The Morning: Changing the clocks -

Good morning. Daylight saving time ends tomorrow. How will you make use of the extra hour?

María Jesús Contreras

Taking time

The midday sun in my apartment this time of year is like a searchlight, illuminating every windowpane streak and every mote of dust. It’s obnoxious, honestly, like a teacher’s pet showing off: “Look how bright and unsparing I can be,” the sun seems to taunt, “just before I decamp for the next four months.”

An extra hour of sleep is no small thing if you can seize it. This is what I’ll remind myself as I make the rounds of the clocks tonight before bed, anticipating that brief moment of confused excitement tomorrow when I wake and check the time: It’s 7, no wait, it’s actually 6! Every first Sunday in November, I contemplate becoming a different, better person, one who gets up one hour earlier to meditate or exercise or meal-prep. I could be the person who spends an hour journaling, or fixing a large, healthy breakfast or taking the dog for a brisk walk in the cold dark. (In this alternate reality, I have a dog.)

And every first Sunday in November I do none of these things. I spend the extra hour in bed, trying to go back to sleep, probably fretting a little about how I’m squandering this precious opportunity to begin leading a truly productive life.

I know, it’s just one hour. How one spends it or doesn’t is hardly determinative of whether they’re making the most of their time on earth. But the scarcity of daylight this time of year does make every hour feel that much more valuable. As we enter the final two months of the year, thoughts naturally turn to how we’re filling our days.

I like the handy suggestion that we change the batteries in our smoke detectors every time we change the clocks. A potentially lifesaving precaution, easy enough. If daylight saving is this built-in, twice-yearly reminder, we could use it to prompt ourselves to perform other life-improving tasks. Maybe it’s the day you make a list of all the things you’d do if you had an extra hour, and commit to doing at least one of them daily between now and March, when we give that hour back.

Or you could just sleep in. Luxuriate in the extra hour without any mandate to do something with it. You could even do as a reader of The Morning advised a couple years ago, when I asked for tips for acclimating to the return to standard time: Wait to change your clock until an hour on Sunday that you’d like to experience again. Maybe you’d like to redo coffee and bagels at 10, or maybe an extra hour for an afternoon lie-down at 2feels like just the thing.

“A man who dares to waste one hour of time has not discovered the value of life,” Charles Darwin said, rather imperiously, but I guess his body of work does speak to some pretty impressive time-management skills. I’ve often used this sort of injunction as a way to urge myself into action. But I’m as inspired by the psychologist Amos Tversky, who said, “You waste years by not being able to waste hours.” Whose wisdom will you heed this weekend?

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