Tomorrow morning (April 1), Daylight Savings ends in NSW, Victoria, South Australia, Tasmania and the ACT. For some reason, the obligatory clock readjustment tends to flummox otherwise intelligent people. Do you move the clock forward or backwards?? If you suffer from this embarrassing annual brain fart, here’s an old adage that will help you to permanently remember.
The below saying is as old as the hills, but it would seem a lot of you have never encountered it judging by the number of people still confused by the process. It’s a wordplay on seasons which happens to correlate with the direction you move your clock.
“You ‘Spring’ forward, then you ‘Fall’ back.”
In other words, you move your clock forward one hour in Spring (when Daylight Savings starts) and move it back one hour in Autumn (when Daylight Savings ends.) Pretty foolproof, eh?
Okay, so we don’t actually say “Fall” in Australia, but this is one occasion when we’re willing to let an Americanism slip. If you’re one of those people who can’t remember which way the clock turns, commit the above saying to memory and you should be right as rain.
If you want to be anally punctual about it, the correct time to reset your clocks is 2am on Sunday morning.
Comments
20 responses to “Turn Your Clock The Right Way With This Simple Daylight Savings Rule”
Mine is easier to remember, it goes like this: “Fuck daylight saving, it’s stupid”
It actually makes a lot of sense.
Move the extra daylight to where you get the most benefit.
Then start work an hour earlier. Why mess with clocks? It’s more of a hassle and causes more stuffups than Y2k.
I recall Y2K also caused zero problems.
It did in a number of industrial control systems. And the production reporting system when they tried to do DST with it where it met the business network really lost its marbles, especially at the end where they got 1 hour and 1 minute worth of production in one minute.
I don’t understand why that makes any more sense than saying someone could “‘Fall’ forward, and then ‘Spring’ back”…
Man, you’ve screwed it for everyone now.
Oh My Goodness zak you sure did…………….
Spring forward and autumn back.
I’ve always heard it as “Spring ahead and Fall back”, no one says “fall ahead”, so both parts of the saying are common phrases independently of each other.
so do we set it forward or backwards tomorrow?
Yes
My rule is “it’s Sunday, wake up whatever time feels right. Then adjust the one or two clocks that don’t update automatically to the same time as the ones that do.”
Mines simple “Daylight saving you say? …I made waffles”.
Hopefully bright sparks in WA dont decide we need another trial of that nonsense anytime soon 😛
You obviously are not a tradesperson
not sure how that would magically make the day being shifted a single hour actually useful.
But then im up before dawn year round (even when we had DST) so i guess that may play a part in me not seeing the point 😛 I would have no problem with it if the entire country had it at the same time however, but we didnt, so it just made it a nuisance trying to contact suppliers/customers in the eastern states
Because in summer where it reaches 40 degrees, it would be very beneficial to be able to start an hour earlier. By 7am it’s already sweltering some days, and it’s illegal to work earlier than that unless you can be very quiet.
Just make sure you don’t follow the Americans and switch your calendar to the 10th of February as well.
How does one “Autumn Back”?
Ummm, here in Qld, Sunday is April 2nd. Does this mean us northerners have been a day ahead of the southern states for 6 months?