I am Skipping Daylight Savings in 2025

2025/Feb 07

Due to popular misconceptions of what the word “daylight savings” means, allow me to explain my understanding.

In the pre-industrial era, town clocks would be adjusted so that the clock would strike noon at solar noon, meaning the high point of the sun in the day was also the high point of the clock in daytime. The reason for this practice stems from how humans sleep—normally, our bodies start to fall asleep after the sun sets, and wake up shortly after it rises. There is some variance in how people sleep, this way: some wake up at sunrise, some wake up a couple hours earlier, some a couple hours later, and a rare few a couple hours after the late group. Despite the significant variance in normal sleep patterns, everyone is normally awake by noon.

With trains came time zones and with wars came the idea of adjusting clocks in summer months in order to save on energy needed to illuminate homes. The idea was to move the clocks forward in warm months in order to “save daylight” by having people be awake for more of it. What the word ‘daylight savings’ means is any time when clocks run early such that solar noon doesn’t happen until much later than 12:00 noon. Daylight savings utterly divorces clocks and human societies from time and the needs of human bodies.

There is a popular notion here in Canada that Saskatchewan and Yukon do not observe daylight savings. In actuality, Saskatchewan’s clocks are an hour ahead of where they should be—they are on permanent DST.

Setting their clocks to UTC-0700 year-round, Yukon is two hours ahead of Yukon Standard Time. Double-daylight savings for the territory suffering an abundance of sleep disorders.

So, every single place in Canada observes daylight savings in some way. Residents of Saskatchewan and Yukon simply have the misfortune of never getting any mercy from it.

There is ample data demonstrating that those living closer to the western ends of time zones—as in, people who are obligated to wake up before their bodies would naturally awaken—are far more likely to suffer sleep disorders. This is an effect that can be observed by waking up just 15 to 30 minutes early every day. Daylight savings imposes a far more significant effect on an entire time zone for over half of the year. Vehicular accidents and cardiac events may be most significant in the week after the start of daylight savings, but the body never actually adjusts to the lack of sleep—we just learn to tolerate compromised health.

When sleep scientists mean abolishing daylight savings, they don’t mean abolishing the time change. What abolishing daylight savings actually means is putting clocks back to where they were before the poorly-thought out scheme of daylight savings was introduced.

In the absence of the abolishment of daylight savings, I’ve decided to protest it.

Because computerized clocks will automatically adjust to daylight savings time, outright refusing to adjust clocks is not a feasible option. I also want to be able to coordinate with others, and that’s difficult if I’m the only one using the correct time.

The daylight savings protest is instead an act of resisting daylight savings as much as possible. If the clocks are going to adjust against all sanity, then I’ll just adjust everything else around it. I’ll wake up later. I’ll eat later. I’ll go to bed later. All my daily alarms will be pushed back an hour. If you value your health, and are in a position to protest daylight savings, I suggest you do the same. The clocks may change, but my body will never know it.

When the clocks spring forward, move the schedule back. The schedules can return to normal when the time does.