Saving Daylight: what time is it anyway and why does it matter?

Issue 183 — November 8, 2021

Don’t you love the day each year that we get an extra hour?

Fall back.

Well, maybe not so much if you have small children whose body clocks still awaken them and their parents, at what will now be one hour earlier than before.

And maybe you’d prefer to keep daylight saving time all year to stave off darkness in the late afternoon, thus reducing seasonal affective disorders while avoiding the complications of a mid-year time change.

Buying time

Changing the clock was first implemented in Germany in 1912. It stemmed then from the belief that it would save energy during World War I, but apparently had been motivated initially by a desire to have more light to foster more working hours of the day.

Eventually the American business community saw it as a stimulus to consumer spending for people to leave work while it was still light.

So daylight saving time was enacted into law that all states except Arizona (with the exception of the Navajo Nation whose lands stretch across multiple states) and Hawaii practice. Hawaii makes sense because there is little variation in the weather. And Arizona, my state of residence, certainly has more than enough sun most of the year to make daylight saving irrelevant, but it’s also inclined to assert its independence from any kind of federal restrictions.

Time flies

From the invention of the sundial around 3500 BC in Egypt and Babylonia, clumsily measuring the day by the sun’s shadow to the Apple Watch today that measures almost everything, the human predilection to control our environment has given us ever more sophisticated ways to measure time.

There are many metaphors and intriguing stories pertaining to time, but ultimately we are each faced with making meaning of whatever time we have on Earth. And let’s face it, no matter how much we plan, new challenges arise.

Like pandemics for example.

Times change

Cher sang the plaintive song, “If I Could Turn Back Time.”

We can’t turn back time. But as I demonstrate in my book Intentioning, we can take the opportunity inherent in disruption that seems like it’s turning us back to envision and create a new future of our choice.

Enter to win a free signed copy of Intentioning.

Experts say the pandemic has set back women’s progress to pay and leadership parity by a decade. We at Take The Lead say, “No way. We won’t let that happen!”

Here’s one way you can take a few seconds of that saved hour to make a life changing impact for a woman struggling to regain lost career footing:

Your one time or monthly recurring contribution to Take The Lead helps to put women at the center of the recovery from the pandemic. It’s as simple as that.

Your gift will enable Take The Lead to provide free resources and our “life changing” 9 Leadership Power Tools to Advance Your Career course to help women retool, refresh, or rethink their career paths. We help all women identify their value and their relationship networks, gain skills, and make a plan to achieve their highest intentions.

Join generous supporters like Shirley Coly, Director of Partnerships at Tostan, who says: “I believe elevating women helps us all rise and that’s why I became a monthly sustainer for Take the Lead! I’m proud to support their vision of gender parity by 2025 and I love the practical tools and resources they share to ensure women leaders claim their power and their place at the table.”

Poet Mary Oliver said in her poem “The Summer Day,” “Tell me, what do you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?” If each of us able to do so will use just a small moment of our time to help another woman to rise, we will soon be back on track and even moving faster forward to leadership gender parity.

Thank you, and enjoy your extra hour!

GLORIA FELDT is the Cofounder and President of Take The Lead, a motivational speaker and expert women’s leadership developer for companies that want to build gender balance, and a bestselling author of five books, most recently Intentioning: Sex, Power, Pandemics, and How Women Will Take The Lead for (Everyone’s) Good. Former President of Planned Parenthood Federation of America, she teaches “Women, Power, and Leadership” at Arizona State University and is a frequent media commentator. Learn more at www.gloriafeldt.com and www.taketheleadwomen.com. Tweet Gloria Feldt.