DST Confusion

2024-03-21

It’s this time of the year again. Working in a global environment, at some point, you’ll be confronted with the daylight saving time confusion.

One example: We have a daily meeting, invited by a colleague from the US and scheduled for 2pm my time - usually. During two weeks in March and October my calendar is messed up, because the US already saves daylight, while Europe doesn’t and vice-versa. The meeting is suddenly one hour earlier - conflicting with other appointments I have scheduled for this time.

Dominik has similar issue.

This is definitely not the end of the world, but annoying. It made me think about daylight saving time in general, again.

I used to have a strong opinion for constant DST during the whole year, because I liked having more daylight in the evening than the early morning. Then I read articles about standard time being healthier. Waking up with the rising sun triggers something in the body that helps us getting started. Changing my opinion to being in favour of standard time. There were times, when I thought using UTC globally would be the best solution. But I guess it will be even harder to know what “time of day” it is in another country. Is 06:00 am the time when the sun rises, high noon or something else?

With age comes serenity. I almost don’t care about DST anymore. The only thing I wish for is getting rid of the switch at some point, because the adjustment is not getting easier.

What are your thoughts on this?