Daylight Savings: When falling back is good

November 6th we have a clock change for daylight savings time.  Don’t worry, it’s the good one.  We “fall back,” as in fall back to sleep on Sunday morning since we’ve gained an hour.  Isn’t it nice to get that extra time?  I think so.  I always try to appreciate a little extra. 

And when Sunday night comes, it feels comforting to me when I look at the clock and see that it’s earlier than it feels.  

This is an opportunity for anyone who has trouble getting to sleep and waking up in the morning.  What if you took advantage of the time change to shift your own clock?  This would mean carrying on with what you were doing before so you had a one-hour shift earlier.  Or you could split the difference to make things easier for yourself.  

Here is an example of splitting the difference.  Let’s say you need to wake up at 6 am on weekdays to get to work on time, but you’re barely making it since you’re hitting snooze for half an hour.  You try to be in bed by 10:30 pm, but it’s hard to sleep until about 11:30 pm.  So you’re getting around 6.5 hours of good sleep plus 30 minutes of broken sleep because of the snooze button.  And then rushing in the morning. 

With daylight savings time ending on Sunday, you could set your alarm on Monday morning for a new time, 5:30 am.  This would feel like 6:30 am, the time you had been getting up anyway.  But now you don’t have the snooze struggle going on for 30 minutes and your morning is less rushed.  

Starting Sunday night, you could go to bed at 10 pm, which was previously 11 pm.  And you would probably fall asleep in 30 minutes or less (you had been falling asleep around 11:30 before).  Your sleep may be deeper. You would get at least 7 hours of solid sleep.  And your morning would be less stressful.  

You’re just moving your scheduled bedtime and wakeup time a little bit back. . . and then locking in those new times to give your brain the gift of consistency.  

Do an experiment and see if it works for you!