Daylight saving time starts this weekend. I won’t spend a lot of time arguing why daylight saving time is an archaic institution that needs to be ended.
Instead, I’m going to encourage you (and myself) to accept this change when it happens, plan for the hour of sleep lost — or keep your sleep, and plan to lose an hour of daylight (which seems like the exact opposite of daylight “saving”, but I digress.)
Because daylight savings is a sign of the onset of springtime, it’s a good opportunity to consider a reset of one or more of the following:
How is your schedule working for you? Are you able to fully embrace your chronotype, or are you shoehorning yourself into a schedule that’s not the most generative for you? You might use the time change, when your sleep schedule is already thrown off, to adjust toward a schedule that works better for you.
How’s your energy in spring? You might, like a lot of folks, come out of winter hibernation with a burst of new energy. Or you may be just the opposite: as you leave the crisp cold behind, you may find yourself feeling languid as the weather warms. Recognize the pattern, and plan your next several months (or several seasons) accordingly.
How are your habits? Springtime — and the month of March particularly, when we’re past the first couple weird months of the year — is a great time to review your habits and perhaps start a new one.
Check out Reads and Seeds 👇 for some additional resources on these areas you might find helpful as you consider a reset this weekend.
-Steve
In case you missed it this week, check out the updates to ’s classic thought piece, “Why Today Is the Perfect Day to Start Something New”, which feels particularly relevant for spring. 🌸
Join us for our next Monthly Community Coaching Call on March 13, 2024, at 11 a.m. PDT — a 60-minute call that’s a mix of teaching,
hot-support-seat coaching, and Q&A. The topics are what you decide to submit or bring forward.Save the date for our next PF Quarterly Planning session on Wednesday, March 27, 2024, at 11 a.m. PDT. More details about this Q2 planning session for our Pro subscribers coming soon.
We all know, in theory, spring should offer increased energy and resolve, but there IS such a thing as Spring Lethargy. Some folks experience higher levels of insomnia and anxiety in springtime as a result of changing hormonal levels of serotonin and melatonin with more light.
A Guardian article on why we should “stop circadian rhythm shaming” suggests your chronotype (or sleep-wake schedule) is mostly genetic. Dr. Mathias Basner, director of Penn’s unit for experimental psychiatry, sleep, and chronobiology, suggests being a night owl is not bad in itself, but it’s the early work starts and long commutes our society normalizes that lead people to sleep debt.
Most Americans (just not Hawaii and Arizona) will move their clocks forward by an hour this weekend. But where did this start? AP News says Daylight Savings Time came about through “two world wars, mass confusion, and a human desire to bask in sunlight.”
- in a time change relevant thought from ‘How can slowing down create momentum?”: “If you want time to get stretchy, you have to get stretchy with time.”
And in honor of International Women’s Day today, a shout out to a recent piece from
, “The Princess And The Pea”, on how the mundane and frustrating aspects of our lives can be used to fuel our creativity: “like the fairytale, do not underestimate the power of that single, tiny pea. Allow yourself to sit with the discomfort, the frustration and the insomnia and use it to your creative advantage.”