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Comment by vintermann | Hacker News Reader

Why is it so hard to set our schedules instead of our clocks? Can't we just agree that school starts an hour later in winter, for instance?

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Then parents who do morning routine or drop off have to come in an hour later, and their partner also wants to wake an hour later so they can stay up with the family an hour later, which means they don’t want to open the coffee shop until an hour later, so now the random commuter wants to start later so their coffee shop is open, and pretty soon it’s just as easy to say “ah screw it, we’re just going to change the clocks twice a year…”

Or, we come up with a system that actually follows the rhythms of nature, rather than forcing a standard schedule year round. Like, I get up later and go to bed earlier in the winter like pretty much every other mammal on the planet, and the 9-5 can shove it. This has nothing to do with clocks changing. Just our patterns changing.

I’d like a single, consistent way to mark time, but that shouldn’t dictate my seasonal schedule and rhythms.

> Or, we come up with a system that actually follows the rhythms of nature, rather than forcing a standard schedule year round.

The clock-driven day is one of humanity's greatest inventions. You can't build a spacefaring society on "following the rhythms of nature."

I understand the sun enveloping the earth is inevitable and the fate of our species depends on shedding our earthly bonds but, I think we can conform our daily habits to our present reality without sacrificing a distant future spacefaring civilization.

Rigid timekeeping does not preclude compensation for the sun.

Eh, we still have timezones, and a spacefaring civilization will most likely at least use a time that matches their planet’s cycle.

Eh, I say give it a try. Worst case we don't get to space but have a good time.

We have given it a try. It’s how most of the world worked until industrialization, and how much of the world still works (like my dad’s village in Bangladesh). It’s a recipe for poverty.

Not sure I buy the cause and effect here.

It's co-evolution. As the society advances, it develops rigid timekeeping to enable further development.

Parents already have to make adjustments to their schedules for when their children are out of school in the summer, right? It's not like society isn't used to parental schedules shifting based on the time of year.

One of my favorite life hacks (which really isn't a hack) is to not change my clock, go to sleep and wake up at the exact same time (solar wise, not wall clock), and just view the shift as a shift in schedules as opposed to time.

This is somewhat what it is like for me in Arizona. There is no clock change here, so I just watch my out of state meetings shift around twice a year.

Because the opposite is true. Schedules used to be earlier in the past. People simply want them later, despite stating otherwise.

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