Being from south of the border, I have always been a huge fan of Daylight Savings and never really understood why other states didn’t embrace the advantage of twilight. I am alway bemused by people saying we don’t want extra sun – um hello – same amount of sunshine. We are not controlling the sun we are controlling the time!
The idea that we can control time and in the case of Daylight Saving at what time of day we would like to have sunlight and what time we don’t (which is essentially all that it is) has been embraced by 70 countries around the world, first introduced in Canada in 1908 to save energy – how every forward thinking!
People who live in a Daylight Savings time zone people enjoy a greater sense of work-leisure balance. Wth the added daylight hours after work they engage in more family or recreational activities than they do in winter. For me, growing up in a small country town and enjoying my annual Twilight Netball competition was wonderful, oh and the cows didn’t stop producing milk, nor did mums curtains fade! But now, having resided north of the border for 16 years, I look to the sky every evening wishing that I could enjoy just a few more moments in the gorgeous Queensland sunshine; yeah it’s hot but it’s perfect pool time!
I another effort to control time, this week the Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy said he wanted to establish a shorter work day – a cultural change that would bring a shorter lunch break and therefore reduce the long-standing siesta tradition, all in the name of work-life balance. Those who have travelled to Spain fantasise about this amazing lifestyle with long lazy lunch breaks every day, but the reality for Spanish workers is that they begin work at 10 a.m. and break at 2 p.m. for a siesta for as long as three hours, ending the work day at 8 p.m Doesn’t make much time for work-leisure balance. “I will find a consensus to make sure the working day ends at 6 p.m.,” Rajoy said
Perhaps we should consider how we control our own time in an effort to manage our own work-leisure balance.