As much as timezones are a pain (I'm a programmer who recently finished working on an international calendar for an app), I don't think getting rid of timezones is a great idea. https://qntm.org/abolish
I think a much better goal would be getting rid of daylight savings. THAT causes so much headache for little reason nowadays
The first argument is silly. You could simply search "Sunrise time Melbourne".
The second argument is also silly. Some people do work jobs overnight, and they don't say they work 19:00-24:00 + 0:00-2:00
They simply say "I'm working Friday from 19 till 2"
Third argument is the same as the first. Look up "sunrise time Melbourne".
Besides, a single format timezone works best when the people who use it are prepared to let technology dictate floating values.
Sunrise time is always changing, and our bodies have evolved to wake with the sun, not with some arbitrary number.
That's why I use Suntimes to wake up.
I set my alarm to "sunrise minus one" and I always wake up one hour before sunrise.
I work from home, so work always starts for me "sunrise plus one".
I set my alarm to tell me to sleep at "sunrise minus 10" and I get 8.5 hours sleep which is fine for me.
I definitely agree some of the issues they cite are more complicated than they need to be
It would be awesome to base schedules around sunrise (especially sleep, your routine sounds very nice), but the wild variance the further you go from the equator might make that unruly.
Depending on the time of year my schedule would "shift" around multiple hours due to latitude, people in (southern) Norway would have to shift around 6ish hours, all the way to the extreme arctic circle where the sun doesn't rise/set depending on season
I think I could adapt where I live, but I feel like "time of day" would lose all meaning without also knowing time of sunrise, whereas right now I can be reasonably certain how "active" the world is in any given timezone at 9:00 or 23:00
It is definitely interesting to think how different it would be to base everything around sunrise (you'd never really say let's meet at x time, it would always be relative to sunrise), I just struggle in thinking people would be able to break the routine of relying on nice round numbers for time
As I mentioned, we need to rely on technology to manage these things to be efficient, as even something like altitude changes the "sunrise time" - so booking appointments and meetings would be too hard.
It's a fantasy for the most past, we would never see its implementation in our lifetime.
Still very cool to think about
And thank you for the app link, if I ever get flexible enough hours I wonder if that sleep schedule would help my somewhat unhealthy relationship with sleep
Definitely recommended. I've been using it for two years now, and I noticed the seasonal changes don't seem as bad because my alarms don't change depending on daylight savings time (the real enemy here which needs to be abolished).
