What if the real problem with the time change was your work rhythm?

What if the real problem with the time change was your work rhythm?
Make the clocks tick to the rhythm of the seasons? Very little for Europeans. In 2018, in the face of massive opposition, the European Commission announced its intention to abolish the switch to winter time. But what if this rejection went well beyond a simple question of comfort? What if it was a symptom of a deeper malaise, linked to our work rhythms? This is what a Spanish study published in the journal Chronobiology International suggests.

Two Spanish researchers, Jorge Mira Pérez from the University of Santiago de Compostela and José María Martín Olalla from the University of Seville, reached this, to say the least, unexpected conclusion by looking at the results of a vast public consultation launched by the European Commission in 2018. Nearly four million citizens of the 28 Member States at the time took part. A figure which, although it may seem modest on a European scale, nevertheless offers a solid basis analysis.”We considered this public consultation as a natural experiment“, explains Jorge Mira Pérez in a press release. “We examined the distribution of favorable and unfavorable responses to identify factors likely to influence these positions.“.

First lesson from their study: the more a country is located in the north of Europe, the more its citizens reject the time change. But above all, a link emerges between the start time of the working day and the rejection of this practice. Those who get up early are much more likely to express their discomfort with the time changes.

To explore this avenue, the two researchers compared the start time of professional activity with the time of sunrise in winter, a period when light is at its lowest. “When we simply use the time the working day begins, we do not find significant correlations with the public consultation results. But when we analyze the distance between this time and winter sunrise, we find that countries with earlier starts have higher rates of opposition to the time change.“, notes José María Martín Olalla.

The geographic factor or the time zone are therefore not enough to explain this discomfort. For the authors, the time change is above all a question of physiological adaptation. Those who start their workday in the winter darkness feel its effects more. In short, the current system represents a shaky compromise between “early risers”, disinclined to live in permanent summer time, and those who prefer to start their day later, for whom constant winter time would be disadvantageous. A watchmaking debate which reveals, implicitly, the importance of respecting our biological rhythms.