Most of the time, Germany is six hours ahead of the East coast of the United States.  For the next three weeks, however,  that’s not going to be the case.   This weekend, on March 10th at 2 am, daylight savings time begins in the United States.  On March 31st at 2am local time, Central European Summer Time (CEST) begins in Germany.  There is a span of three weeks between those two dates.

What this means in simple terms is that meetings with my US colleagues are going to be constantly mis-scheduled because every time we have a week or three between our respective time-shifts, Exchange calendar seems to go to hell.

I research everything I write about on this blog, because I always learn cool and interesting stuff.  I didn’t know that Germany was the first country to implement Daylight Savings Time, in 1916.  They did so to conserve coal during World War I.  It made sense at the time.

Even though it’s been a part of my reality for my entire life, I still think it’s kind of ridiculous in modern times.  Studies on whether it saves money or energy expenditure have gone all over the map- some have shown a huge savings, some have shown increased energy consumption, and some have shown very little change at all.    Other studies have shown that it causes disruptions to sleep habits, and one 2008 study showed that changing to DST correlates to an increase in heart attacks.

Do you think we still need Daylight Savings Time?