For those of you who live in a place where Daylight Savings Time is no longer in effect (or never was in effect), I am deeply jealous. Over the weekend our clocks jumped forward an hour and my body has been feeling it ever since. I'm having a hard time wanting to go to bed at the right hour and it feels like death to get up at the same time that I was getting up at before.
The only problem is that it isn't the same time as it was before. It's actually an hour earlier and my clock is just lying to me. But my body isn't fooled. I get up at 5:00am most days and, while it's really early, my body was used to it. In fact, on some days I would even wake up a few minutes before my alarm would go off.
Now I'm asking my body to get up an hour earlier and I'm secretly asking myself how long it will take to get used to it. It doesn't help that I was recently listening to a chapter in Nuture Shock on sleep that was relating all of the bad things that happen to you due to lack of sleep: mind doesn't work as well, self control is lessened, moodiness, irritability, don't lose weight as easily, etc. The book even pointed out that these same effects occur when the same amount of sleep is merely shifted (like when you sleep the same amount of time on the weekend but you go to bed later and get up later or when you shift sleep during Daylight Savings Time).
At this point I have to really, really disagree with my state's refusal to do away with Daylight Savings Time (http://fox13now.com/2015/02/04/the-first-daylight-saving-time-bill-in-the-utah-state-legislature-has-died/). I don't see any point in keeping it. I do see a lot of reasons why we should get rid of it. Just imagine how many hours of lost productivity and general lessened happiness occur throughout the state every time we shift all of our sleep schedules. I know that I definitely haven't been as productive since the shift. Have you?
