It's also, I guess, coincidental or maybe not, it's up to you but the first two states to pass measures to explore permanent daylight savings times were Florida and California. There's also happened to be the two states with the most golf jobs, so again, could be pure coincidence. Also, it wouldn't be shocking just to people that live in the sunny states like more sunshine. There may not be a nefarious conspiracy there, but it is funny that those were the first two.
Speaker 1:Again, daylight savings first found practical application during World War I. We actually didn't pioneer that, Germany did, and then everybody who was fighting against Germany had to do it to also conserve coal. So this was the real reason that we got into daylight savings. Postwar, a lot of countries actually went back to know daylight savings, and now this is when the lobbying, if you will, starts kicking. There was also again concerns with energy in the 1970s, when oil shortages started to come up. So the idea of shifting daylight hours to conserve energy was discussed. We'll, I guess get into this deeper later, so I won't touch it too much now. But that link is looking less and less solid. But as far as decreasing your energy consumption when you switch, that's something that is probably less relevant in the modern world for a lot of reasons. But bottom line, we're still on the history Daylight savings time had not been adopted globally at this point.
Speaker 1:So there again was a big push from lobbying groups and most of them were going to come from not only golf, which we already mentioned, anything that was associated with leisure activities, retail. The same argument was there that if people had sunshine hours after they were done with work, they would have more time for that. You don't think of this as like a big lobby group, but one of the people that lobbied for it, I believe, was the Clorox Corporation. I think one of their subsidiaries owned some charcoal briquettes and they had done the math and estimated that it would make them another $100 million. Anyway, I don't think it's like big charcoal that pushed it. There are a lot of economic interests that were lobbying to have some daylight hours after work. That is what has created this policy. That was the point of all that, not to slam a bunch of lobbyists and, frankly, maybe it's not the worst idea that people have some daylight hours after work. Yeah, I'm not trying to cast any or get any tinfoil hats out for this section, just painting out who and what shaped the policy that we actually have. And again, my main objective it wasn't farmers. Farmers have been blamed for this forever, and at every iteration of lobbying that was actually one of the groups that was going against it, believe it or not, but anyway, I've been railing against this for years.
Speaker 1:I became aware of some of the negative health impacts associated with clock shifting. I thought it was a stupid relative practice anyway, and so for me it's been nice to see that there is actually rising awareness, shall we say, or at least a rising public dissatisfaction with clock shifting. So public opinion has really shifted my way. It was kind of just once a quiet issue that people didn't really think about. It's actually given way to pretty vocal discontent from a lot of different people. But yeah, well, one important scientist, politicians, constituents there isn't really any meaningful pushback right now on not switching our clocks. What's left to sort out is what's the best schedule for us to be on, but it's kind of nice to know that actually in, I think, what are objectively really divisive times that actually so.
Speaker 1:Almost every state has at least considered ending daylight saving time, and in a 2021 poll by YouGov, it's about 62% of Americans would prefer eliminating the need to change their clocks twice a year. That's the way they phrased the question. Of that group, 50% say they would prefer to keep daylight savings time permanent and 31% are saying that they would prefer to keep standard time permanent. Again, I think what has driven the awareness and dissatisfaction? Well, the dissatisfaction that was already baked into it. Anybody who's ever had to rush to work or late for school we've all had our bad days because of clocks, and so, yeah, the dissatisfaction was always there.
Speaker 1:But I think there has been rising awareness one about the benefits of sleep as it pertains to health broadly, and then, specifically, the negative effects of clock shifting. In 2020, jama Neurology obviously published a study that outlined a lot of the negative impacts, including less sleep, increases of stroke, increased heart attack, decreased sense of well-being, and there's even mixed studies on traffic accidents on the days that we shift clocks. So I do think that rising awareness of this and just the fact that shifting clocks is stupid it is a negative on everybody's lives, that this is something that we are surprisingly united on, even in these days of a sharp division. If you will but I am a guy with a podcast so I shouldn't really present unity let's actually now dive into the two camps. Let's make this a tribal issue, let's make it a binary. And yeah, so briefly mentioned, but it is roughly 50% who say they would prefer to keep permanent daylight savings time, 31% saying that they would have to keep it on standard time. Let's first just go camp by camp and explore the arguments of each and also who is backing each group, and obviously, I imagine, those of us just listening and even me talking about it. I imagine we all have our own lifestyles, personal preferences, work schedules, school things that are obviously going to play into this. But yeah, I just want to break down which groups. There's going to be a lot of lobbying groups on both ends of this and what their arguments are, and I'm sure we're all going to have our own preferences that are separate and apart from any of this stuff. So add this in as you continue thinking about this. So, anyway, let's say that you are for daylight savings time, that we should go permanent on that. So joining this group is going to be almost all the retailers convenience stores, people who sell outdoor products, barbecue equipment, the golf industry that we already mentioned, amusement parks this is actually where I would say the bulk of the corporate lobbying is being done. This has the backing of most chambers of commerce and I think this is, in general, the more popular opinion.
Speaker 1:A couple explanations. One I think through all of the years of clock shifting, we probably associate the shift to daylight savings time better the spring forward than the fall back. That's all I have to say. You know I don't agree with the use of language here, but oftentimes in fall people say they lost an hour of sleep or they gained an hour of sleep. I tend to question their time management, but that that is something that's commonly said. So I just think that there is a positive association with spring forward and daylight savings, a negative association with fallback or Standard time, just because when people make those respective clock shifts how it feels when they're doing it. Similarly, I would say that there's probably just going to be a natural positive Association with daylight savings time because those that's the summer, sunny, fun months. So you know just for years of associating the daylight savings time with summer and Standard time with winter. I just think there is, you know, going to be a natural psychological advantage for daylight savings time. When we just begin to think about this.
Speaker 1:There is currently a bipartisan bill that I Think it's been put forth by Marco Rubio in the house does a backing from both sides of the aisle and it is actually pushing for permanent daylight savings. I will say the evidence cited in the bill. It does cherry pick the evidence a little bit because the argument being made in the bill is obviously not daylight savings time versus Shifting our clocks twice a year. It is daylight savings time versus standard time. The issue is the the studies cited are all comparing the impact of daylight savings time to clock shifting. So all of the evidence that that cited is valid and would support Switching to daylight savings time only, but it would also support switching to standard time only. So what? One of the things that's going to be challenging With the data that we have is we just don't actually have studies to compare, you know, long runs of being on standard time versus long runs on daylight savings time. All of the studies we have, you know, deal with people shifting their clocks twice a year. So we know a lot about the negative health impacts of that. We don't know as much direct comparison between daylight savings time and standard time. So in in the bill being advanced, they the argument is that daylight savings time might be Healthier than standard time, and that's actually not where the scientists are on this. So I do think that the the bill that's being events probably reflects more the lobbying groups and again, probably just positive connotations. Like I said, I don't think this is actually, again, this is a popular issue with people, so you know, supporting both sides. So I don't think we have to, you know, rush to conspiracy, but but there are obviously Very big lobbying groups that mentioned the US Chamber of Commerce. There Also, in the past we already have we have seen significant lobby efforts to extend daylight savings time.
Speaker 1:You know, as we mentioned in the history After the world wars we didn't just go to daylight savings time, we rolled it back. And then there was. It was like the petroleum industry had, you know, noticed that consumer spending they were. They were the first to notice it and I think as early as like 1930. So a lot of business interests have been lobbying for daylight hours after work for a very long time. There have already been two successful extensions of daylight savings time once in it was 86 that extended it for an hour, and then in 05 they extended it another two hours. So yeah, there actually has been consistent lobbying from, namely, retail and commerce on the other side, if you will, of this debate is actually most of the science and Researchers. But there's also some lobbying going on over there too.
Speaker 1:Ski resorts, believe it or not, even though you would think that the daylight hours would help them. Colorado is actually one of the only states that hasn't enacted a permanent daylight savings times bill, and that is Largely due to the ski industry. For them, you know, people are gonna leave Regardless of the daylight. It's more about beating traffic. At least that's what their research shows. So extending the daylight Into the the later hours of the day doesn't up the ski industry. So Colorado has been one state that hasn't done this.
Speaker 1:Most schools also favor this there. There's an idea there that it's safer. You don't want kids coming to school In dark or in darkness. But this one I don't know if there's actually a strong link there, to be honest, because you're gonna catch it on one end or the other. You know, either coming or going from school, I mean. So you, you just can't shield, you know, people from the dark. I actually think there's. There's a little bit of a mixed bag on safety With cars when we get into standard time, although that was shown in the studies. We'll get into this later, I don't want to kill it now.
Speaker 1:There's some confounding factors that point to something that's little bit more convincing than Whether you're on daylight savings or standard time. Another group, though, that I would say is supporting standard time is going to be TV networks, for the opposite reason as all your Retailers and everybody there is that they would prefer people actually be at home during those hours watching must-see TV. So you know, we do have a big, powerful and and and wealthy you know group going against it. Obviously farmers, believe or not. Farmers lobbied against both extensions and they lobbied against switching back after the wars. So, even though people think farmers invented daylight savings time, they are one of the strongest groups actually against going to a daylight savings time permanently. Let's see yeah, did we get them all? Yes, scientists, ski resorts, schools, yeah, tv. So that's that pretty much rounds out the camp of who is in favor of Going to standard time rather than daylight savings time permanently.
Speaker 1:Yeah, obviously, the the group of people that I found the most interesting in this group is, of course, the scientists. That's that's the people whose opinions I looked at the most, and and Scientists, you know, generally advocate for permanent standard time, or sometimes called natural time, because it better aligns with people's schedules with the Sun. People who study the issue are pretty much in agreement. There was a 2022 American Medical Association that well, in 2022, rather, they they called for the end of daylight savings time, saying that it can actually take months for the human body to adjust to a new sleep cycle. If you know, we were waiting, which I do. I wait the scientist's opinions just a little bit higher than the interest groups, and again, I'm hesitating because I don't want to cover ground that we've already touched on.
Speaker 1:We did talk in a previous episode a lot about how to sink your body to circadian rhythm. I think the short way is that getting exposure to light in the morning can start to stimulate a number of things, but namely production of melatonin. When you have the access to light early in the day, it is then going to. There is a cascade of effects that are going to stem from that and whole host that we don't want to touch here. Go right up the circadian rhythms again if you want to get to all that today.
Speaker 1:But yes, just from the standpoint of that, there are so many other considerations that play in, obviously what time you're going to work, what time you're going to school. But if we're looking at it from the stance of optimal health, it is pretty clear that we should probably favor the standard time and even though that doesn't, you know, maybe coordinate with lifestyle or economy. This well, even there, I know I'll play devil's advocate because that's one of the big. You know we can't do this because the economy. But if people are less productive, what do you care? If you're getting a couple extra hours and you guys feel good when you leave work, but the work you did all day was below the capacity that you could have done if you arrested. Your creative energies could have just been better. So again, I actually think that the economy argument is a little bit of a cop out, because I think that we could, you know, also glean that if people were, people might be, if you were sick days, people might work better, productivity could increase, et cetera. But actually now that's just all conjecture.
Speaker 1:Anyway, let's actually stick it to the science. That's getting into my opinion. Yeah, the you know one more, the nonprofit organization Save Standard Time. Its endorsements are from 30 sleep science and medical organizations American Academy of Sleep Medicine, American Medical Association. We mentioned American Academy of Neurology the list of organizations and scientists that are backing Standard Time. Again, when we look at the incentives, it really does appear that they are mostly reacting out of the idea that it is better for people's health, quite frankly. So yeah, I already started to jump into it, so now I officially, in my outline, am allowed to do this.
Speaker 1:Simon says what do I say? I was already kind of leading there, but I actually I lean with the scientists on this one. I've actually gotten a little bit of flak talking about this in the past. So I want to qualify what I'm about to say, because I really do get it that not everybody is at liberty to alter some aspects of their schedule. So if you're working a night shift, obviously I think that businesses and organizations should figure out ways to make sure, in light of everything we know about circadian rhythms, light levels and all that, that we could accommodate for things that work.
Speaker 1:But there are a lot of people not talking to night shift workers. I'm not talking to people that have to be at work at a specific time, but there are tons of people who the reason that they aren't shifting their schedule isn't that it isn't fungible. A lot of people are staying up on their screens at night. So for that population there's a lot of people who have a lot of room to make some changes. All of us, within our capacity, should set our schedule up as much as we can to the natural circadian rhythms, not because I told you to, but because you're going to get more out of your own days by not fighting your biology, by just rolling with it. There's obvious limitations with work and with the structure of the day that I'm not going to be able to conquer in one episode. But yeah, I just don't want to be accused of making judgments about people's lives or inability to change sleep schedules based on those external factors. I know those exist. Within reason and within your ability, you're going to want to make shifts to accommodate circadian rhythm.
Speaker 1:Anyway, disclaimer out of the way just because I've already dealt with those comments in the past. I do. I favor the scientists. I think we should actually stick with standard time when we finally decide to pick a time and stick with it. That being said, though, I'm not really that committed. I'm way more committed to us not changing our clocks than me getting my way on standard time. I think the case is significantly better for standard time, but I think the case against switching clocks is even stronger that, even if we decided on daylight savings time, I'm not going to be mad.
Speaker 1:The other reason, though, that I'm not going to be mad is that it's also, just frankly, not going to solve all of our issues with sleep and health. I alluded to some of that, but a lot of when we really get at why do people? This is one that actually brings out some pretty strong opinions. I think the reason is that it's so close and fundamental to how we have to live our lives and how we have to adapt our lives into, quite frankly, an industrial society. I wish I could have come up with a better word, because, with my Montana roots, now that makes me sound like the Unibomber, but no, I think that's where, when we're trying to figure out how to solve our time problem, that's what we're really getting at is how do we synchronize and arrive? How do we have our businesses function, schools function, in light of what we know about our health and all that to get to?
Speaker 1:There are way more factors that play into this than just daylight savings and standard time even, and we're actually still sticking in the domain of time. I'm not even going to unpack any other confounding factors, at least today, but no, even when we're just sticking in time, there's also significant difference in time zones, and this is why we actually kind of have to pause on what we're seeing with the traffic accidents, because when we really hone in and start to isolate what is going on, something that has a much stronger case right now is there are regions that are actually jumping ahead. So time zones. Obviously, if you're in the eastern part of a time zone versus the western time, the difference in the sun's position on what the clock says can be as much as an hour difference between the eastern and western edge. So in the edges of time zones, so they call these its eccentric time localities, so these ETL regions, they're basically on the borders of time zones. Residents of these areas suffer significantly higher fatality rates in car accidents than anywhere else in the time zone.
Speaker 1:So I mention that because when we do studies comparing, or rather looking at traffic accidents with clock shifting, it's going to be tough to tease out whether that's not occurring. Or say it another way, that may not be happening, then it may not be evenly distributed throughout time zones. It looks that they are more significant in certain areas, these ETLs, eccentric time localities. So if you are in the middle of a time zone, the chance that any one of these clock shifts is as influential to you as somebody living on the edge of a time zone, it does look that the effects are much more pronounced in these regions that are close to the borders. So, obviously, it doesn't really matter which schedule you choose daylight savings time or standard time if you are living in an ETL, those zones, regardless of schedule, are going to have just a little bit more time distortion for people who live there.
Speaker 1:And again, this just unpacks an issue that I'm actually not even ready to speak on. But now we have to get into basically redrawing time zones, which I don't know enough about. I know they're roughly equate to latitude and that's as far as I'm going to even attempt to go on that one. But no, I just wanted to introduce this because this is a significant confounding factor. When we start to talk about the negative effects that we have noticed in clock shifting, is it's worth mentioning that all of those impacts are far more pronounced in our eccentric time localities, and that's not really something that we can address with shifting our clocks. Whichever one you choose, that's still going to be a problem.
Speaker 1:Another massive confounding factor that I see in all of this now is that it's, frankly, artificial light, and I was alluding to this, but the vast majority of people, their issue with sleep and with what's going on actually isn't the clock schedule, it's just that they stay up too late looking at screens and I know there's going to be a lot of exceptions, but that's talking about a country of 300 million and, speaking to averages, that's the most common problem and that's the most common sleep issue. So, yeah, when we are focusing on issues like daylight savings, time time zones, all of that, it can get a little bit disconnected from the modern lifestyle, because there are significant people who are not being driven by the sun and the larger issue is actually how much artificial light is being exposed to during the day and the impacts of that, and obviously, with the rise of blue light, glasses, stuff like that. People know the impact, but blue light is known to have one of the most powerfully disruptive impacts to circadian rhythms and most people are consuming it in pretty high doses throughout the day. Focusing on daylight savings or standard time as it pertains to improving our health, I do want to circle back to this because I've really tried to keep everything I talk about here at least motivated in the spirit. We're a little bit majoring in the miners today. You know, parsing hairs over which time schedule is different between daylight savings and standard time. The big rocks here are, you know, making sure that you're getting exposed to the sun early in the day, moving around sufficiently removing the blue light, getting a good night's sleep those are the big rocks. So, again, when we're talking about the health impacts that we're seeing, those, I think, would still be the best first amendments. But, you know, just because the reality is we all have to fit our lives into these schedules.
Speaker 1:I still think the topic is worth discussing, but I don't want to bury the lead with diving into the minutiae of what's better between daylight savings and standard time when, you know, I think most people are just staying up too late with Netflix, to be honest. So, yeah, just to make sure that we're not, with this focus, that we're not overlooking surrounding factors and arguably, frankly, larger factors, if we could align our sleep and work schedules with the light that's available, it would not only be better for us, because we, you know, use electricity and devices, but it would be better for the planet. So it's, these are questions that we do need to ask and, admittedly, I don't have the answers. That was kind of why I dove into this topic. So, yeah, that's. I'm not going to present you guys today with any final thoughts, because I actually genuinely think this is an open debate. And, yeah, although I have lobbied against shifting clocks twice a year for a long time, very passionately, I like the place we're at, because, whether we end up with standard time or daylight savings, I'll win either way. Before we go, though, I'm going to keep this one short today, but let's just sum it up real quick. So, yeah, you know, obviously, today we got through the real story, or the real history, if you will, of daylight savings time. It wasn't created by farmers. Farmers have actually been one of the groups lobbying against it for the longest.
Speaker 1:There is a rising awareness of the negative health impacts. Now, before many states, we are presented the choice of either ending or when we end, shifting clocks twice a year. We can either shift over to daylight savings time permanently or standard time permanently. The groups behind that, in short, think the Chamber of Commerce, think retail outdoors for your daylight savings time, and behind standard time, you've got scientists, schools and possibly television. Wherever you sit, on the daylight savings time or standard time debate, maybe you didn't even know it existed, but yeah, wherever you sit, I actually think there are valid points on either end. That range from economic impacts, health impacts. The case for health, frankly, is much stronger on the side of standard time. I think it's a bit of a mixed bag when we're talking the economy. So, yeah, I guess the one personal opinion that I would be willing to share is that I do think that we should lead with health as we consider what changes that we are going to make today. In a way, the conflict over daylight savings time versus standard time, at least the public debate of it, could just be another one of those of different lobbying groups putting out their different messages. So I do think that the number one thing that we should be listening to. I feel like I'm in the same boat, but we should be really listening to the scientists and what they are saying about our health.
Speaker 1:There is one other piece, and I guess this is going to be just my little touch on philosophy today, but I have talked about this for years, so admittedly, I do think there is just frankly, something awry in the way we mark and think about time. This issue certainly brings it up, but one of the things I always notice, again when people talk about shifting the clock, is that when we go to daylight savings time, they'll say that it adds an hour of daylight Again, maybe I'm just reading too deeply into it, but whenever people say that, it just indicates to me a deep misunderstanding of time's nature. Regardless of how you label time or what you call it, it doesn't actually alter the amount of daylight that we get. Obviously, the earth's tilt and the seasons take care of all that. So shifting our clocks just changes what we call certain hours. It doesn't alter the amount of daylight.
Speaker 1:So, yeah, I don't have a passionate side actually to take on this. There's the obvious People have work schedules and they have the patterns and things that they've gotten used to. So I can imagine a lot of people lobbying for what they've gotten used to, but I've actually experienced in my own lifetime that actually altering a sleep schedule is a lot more malleable, I think, than most people think. You probably don't get the opportunity because work, school life, other reasons but I have actually experienced and flourished on more than one different sleep schedule in my lifetime and I've had to alter it many times. So I also don't think that this is something that we need to think in terms of cookie cutter or top down solutions, if you will. There's like a general principle that we really know works, and that's that you really should get the morning light that's going to cue your body to ramp up cortisol. That wakes you up, you feel awake, you feel alert and then, while that's getting ramped up, you're also triggering your melatonin production and if that doesn't happen, you're not going to fall asleep well at night.
Speaker 1:So yeah, just as much as anybody can, they should synchronize to the solar clock and also recognize that, whatever we call the time, it's a bit relative. It doesn't really matter, as long as people are showing up on time. And yeah, because I just even think about this, when you know somebody is lobbying on one end, vociferously believing that if they don't get this, you know clock time that their business is going to die. I don't even know if that's going to happen. I think people might just adjust and you know, if the time that we used to do something was called five o'clock but now it's called four o'clock, I don't know if that really matters and I think people are intelligent enough to make those shifts all on their own. So I do think some of the corporate lobbying on this may just be much ado about nothing. I think they'll be fine either way. Winter days are short, summer days are long. It doesn't really matter what you call the time. There's nothing you can do about that. So, yeah, anyway, that's just my and I don't have a solution.
Speaker 1:But I think, as we're considering this, that we should be leading with health. I guess some of the changes that you know people could consider would be, you know, flexible start times for work and school. Some of that is probably already going on with work ever since the pandemic, quite frankly. So so maybe the work world can can lead with some flexible start schedules, stuff like that. But yeah, anyway, I don't really feel like I have a strong opinion or a horse in the race, necessarily, but this is an issue that I have found interesting for quite a long time and again, it's not often or at least it feels it doesn't feel like I get to highlight an issue that I feel like there has actually been genuine progress and people agreeing on.
Speaker 1:So, before I finish, I actually want to encourage you guys to, to, you know, reflect on how you guys feel about daylight savings and standard time. Which schedule do you prefer? Think about some of those difficult questions Like how could we restructure work, how could we restructure school and our society at large? You know, I honestly think that you know, because, because I did survey a lot of the answers and why I'm not really willing to, you know, go hard on any of them, is that I don't think there are a lot of good answers being out there. So, anyway, this is one that I want to encourage my mind, muscle, community to reflect on.
Speaker 1:Think how you're thinking that this is actually still being written as we speak and, yeah, I'm not sure we actually have gotten to the best answer yet. So, anyway, guys, if you found this one interesting, make sure to share it. If you've ever, like me, griped any of your friends about clock shifting or just had a bad day, you know, flipping your clocks around. Share this with somebody you know who had the same experience, and maybe they'll get something out of it too. Remember, guys, mind and muscle are inseparably intertwined. There are no gains without brains. Keep lifting and learning. I'll do the same.
