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Comment by humansuit | Hacker News Reader

As long as they eliminate the constant inane switching back and forth. Sleep disruption is harmful in many ways and all this practice seems to actually do, old wives' tales about farmers and circumstantial localized benefits aside, is induce it. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5449130/

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I'm bipolar and extremely sensitive to "minor" things like changing timezones during travel. The switch between EST and EDT fucks up my sleep for at least a week, usually longer. This is not going to be a good month.

I can't wait for this to be signed into law.

You should start trying to adjust it gradually. If you start by just a couple minutes every day in the start of February, you don't even notice it. Also can't wait for it to change.

Adjust gradually how? Between ADHD, anxiety, depression, mania, and medication side-effects, my bedtime can vary by as much as 2 hours.

By the end of the day any willpower I started the day with is usually gone, so going to bed at the same time each day just can't happen with any regularity. I have settle for a 90 minute window.

What I can't handle is my window shifting by 60 minutes, especially when the sunlight changes. Suddenly, it's bright 60 minutes after the sun should have set and everything gets out of balance.

No offense intended, but it sounds like things won't be easy no matter what course this issue takes. Having had many a bi-polar friend, I feel for you, life's tough with mental health issues, particularly BPD.

Eh... life is always difficult, but time changes push things from difficult to nearly unmanageable.

The problem with time changes is the pattern of the day and therefore the energy and mental states tied to that changes. I can no longer predict how I will feel at specific times of day. This means I can no control my energy expenditure. I have to relearn how to cope from scratch.

For example: ~2pm is when my brain starts to get foggy. 4~5pm is going to be hopeless depression until my next medication dose kicks in. When all of this shifts by an hour, my body no longer knows what time it is. It doesn't matter how many timezones I've moved.

Removing EST<->EDT changes gives me a month of my life back each year.

This isn't anything like traveling, because traveling is temporary. I spent the month before making sure my mood will carry me through the trip and end up in a manageable state on the other side. It's like running to jump. I can't stay in the air; I have to land properly so I don't get hurt.

You adjust the start time, not the end time.

FTFY:

I tried starting to adjust it gradually. I changed my sleep time by just a couple of minutes every day in the start of February, and I didn't even notice it.

If you have the flexibility with your life to do this, why adjust at all? Just keep your routine the same and get up an hour earlier (clock time) when everyone else is on DST.

I am also bipolar, and yes, it sucks. It is the actual soul of suck, to the point that it feels cruel and purposeful. And sure, you can adjust gradually - but add that to the pile of little easy life hacks that I already do to convince people that I'm "functional" and you've got one giant mountain of mental load.

My youngest kid (4 years old) is like this. He wakes up at the "old" time for about a month.

Normally he wakes up between 6am and 630am. 730am is too late for school, so right now I have to wake him up for him to get there on time. And 5am is too early for me. Heh.

Night owl and average night enjoyer me thinks this was the right choice.

I want more daylight after work to enjoy. I know the counter claim, "but you could start your day earlier".

All I can say is that this change works for me. I love summer nights, having dusk arrive at almost 10 PM. They're the perfect days.

The point of that 'switching back and forth' between standard time and DST is to let the clock approximate a constant time for dawn, which in turn should lead to the most efficient use of daylight. Permanent DST just ensures very dark mornings around the Winter Solstice period - December and January especially, Nov and Feb to a lesser extent - which in turn means more stress (since it's a lot harder to wake up with no natural light) and lots of car accidents as people commute to work. It's a pretty bad idea all around.

But standard time in the winter means darkness by 4:30 PM around the winter solstice period, which in turn means lots of car accidents as people commute to work. It's a pretty bad idea all around, right?

We have artificial lighting now and the older method just means more car accidents as people commute to home after work.

Artificial lighting is less effective than natural light - which is why many people use special high-intensity lights to counter SAD (Seasonal Affective Disorder) in mid-winter. You could argue that shifting that daylight towards the mid-to-late afternoon is a preferable trade-off, but it's not a foolproof argument.

> since it's a lot harder to wake up with no natural light

In much of the world, and presumably some parts of the USA, people wake up in the dark just fine. Yet everyone in the USA has to deal with daylight savings time.

It's fall where I am, we are still on daylight savings for another few weeks, and I woke up just fine in the dark at 7:30am this morning.

Shifting the time 2x a year is a bad idea all around and has measurable negative health impacts [1]

[1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7302868/

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