The Waste of Daylight – William Willett's Original Daylight Saving Time Proposal(webexhibits.org)
webexhibits.org
The Waste of Daylight – William Willett's Original Daylight Saving Time Proposal
http://www.webexhibits.org/daylightsaving/willett.html
55 comments
Or just shift to DST permanently. Nearly everyone is awake 4-7 so why not just have sun then and have mornings and nights sometimes sunny?
Computationally it's not a problem, but other issues abound.
We want time zones to coordinate across large areas. A similar issue exists because the day has different length the further you are from the north pole. With southern summers and northern winters occurring at the same time.
We want time zones to coordinate across large areas. A similar issue exists because the day has different length the further you are from the north pole. With southern summers and northern winters occurring at the same time.
If we can assume that clocks have decent computing power, and if we can assume that people that need to do time calculations across significant longitude differences have access to decent interactive computing power (smart phones, tablets, desktops), then I think some kind of dual time system might be workable.
Clocks would display both a "World Time" and a "Zone Time".
The World Time would probably simply be UTC.
For coordinating across significant longitude differences World Time would be used.
The Zone Time applies to a region similar to a current time zone, and is an idealized solar time, adjusted so that sunrise each day is around 6:00 AM LZT (Local Zone Time).
Schools, stores, most offices, mass transit routes that are mostly in the zone, theaters, meals, and similar things would base their schedules on LZT. So office hours, for example, would typically be 9:00 AM to 5:00 PM LZT, year around.
This would let most people work on a schedule that syncs well to the Sun, which should have tangible benefits for many people. There would be no going to work or school in the dark, and in summer the longer daylight time would automatically come after work/school.
This needs to assume people have decent access to interactive computing power because it would complicate planning things that involve interactions between LZT and World Time, especially when planning events weeks or months ahead.
(And yes, under this system 6:00 AM LZT from one day to 6:00 AM LZT the next day would not be exactly 24 hours. So? Things for which that matters would be scheduled on World Time, not on LZT).
Clocks would display both a "World Time" and a "Zone Time".
The World Time would probably simply be UTC.
For coordinating across significant longitude differences World Time would be used.
The Zone Time applies to a region similar to a current time zone, and is an idealized solar time, adjusted so that sunrise each day is around 6:00 AM LZT (Local Zone Time).
Schools, stores, most offices, mass transit routes that are mostly in the zone, theaters, meals, and similar things would base their schedules on LZT. So office hours, for example, would typically be 9:00 AM to 5:00 PM LZT, year around.
This would let most people work on a schedule that syncs well to the Sun, which should have tangible benefits for many people. There would be no going to work or school in the dark, and in summer the longer daylight time would automatically come after work/school.
This needs to assume people have decent access to interactive computing power because it would complicate planning things that involve interactions between LZT and World Time, especially when planning events weeks or months ahead.
(And yes, under this system 6:00 AM LZT from one day to 6:00 AM LZT the next day would not be exactly 24 hours. So? Things for which that matters would be scheduled on World Time, not on LZT).
It's an interesting proposal, but it seems like it would work best for more equatorial regions. In my not too northern location, that would mean in the summer I get up 5 hours earlier than in the winter.
The idea isn't that everyone gets up at sunrise. People in equatorial regions would be the last people to care about this stuff. DST is not an issue there. People in more polar regions tend to not care that much about daylight in the winter. There is so little of it and it is so cold that it makes no difference. There is so much light in the summer that it makes little difference when you get up. People in polar regions might actually like a sort of anti-DST offset so they can get some darkness in the evening in the summer.
It is people in the temperate latitudes that tend to care.
It is people in the temperate latitudes that tend to care.
Why anchor it to sunrise instead of solar noon?
Under the sunrise scheme, Chicago, for example, would have sunset at 3:08 PM LZT on the winter solstice and 9:14 PM LZT on the summer solstice.
Under the sunrise scheme, Chicago, for example, would have sunset at 3:08 PM LZT on the winter solstice and 9:14 PM LZT on the summer solstice.
> Why anchor it to sunrise instead of solar noon?
Our circadian rhythms sync to the day/night cycle, which is sensed by changes in light levels. Sunrise is a major driver of that, and so syncing our schedule to sunrise works out well biologically for us.
If the day is synced to solar noon, so that the time we need to wake up relative to sunrise changes throughout the year, then we may need to work to keep circadian rhythms synced to our schedule. For parts of the year where our wake up time is significantly after sunrise, we may need to block sunlight from our sleeping rooms. For parts of the year where we need to well before sunrise, we may need to have bright lights with the appropriate spectrum go off when it is time to wake up.
Our circadian rhythms sync to the day/night cycle, which is sensed by changes in light levels. Sunrise is a major driver of that, and so syncing our schedule to sunrise works out well biologically for us.
If the day is synced to solar noon, so that the time we need to wake up relative to sunrise changes throughout the year, then we may need to work to keep circadian rhythms synced to our schedule. For parts of the year where our wake up time is significantly after sunrise, we may need to block sunlight from our sleeping rooms. For parts of the year where we need to well before sunrise, we may need to have bright lights with the appropriate spectrum go off when it is time to wake up.
For me practically, I hate this time change. It is already getting dark a little after 5PM. Now it is definitely dark by 5PM. I work in a fairly windowless office. Not seeing the sun is depressing. I like having a few hours of sun after work, psychologically.
I love checking out daylight charts for weird places like Iceland or Svalbard. https://www.timeanddate.com/sun/norway/longyearbyen
I didn't know the original proposal was to do it in multiple small shifts, nor that it included an energy savings argument.
Most of my life I thought I didn't like daylight saving time. Then recently I looked at the daylight chart (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daylight_saving_time#/media/Fi...) and really imagined what it would be like without daylight saving time, and I changed my mind.
If I stayed on summer time all year, then in the winter sunrise would be around 9am, and I'd have to commute in the dark. If I stayed on winter time, then in the summer the sun would be up at 5am and down at 8pm. On a normal work schedule, I'd miss the morning time and wish for more sun in the evening.
I didn't know the original proposal was to do it in multiple small shifts, nor that it included an energy savings argument.
Most of my life I thought I didn't like daylight saving time. Then recently I looked at the daylight chart (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daylight_saving_time#/media/Fi...) and really imagined what it would be like without daylight saving time, and I changed my mind.
If I stayed on summer time all year, then in the winter sunrise would be around 9am, and I'd have to commute in the dark. If I stayed on winter time, then in the summer the sun would be up at 5am and down at 8pm. On a normal work schedule, I'd miss the morning time and wish for more sun in the evening.
DST works pretty well for London and the south of England, but if you go somewhere more north, say Aberdeen, the sun doesn't rise until nearly 9am in the winter and sets before 3:30pm. [0] In the summer it's light enough to drive without lights from 4am - 11pm. Shifting either of those times by one hour to maintain the same time zone all year around work make barely any different to most people.
On mainland Europe it's even worse, the sun rises 1.5 hours later in the west of Spain compared to the east of Poland, yet they all share the same timezone.
[0] https://www.gaisma.com/en/location/aberdeen.html
On mainland Europe it's even worse, the sun rises 1.5 hours later in the west of Spain compared to the east of Poland, yet they all share the same timezone.
[0] https://www.gaisma.com/en/location/aberdeen.html
Yeah, agreed. There are definitely places where daylight saving time doesn't make that much sense. Aberdeen doesn't have an official night time for 3.5 months of the year, or an astronomical twilight for 2 months. https://www.timeanddate.com/sun/uk/aberdeen Still, without it, in June the sun rises at 3am and sets at 9pm, it still seems like trading the morning hour for one in the evening would be a net positive for most people, even if it's small. Unless I was on a strange work schedule, I would definitely sleep through the first few hours of sun in the morning, and always be awake for the sunset.
I suddenly started to wonder, if we care about daylight, whether work schedules might make more sense if they started at 8 am rather than 9, just to be more symmetric around noon. Or even 7am, if we're preserving evening daylight. But I dunno, that sounds too early. ;)
I suddenly started to wonder, if we care about daylight, whether work schedules might make more sense if they started at 8 am rather than 9, just to be more symmetric around noon. Or even 7am, if we're preserving evening daylight. But I dunno, that sounds too early. ;)
After moving to a sunny place in the country I noticed how it affected my mood, so I think that every scheme to add natural light to our day is great for mental health. That's why stripping DST in Europe is in my opinion unfortunate.
Wait, what? You don't gain extra natural light in summer due to DST. The days become longer naturally due to the angle of the earth wrt the sun. DST makes you get up earlier to "enjoy" that longer, sunnier day, but that one hour is probably pointless in terms of mental health improvement.
Besides, summer isn't the time when sunlight is lacking. Winter is when people get vitamin D depressed, and no time change is going to fix that for northern countries.
Besides, summer isn't the time when sunlight is lacking. Winter is when people get vitamin D depressed, and no time change is going to fix that for northern countries.
Yep, it makes no difference. I get up at 5:30 to go to work. Even during DST it's still dark in the morning, and it's not like I'm really getting any exposure to the light on the bus to work. But the consequence is that when I leave work at 4, it's pitch black outside where the sun would have been setting before.
DST is pointless and antiquated.
DST is pointless and antiquated.
Which country do you live in? In the south of Europe we center the day (lunch) around 13:00 to 15:00 so if Earth axis would be perpendicular to its orbit (always 12 hours of light) we would pick sunrise at 8 and sunset at 20. With DST we have sunrise at 5 and sunset at 21 in June. A double or triple DST would suit us better. If we stop using DST in Europe I hope that my country moves at least one time zone to the east.
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Surely there's better ways to make sure people get more sunlight than arbitrarily changing the measurement of time?
Good luck with changing the start working hours for most of the companies from an entire continent from around 8-9 in the morning to about 7 in the morning, so that people could have the chance of catching an hour of daylight in the winter by going home at around 3 or 4 in the afternoon. That's not going to happen anytime soon.
You could legislate that. Or you could simply legislate government office and school hours and wait for private industry to match the behavior.
The problem with the "change the time we do things" approach is that we write down times in permanent or semi-permanent places. Buildings have hours of operation signs. Streets have lane restriction and parking hours signs. We print schedules for buses, planes, boats, and trains.
If we just change so we do all of these things an hour earlier in summer we either have to change a whole bunch of signs and other printed material twice a year, or we just have to remember that we need to mentally take an hour off the printed time during that time of year.
The former would be a major hassle and possibly an expensive one, and the later would confuse a lot of people for days or weeks after the switches.
Clocks, on the other hand, are designed to be changed.
If we want things to start an hour earlier in summer, and we want that to apply to everything, than implementing that by moving the clocks an hour forward is easier, cheaper, and less confusing.
The main hassle with changing the clocks is that there are so many of the damn things, although I think we may be getting past that.
(I say this is the main hassle, rather than the hassle of dealing with biological rhythms getting messed up for a while around the time changes because this post is about how, if we are going to have DST, it should be implemented--change schedules or change clocks. The biology thing is the same under both, so is not relevant in this comment)
At one time, say before the 1970s, it wasn't much of an issue because we didn't actually have all that many clocks. A typical family might have wall clocks in the kitchen and living room, table top alarm clocks in the bedrooms, and watches.
It was in the '70s and '80s that clocks started appearing everywhere, and worse, no two seemed to have the same mechanism for setting them and the mechanisms were usually almost impossible to figure out without the instructions. DST changing could be a frustrating evening of alternating trying to guess how to set a clock and searching through every place you might have left the manual.
But now, although everything still has a clock whether it needs it or not, those clocks are more and more likely to be self-setting. I think I have 15 clocks in my house and garage right now, and only 3 of them did not handle this morning's return to PST from PDT automatically. (And all three are or are in old things that if bought today probably would automatically handle the time change).
If we just change so we do all of these things an hour earlier in summer we either have to change a whole bunch of signs and other printed material twice a year, or we just have to remember that we need to mentally take an hour off the printed time during that time of year.
The former would be a major hassle and possibly an expensive one, and the later would confuse a lot of people for days or weeks after the switches.
Clocks, on the other hand, are designed to be changed.
If we want things to start an hour earlier in summer, and we want that to apply to everything, than implementing that by moving the clocks an hour forward is easier, cheaper, and less confusing.
The main hassle with changing the clocks is that there are so many of the damn things, although I think we may be getting past that.
(I say this is the main hassle, rather than the hassle of dealing with biological rhythms getting messed up for a while around the time changes because this post is about how, if we are going to have DST, it should be implemented--change schedules or change clocks. The biology thing is the same under both, so is not relevant in this comment)
At one time, say before the 1970s, it wasn't much of an issue because we didn't actually have all that many clocks. A typical family might have wall clocks in the kitchen and living room, table top alarm clocks in the bedrooms, and watches.
It was in the '70s and '80s that clocks started appearing everywhere, and worse, no two seemed to have the same mechanism for setting them and the mechanisms were usually almost impossible to figure out without the instructions. DST changing could be a frustrating evening of alternating trying to guess how to set a clock and searching through every place you might have left the manual.
But now, although everything still has a clock whether it needs it or not, those clocks are more and more likely to be self-setting. I think I have 15 clocks in my house and garage right now, and only 3 of them did not handle this morning's return to PST from PDT automatically. (And all three are or are in old things that if bought today probably would automatically handle the time change).
Bus and other transit schedules already change frequently, often related to changes in demand that may also be seasonal.
I have certainly seen hours of operation signs with separate summer and other hours -- they generally also indicate when they think summer begins and ends. Even if you did change the hours twice a year, that allows you to adjust for changing demand as well -- you don't always need to keep doing what has always been done.
I personally don't think parking and lane restriction hours are that sensitive, just set them to cover the full range of high traffic times.
Most of your self setting equipment is likely not to adjust to changing dst dates when next we add more days to DST.
I have certainly seen hours of operation signs with separate summer and other hours -- they generally also indicate when they think summer begins and ends. Even if you did change the hours twice a year, that allows you to adjust for changing demand as well -- you don't always need to keep doing what has always been done.
I personally don't think parking and lane restriction hours are that sensitive, just set them to cover the full range of high traffic times.
Most of your self setting equipment is likely not to adjust to changing dst dates when next we add more days to DST.
We already do, it's called DST. The effect is that all official times start an hour later.
And don't forget schools, too.
Amen. Worse is better.
I don't know, there's certainly other ways but if you have the power to do it, changing the very measurement of time sounds like one of the better ways to me
It just seems so heavy-handed, if your goal is that people should get off work earlier to enjoy more sun for example, why not just make working days shorter, or move them back? Why change the entire measurement?
>, or move them back? Why change the entire measurement?
Because that's the easier method for society en masse to change 2 times per year. E.g. Some businesses have their opening hours painted on glass windows[1] so repainting them to say 8am-4pm instead of 9am-5pm is more complicated.
That's just a single example. I mentioned some others in a previous comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11277093
[1] https://www.google.com/search?q=store+opening+closing+times+...
Because that's the easier method for society en masse to change 2 times per year. E.g. Some businesses have their opening hours painted on glass windows[1] so repainting them to say 8am-4pm instead of 9am-5pm is more complicated.
That's just a single example. I mentioned some others in a previous comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11277093
[1] https://www.google.com/search?q=store+opening+closing+times+...
If they want to have different opening times for different times of the year painted onto their windows, they can achieve that without repainting:
8am-4pm (2nd Sunday in March - 1st Sunday in November)
9am-5pm (1st Sunday in November - 2nd Sunday in March)
In fact, many business already use this technique successfully to display different opening hours for different days of the week.
8am-4pm (2nd Sunday in March - 1st Sunday in November)
9am-5pm (1st Sunday in November - 2nd Sunday in March)
In fact, many business already use this technique successfully to display different opening hours for different days of the week.
>(2nd Sunday in March - 1st Sunday in November)
Adding calendar qualifications like that to the times makes it even more complicated. To use another commenter's example about "valid hours of parking" printed on narrow street signs, there's no space to append long conditional text (like your suggested verbiage) to the times.
Also, the DST change date isn't stable. Over the years, the DST date boundaries have changed: from the last week in April -- then to first week in April -- then to March. The DST rules may further be refined to be always or never.
Did you look at my link to my previous message? The business hours on the window was only one example of complexity.
Adding calendar qualifications like that to the times makes it even more complicated. To use another commenter's example about "valid hours of parking" printed on narrow street signs, there's no space to append long conditional text (like your suggested verbiage) to the times.
Also, the DST change date isn't stable. Over the years, the DST date boundaries have changed: from the last week in April -- then to first week in April -- then to March. The DST rules may further be refined to be always or never.
Did you look at my link to my previous message? The business hours on the window was only one example of complexity.
Because it's a lot fewer measurements that need to be changed. It's just one. It's so easy.
Waking up in the dark is similarly exhausting to me. Perhaps a short work day of a couple hours of scheduled meeting and let everyone do their technical work on their own schedule like undergraduates would.
DST in Europe makes no sense anyway, because of political reason countries as far away as Spain and Poland use the same time zone (CEST).
So today daylight in Warsaw was 6:36-16:01, and in Madrid it's 7:47-18:08.
If people really cared about daylight saving - they should use the correct timezone in the first place and then worry about changing time.
So today daylight in Warsaw was 6:36-16:01, and in Madrid it's 7:47-18:08.
If people really cared about daylight saving - they should use the correct timezone in the first place and then worry about changing time.
Yes, Spain is in the "wrong" time zone geographically and should really go back an hour relative to CEST. This would put it in the same time zone as Portugal, Britain, Ireland and Morocco.
Personally, here in the UK I'd like to see daylight saving time abolished, but we should stay permanently in summer time. In winter the sun is usually up well before I am, but in the evening it gets dark far too early.
Personally, here in the UK I'd like to see daylight saving time abolished, but we should stay permanently in summer time. In winter the sun is usually up well before I am, but in the evening it gets dark far too early.
> here in the UK I'd like to see daylight saving time abolished, but we should stay permanently in summer time
We tried that for a couple of years at the start of the 1970's... Clearly it didn't last.
We tried that for a couple of years at the start of the 1970's... Clearly it didn't last.
I think the better solution is to change your alarm cocks for what fits your schedule, instead of changing all the clocks in the country for all uses.
I used to strongly agree to this until someone pointed out that you don't have that option if you have children that are tied to the schedule decided on by their school or kindergarten.
Yep. Plus people working in factories or cops or teachers or those working in stores or restaurants or any customer facing office etc are tied too.
Flexible schedule of programmers is more of an exception then norm.
Flexible schedule of programmers is more of an exception then norm.
> This is the whole cost of the scheme. We lose nothing, and gain substantially.
Well not in todays connected world.
> For Continental trains only will special time tables be required, one for April, a second for May, June, July and August, and a third for September
Yep, more like it.
I think DST today is less relevant. Light is cheap. I dont actually need candles. Cities and towns also have lights. Today most power is being used by manufacuring, be it at day or at night. I dont think savings is relevant here.
Dont get me wrong - I love daylight. But I enjoy that we @ europe will get rid of DST. I just hope we get to stay in summer time :)
Well not in todays connected world.
> For Continental trains only will special time tables be required, one for April, a second for May, June, July and August, and a third for September
Yep, more like it.
I think DST today is less relevant. Light is cheap. I dont actually need candles. Cities and towns also have lights. Today most power is being used by manufacuring, be it at day or at night. I dont think savings is relevant here.
Dont get me wrong - I love daylight. But I enjoy that we @ europe will get rid of DST. I just hope we get to stay in summer time :)
Am I the only one that thinks staying in summer time is insane?
The clock face is not arbitrary. Midday is the middle of the day. Midnight is the middle of the night. (To the nearest hour.) If we abandon these conventions, anything left is entirely arbitrary, and having time zones at all seems like a huge complication vs a single global time zone.
We can all get more light in the “evening” by shifting the conventional hours for work and life backwards a bit.
Abandoning timekeeping conventions instead just so that we can start work at some arbitrary number on the clock seems crazy.
The clock face is not arbitrary. Midday is the middle of the day. Midnight is the middle of the night. (To the nearest hour.) If we abandon these conventions, anything left is entirely arbitrary, and having time zones at all seems like a huge complication vs a single global time zone.
We can all get more light in the “evening” by shifting the conventional hours for work and life backwards a bit.
Abandoning timekeeping conventions instead just so that we can start work at some arbitrary number on the clock seems crazy.
There are countries where people have lunch at 12:00 and countries where they have it at 14:00 or later. Dinner and bed time are set in consequence. For the people in those first countries it makes sense to never have DST. For the others it would make sense to have double DST. We can argue that they could shift two hours backward with no consequences but cultural habits are hard to change (I live in one of those countries.) Having light late in the evening (22:00) is great if people are still out. Nobody use sunlight at 5:00 if they're sleeping.
There's no daylight "saved" or "wasted." It's merely forcing everyone to change their schedules according to someone else's arbitrary desire to have their schedule moved up an hour. It should be gotten rid of entirely, and those who want to change their schedules should do so.
I'm not sure if you were serious, but I actually think completely getting rid of timezones is not that crazy of an idea. It would take some getting used to, but naively I don't think it'd be any harder than say, switching to metric in the US.
That is, I like the idea in principle, but I know it'll never happen.
That is, I like the idea in principle, but I know it'll never happen.
Getting rid of timezones is actually a very crazy idea: https://qntm.org/abolish.
Has anyone pointed out how flawed that first argument is?
If you're going to argue that Google can solve the problem of "what time is it over there" in our current system, then Google can solve the problem of "what times are office hours over there" too.
If you're going to argue that Google can solve the problem of "what time is it over there" in our current system, then Google can solve the problem of "what times are office hours over there" too.
This is addressed, at length, in the piece.
That website doesn't call it crazy, it just points out many of the difficulties, and the comments refute many of them.
I do have to admit, it did not occur to me that the work week would still effectively enforce an "ordering" on longitudes which somehow takes the beauty out of it.
I do have to admit, it did not occur to me that the work week would still effectively enforce an "ordering" on longitudes which somehow takes the beauty out of it.
It's true, the website doesn't say crazy, that's my word.
You know what's beautiful? The fact that the vast majority of humanity is awake, engaged in their major activities (school, work or leisure) at 12:00, no matter where they are in the world, and that this is a shared point of reference.
It's not an exaggeration to say that timekeeping is at base, about the daily cycle of day and night. Every development we have created in the past four millenia is an iteration on that same idea. There is day, and night, and our clocks are just more precise ways of marking that cycle. You want to abolish that, for what? A nicer API?
You know what's beautiful? The fact that the vast majority of humanity is awake, engaged in their major activities (school, work or leisure) at 12:00, no matter where they are in the world, and that this is a shared point of reference.
It's not an exaggeration to say that timekeeping is at base, about the daily cycle of day and night. Every development we have created in the past four millenia is an iteration on that same idea. There is day, and night, and our clocks are just more precise ways of marking that cycle. You want to abolish that, for what? A nicer API?
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If you can convince everyone in the entire world to move their schedules earlier by one hour, I'm with you.
If not, I'm willing to live with midday and midnight being conceptually misaligned, as they have been for the half of my life I've spent on daylight savings time so far.
If not, I'm willing to live with midday and midnight being conceptually misaligned, as they have been for the half of my life I've spent on daylight savings time so far.
How are those times not arbitrary? Midday is not the middle of the day if you don't wake up at 4 o clock, 14:00 or 14:30 is about the middle of the day.
We could shift the hours for work and life, such that it'd be normal to wake up at 4:30, to have lunch at 10, the sun to reach its peak at 12, the middle of the day etc... But that would be a global, massive effort, requiring a rewrite of conventions that go back centuries. Or we could change the clock instead, making the connection between the number on the clock and the sun a little more arbitrary and giving us a few more hours sunlight at convenient times
We could shift the hours for work and life, such that it'd be normal to wake up at 4:30, to have lunch at 10, the sun to reach its peak at 12, the middle of the day etc... But that would be a global, massive effort, requiring a rewrite of conventions that go back centuries. Or we could change the clock instead, making the connection between the number on the clock and the sun a little more arbitrary and giving us a few more hours sunlight at convenient times
Don't take away DST, I love being able to do outdoor sports till 10pm or even later in the summer.
No more dst. No more timezones. What happens when we colonize Mars? We need to switch to star dates.
Shifting the clocks is an idea that adds a lot of cost and questionable benefits. We have the daylight hours that our location's geography provides. Why not simply set the time zone boundaries such that the location is closest to having the daylight centered around noon and leave the clocks alone. Having changing time zones causes costs in updating all the software.
Am I the only one that thinks staying in summer time is insane?
The clock face is not arbitrary. Midday is the middle of the day. Midnight is the middle of the night. (To the nearest hour.) If we abandon these conventions, anything left is entirely arbitrary, and having time zones at all seems like a huge complication vs a single global time zone.
We can all get more light in the “evening” by shifting the conventional hours for work and life backwards a bit. Abandoning timekeeping conventions instead just so that we can start work at some arbitrary number on the clock seems crazy.
The clock face is not arbitrary. Midday is the middle of the day. Midnight is the middle of the night. (To the nearest hour.) If we abandon these conventions, anything left is entirely arbitrary, and having time zones at all seems like a huge complication vs a single global time zone.
We can all get more light in the “evening” by shifting the conventional hours for work and life backwards a bit. Abandoning timekeeping conventions instead just so that we can start work at some arbitrary number on the clock seems crazy.
This sounds a bit closer to the ideal of just working with respect to sun rise. It eliminates the abrupt transition twice a year and allows the adjustment to be greater or less than an hour which is good because the useful adjustment changes with latitude.
These days we could just skip the discrete changes all together and just use solar time directly.