Wake Up To Circadian Time
Good morning, students! Did you show up for class an hour late today?
If so, you may have forgotten to spring forward and set your clocks ahead one hour. That’s right. It’s that time of year again. Our old friend, Daylight Savings Time, is back. (Offer valid in participating locales only.)
Hooray! An extra hour of daylight awaits you tonight. In exchange for the small inconvenience of one hour of daylight this morning, adjusting your clocks, and adjusting your sleep.
Not excited? You’re not alone. Nearly two thirds of Americans agree we should stop this clock-monkeying madness. Another fifth don’t care one way or the other. And this is the last known issue that Democrats and Republicans still agree on.
But it’s more than just an inconvenience. It’s also really bad for your health. It decreases your alertness, messes with your hormones, and makes you grumpy. If you live on the western edge of a time zone, it may even increase your risk for cancer, diabetes, and heart disease.
And it’s bad for other people’s health too. 30 Americans will be killed this week by sleepy drivers.
So, while ending this barbaric practice of Daylight Savings Time would be great, what if we could do even better?
Introducing Circadian Time!
Circadian Time
Imagine a world in which we all have two clocks with us at all times. We invent brand new Circadian Time clocks which we use to schedule local events like school, city council meetings, and farmers markets. And we set all our old clocks to Coordinated Universal Time (UTC) to schedule anything that’s not local like flight times, remote video meetings, and major sporting events.
Circadian Time is local to your geographic community. Each locale can vote on the exact boundaries. But in the United States, something like metropolitan areas (urban) and counties (rural) should work well. The three-letter IATA airport codes be used for urban locales. Big metros can choose the biggest or most well-known local airport. Perhaps some kind of four-letter codes could be devised for rural areas.
Circadian Time still uses the same goofy time segments for duration. 24 hours in a day. 60 minutes in an hour. 60 seconds in a minute. This is important so we don’t have to retrain our minds to understand phrases like “give me five minutes” or “running an hour late.” And it’s consistent between local time and universal time. You can add five minutes, or an hour, to a local clock or a universal clock.
But in Circadian Time, your day starts at sunrise each morning (0:00 local time) and marches straight through the day on a 24-hour clock. 1:00 is one hour after sunrise. 2:00, two hours after sunrise. 8:00, eight hours after sunrise, and 16:00, 16 hours after sunrise.
At any moment of the day, your local clock tells you precisely, in hours and minutes, how long it’s been since the last sunrise.
Two clocks. Two times.
A local clock, in Circadian Time, for coordinating local events as nature recommends.
A universal clock, in UTC, for coordinating universal events as modernity demands.
The biggest advantage is your health. All schools and many jobs will run on local time schedules. Your entire family wakes up at 0:00, sunrise, each morning. Just as its natural circadian rhythm wants to. Breakfast is at 0:30. The bus picks up your children at 0:51, and school starts at 1:15.
You work remotely so all your meetings are scheduled in UTC. This does present a kind of clock drift problem. Part of the year, your normal meetings begin before 0:51. But part of the year, after 0:51. So you can’t always see your children off to school. This clock drift is the biggest disadvantage.
But, hey, we all know we have too many meetings anyway, right? So just block the local time off. Your digital calendar will have no trouble converting local times to universal times. The meeting organizer will see that you, and likely half your colleagues, are partially free. And as such partial conflicts become more and more common, so too will missing meetings become more and more socially acceptable. Less time wasted in meetings. More time spent in your community. Win win!
At 9:00, school’s out. Your children arrive home at 9:24. You take them to Little League at 10:30. At 12:00, you have dinner. And get ready to watch the big game on TV at 13:03 (1:00 AM UTC). Bedtime at 16:00 sharp, so you can aim for 8 hours of good, quality sleep.
Yes, this will take some getting used to. Two clocks everywhere. Lots of new software and hardware challenges. Adjustments for locales in extreme latitudes. Nobody can do time zone conversions in their head anymore. But computers are really good at this kind of thing. And once you get used to it, you’ll never miss converting your time to your boss’s time. Or springing forward. Or falling back. Or all those meetings.
Most of all, your body will be so much happier, healthier, and safer.
If you’re going to the Spring Game this year, come say hi and let me know what you think of Circadian Time. Kickoff is scheduled for April 9th at 6:00 PM UTC, 6:03 LNK. Don’t be late. And Go Big Red!
