time shift

When the 24-hour day is divided into thirds, most people sleep in the first third (0000-0800), work in the middle third (0800-1600), and relax in the last third (1600-2400).

This schedule made good sense for most of human history, when the majority of people worked outdoors performing tasks that required good sunlight .

In most of the industrial world these conditions no longer hold. Even though most jobs could now just as well be done at any time of day, people are still forced to stay inside working during the pleasant daylight hours now best suited to recreation and family activities.

Today it makes more sense to work in the first third of the day (starting at midnight), relax in the second, and sleep in the third. A few people enjoy flexible enough employment arrangements that they could do this if they really wanted to, but only at the price of being out of phase with the rest of society. The real answer requires *everyone* to shift to the same modern, more sensible daily schedule.

Unfortunately, society has such deeply ingrained notions of "appropriate" clock times for various activities that it might be difficult for many people to accept the idea of starting work at midnight. The best solution, then, allows people to maintain their familiar clock schedules by shifting each time zone negative eight hours from their current UTC offsets. The times on the clock would then occur eight hours earlier (with respect to the sun) than they did before the adjustment. A simple and gradual way to accomplish this shift would be to observe daylight savings time at the beginning of the summer, but not return to standard time in the fall, for eight years.

(Potential problems with this idea might arise from the way the body uses sunlight to trigger awakeness and tiredness, and also from auto accidents caused by people driving to work in the darkest hours of the night. Modern lighting technology can help with both these problems, to at least some extent.)