Spring Forward – Daylight Saving Time Begins
On Sunday morning at 2:00 A.M., Daylight Saving Time in the United States will officially begin. Of course, no one will set their alarms to wake up at two in the morning to move their clocks forward one hour. Many people, either not wanting to be bothered by it in the evening or completely forgetting that the time change will happen, often forget about it in the morning.
As we approach our annual time change, here are some things to keep in mind:
*Verify correct times for meetings and appointments. If you accepted someone’s electronic calendar invite (or they accepted yours), you don’t have to worry about this because any time changes are automatically adjusted for. But if you agreed on a date and time over the phone or via email, and the other party is not in your time zone, be sure to verify that they will be in an area that will be changing times. For example, if the other party lives in Hawaii, Puerto Rico, or certain parts of Arizona (or Europe or Asia or basically most other countries besides the U.S.), they will not apply the time change on March 13, so the time difference between the two of you will be different, which will affect your meeting start time.
*Change your clocks before you go to bed on Saturday evening. This will ensure you don’t forget this important step in the morning.
*Verify that all of your automated time pieces are correct. If your electronic device is not set to “automated time zone” or if for some reason it isn’t connected to cell service or the internet, it might not change to the correct time.
Over the years, I’ve encountered several hiccups because either the other party wasn’t accurate in manually calculating what time it would be in their time zone, or neither of us was aware that one would apply a time change and the other would not. This is why even if you operate from a paper calendar, I highly recommend that you use a digital calendar when dealing with people in other time zones and most especially in other countries. That will help everyone involved ensure that they show up on the right day and at the correct time.
If you dislike this time of year when we spring forward because you feel like we’re losing an hour, keep the following in mind:
*We’ll gain it back in the fall!
*It’s Football Saving Time! That’s what I call the time savings after Super Bowl Sunday until Labor Day weekend when the NFL kicks off. Just think about how much time you save not watching football games each week! Bonus: If you’re a baseball fan, you won’t lose time to five-hour games until the end of March!
*You could procrastinate for one hour less this week, then you’ll be even.
Happy Daylight Saving Time!
For the complete guide to time management (no matter if you’re on daylight saving time or not), check out The Inefficiency Assassin: Time Management Tactics for Working Smarter, Not Longer.
