Here we go again...
When DST ended last fall, I refrained from setting the time back on one of my watches. Today, other than my cell phones, it was the only accurate timepiece when I awoke this morning. For other watches, and several other clocks in the house and the truck, so begins another round of resetting the time.
True, technology exists to largely solve this manual work, if one is willing to accept the expense. Computers, including cell phones, reference a time service and therefore are updated to the current time, whatever that happens to be (if all works according to plan, that is; Apple's iPhone may finally have caught up this year). Even wrist-watches are available that reference an atomic time source and adjust as necessary. My TV even synchs with an internet time source and keeps up with the time, but switching to/from DST is a manual process. So, technology can solve the issue to some degree; at least, until the government decides to mess with the dates again. But, does it have to be this way?
It is 2012. Sure, according to the Mayans, great ancient time-keepers that they were, the world may not see 2013. Yet, while we continue in our daily labors, we still must pause twice a year to adjust in full unit increments our perception of time. Suddenly, through the magic of a lost hour of sleep, the sun appears to set an hour later than it did yesterday. Later on, for reasons lost to modern rational thought, we will dissolve this advance and "fall back", magically gaining a lost hour.
What insanity?! In 2012, we continue to delude ourselves in the federal message that our time adjustment efforts are somehow saving money, providing something to the wheels of industry. Evidence supporting such claims is suspect, at best. Blessed be Indiana and Arizona, states that have rejected this inane and archaic aberration.
We will, once again, awake tomorrow morning an hour earlier than our bodies inform us is normal, groggily make it to work, and there down coffee, tea, energy drinks, etc. in an effort to find "normal" levels of productivity. Unfortunately, since this happens corporately, several days will pass before productivity levels return to normal. Modern computing hardware and operating systems should make the adjustment without issue, but there is always one or two applications that stop short when faced with an hour that disappeared, or was manifest from thin air.
How much time and effort, then is spent, to prepare for the time change? Memos produced as reminders to reset clocks, labor engaged to execute that reset in offices throughout the world, development and testing hours expended to ensure code handles the switch with grace, employees missing critical 9a meetings because they are unaccustomed to an 8a office call, drowsy employees operating delicate machinery but off their game due to the time change. All this labor and effort and loss of productivity flows into the support of a system that is wholly unnecessary, a mandated waste of resources all to prop up a belief that man can somehow control time.
Perhaps, once upon a time, there was some benefit derived from "more daylight". Yet, I think it probably less than what we remember. Farmers still have the same number of hours in a day to reap and sow.
Of course, as is often the case, the worst consequences of this decision is visited upon our children. As shown in recent studies, we already deprive our children of sleep and expect them to learn too early in the day. Then, annually, we require them to begin even earlier; perhaps frustrating some to the point that the spark of curiosity goes out forever.
This should come to an end. If you don't support doing it for yourself and your business, then at least think of the children.
Stop DST!
