The clocks are shifting again, and this small change can shake up mornings, nights, and routines. With the end of Daylight Saving Time, the goal is simple: reset gently, stay alert, and keep your home safe. It may seem like a minor adjustment, but the impact on sleep, mood, and schedules is real. A smooth transition starts with light, timing, and a few smart habits to ease the stress.
What’s Changing and Why It Happens
In the U.S., Daylight Saving Time follows a fixed pattern. It begins on the second Sunday in March and ends on the first Sunday in November. In spring, we lose an hour. In fall, we gain one. That extra hour brings brighter mornings, but earlier sunsets.
This year, the time change happens on Sunday, November 2, 2025, at 2:00 a.m.—one day earlier than last year and one of the earliest possible dates. Most people will switch their clocks back before bed on Saturday night, November 1. The result? An extra 60 minutes for sleep, rest, or late-night fun, along with a sudden shift in daily rhythm.
Manual clocks need to be set back by hand. Digital devices—phones, computers, TVs—usually reset automatically at 2 a.m. The shift can feel abrupt, but a little planning keeps alarms synced and appointments on track.
How the Time Change Affects Your Schedule
Turning the clocks back gives you brighter mornings, but darkness comes earlier in the evening. This affects commute safety, evening exercise, and family plans. It can also throw off mealtimes and screen habits. Because your internal clock resists sudden shifts, use the weekend as a reset window to ease into the new routine.
Studies show it’s easier to gain an hour than to lose one. In spring, heart attack and stroke rates tend to spike after the March change. Fall is gentler, but shorter days can still bring fatigue and seasonal dips in mood. Sticking to steady sleep and getting consistent morning light helps your body adjust faster.
For some, shorter days can trigger seasonal affective disorder (SAD). Combat this by seeking bright light in the morning, moving daily, and keeping bedtime consistent. These small anchors fight drowsiness, sharpen focus, and keep your mood steady.
Health, Risks, and Smart Sleep Strategies
Start preparing a few nights ahead. Shift bedtime by 15–20 minutes at a time. Keep your wake-up consistent—even on weekends—so your body locks into the new schedule. Adjust meal times and cut back on late caffeine to avoid tossing and turning.
Use light as your ally. Step outside into natural sunlight right after waking—it signals your brain that the day has begun. In the evening, dim indoor lights and reduce screen exposure two hours before bed. These signals boost melatonin production, improve reaction time, and give you easier mornings.
Safety matters too. Darker evenings reduce visibility on the roads and around neighborhoods. While the time shift was designed to save energy and reduce accidents, personal habits play a role. Run errands earlier, wear reflective gear on walks, and set evening reminders so you don’t drift too late.
The Rules, the Exceptions, and the Debate
Daylight Saving Time has a long history. It began in World War I to save fuel, returned in World War II, and became standardized in 1966 when President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Uniform Time Act. Today, the Department of Transportation manages the schedule across time zones.
But not every state participates. Arizona (except the Navajo Nation) and Hawaii stay on standard time year-round. U.S. territories including Puerto Rico, Guam, American Samoa, the Northern Mariana Islands, and the U.S. Virgin Islands also skip the switch.
In 2022, the U.S. Senate passed the Sunshine Protection Act to make Daylight Saving Time permanent, but it stalled in the House. Similar efforts in New York also failed. Health experts warn that keeping one fixed time year-round could create “permanent jet lag” for millions of people.
Home Safety Checks and Practical Prep
The time change is the perfect reminder for a home safety check. The New York State Firefighters Association urges families to replace smoke detector batteries when clocks shift. Sixty percent of home fire deaths happen when alarms fail—this small habit saves lives.
Sort your clocks by type. Phones, laptops, and smart TVs reset automatically, but car dashboards, ovens, microwaves, and older thermostats usually don’t. Don’t forget wall clocks, watches, and bedside alarms. A full sweep prevents missed appointments and late arrivals.
Use the moment to improve sleep hygiene too. Lower the lights at night, cool down your bedroom slightly, and skip heavy meals before bed. Short naps (20 minutes or less) can refresh without disrupting deep sleep. With steady wake times, morning light, and clear alarms, your body will quickly settle into the new rhythm.
A Clear Plan for a Smooth Transition
The fall time change may be brief, but its effects ripple through sleep, safety, and daily planning. Take simple steps: mark your bedtime, get morning light, and check your alarms. On Sunday, November 2, clocks move back one hour, giving you bonus time. Use it wisely—with calm habits, safe routines, and a fresh reset for the season ahead.
Time change doesn’t matter to anyone that’s rich and has the option of getting up when they want to and going to bed when they want to. But to the workers that have to set an alarm to go to work everyday it screws with our sleep, the people that matter the most. Of course, to rich people we don’t matter. Sleep deprivation has been proven to be one of the leading causes of illness in our country. And giving that rich man an extra hour of work a day is what made him rich and made me sick.
I totally agree Diane just one more thing they push on us. Why the big write about it though is what i wonder? Maybe they are worried this year we finally do what we want? Because if we did what we want they would lose control.
I think daylight savings time is horrible. It takes,away from our light when we get home from work. We can work in our yards or house and makes us,sluggish. They need to leave it how it is. Its,very stupid to change our clocks again. Nothing gets done we work all day and don’t have enough daylight to do anything till we get home. Its a stupid thing we dont need.
That is so tight in there it whatypu had said
The time change is not a day earlier. No matter how you slice it or dice it, It’s still the first Sunday in November. Oy ve
Love it! We should be on Standard time forever. We should also use the metric system and 24 hour time. Why do we have to be so different?
I agree completely
💯
Yep do away entirely with this crap bc it never benefits the worker only the business…or im happy to do DST how bout on a Monday morning during work for 1 hr forward and 1 hour back on Saturday night. Ha but srsly DST is a dead concept from a long gone era. Let’s have congress amend it gone ya?
I don’t mind the 24 hour time format or Standard Time year round. I’m not a fan of using the Metric System. It throws of measuring and buying materials. When I go to places like the lumber yards and garden centers; I buy things by measurements like pounds and feet or inches. Landscape timbers come in lengths of feet and are measured like 4 inches by 6 inches. Just an example. Hardware like nuts and bolts are weighed out and sold by pounds. I buy fuel for my equipment by the gallon and not the liter. Liters are smaller than gallons, you don’t get as much for what you’re paying.
So true. I cringe every time I see this incorrect and misleading headline.
True!!!
I hate falling back in the winter. The days are already shorter. The sun is right in my eyes all the way home from work. The weather is cooler and I’d rather have more daylight. In the summer it’s too hot. The day drags on till 9:00. Rather see the sum go down earlier and cool off sooner. I’d rather have daylight savings time reversed or kept all year.
I agree I would prefer to have less daylight in the summer then I would in the winter
I agree, they have it exactly backwards. About the time it starts getting dark too early they make it get dark an hour earlier!
Some people can’t even get home from work before it’s dark already 😐
It’s not healthy to have less sun light in the afternoon for a few reasons.
First when parents and children have less time to go out as a family and enjoy activities they end up as couch potatoes.
Mornings are usually hectic getting ready for the day.
Very little time for after school sports.
Walking your dog either in the neighborhood or at a park is not comfortable in the dark.
I could go on and on.
I absolutely agree with you.
Permanent jet lag?? How’s that work .I don’t travel enough to get key lag and a one time shift ain’t going to efffect anyone, beyond the first day until you get used to the shift. Then back to normal.
Thousands of years…. actually millions…mankind has just done fine sans moving to clock. Farmers have worked the fields at 3 in the morning….no issues. Kids have gone to school…in the dark, no issues, came home, no issues.
People have gone to work…no issues..now many say…it disrupts my sleep cycle moving the time back and forth, da da da ..
You know….just too many drama queens, too many complainers, too many whiners…the rest of the world has done fine sans moving the time back and forth!
Pick a time and leave it! Heck… Arizona and Hawaii don’t move the clock and doing just fine.
Exactly! And if you don’t like the darkness, Edison solved that problem over a century ago -flip the light switch!!!
Standard Time is more healthful for everyone, at every time of the year. North Dakota nearly opted out of DST last winter, and I greatly wish we had. People had forgotten how long those hot, miserable afternoons can be.
You are so right. If Arizona people and the Hawaiians are fine so will we all. We need to just stay with the standard time everywhere.
When I relocated from Tx to Az my first no time change, which would have been from summer to winter, was awesome! Still live in Az and having the same year round time zone is marvelous.
Agree. The year we moved to Arizona, 1967, saa,that fall, late October, harborthe very last click change..we were back on Mt. Std. Time permanently! We loved it! Then, i had to out of necessity, relocate to here in MS..where they still ping-long the,clocks back ad,forth. After 7 yrs, stukl not used to it WIsh Congress or,whoever, would just pick a time standard, agree to it, and stick to it..
Sam Burkes lll
Leave the time alone. Stop the back and forth. So people can’t function on a set time. That’s bs.
I also wish they would leave the clocks alone nobody’s needs day light saving when I was kid they did this for farms now that everything has changed to help the farmers better they say how bad it is so just leave them alone I have talked to a lot of people they also would like to stop the changes of the clocks if others can do it way can’t we make verthing so much easier and safer
Leave it as it is now. Can’t get anything done after getting home in the evenings. It’s dark . If you live in the southern USA , grass still grows , and yard word still needs to be done.
Do it on Halloween so we get the little ones off the street earlier
Don’t be dumb with these stories. It’s just how the calendar works since it’s in the first Sunday I’m November. Get this folks, in 2026 it’ll be EVEN EARLIER! Nov. 1!!!!! Shocking. Not really. Also, both time changes work perfectly.
When you are in the north, the sun isn’t up in the morning and sets before work ends because of the change. Stop changing clocks
I’m confused…what does the North have to do with anything? Sun rises and sets from East to West respectively. JC…?
My kids get up and go to school in the dark and they come home in the dark they don’t get a chance to play all winter long except their 30 min recess at school we live up north in Minnesota this is a true story they get on the bus at 6:20am they get home at 4:45pm and it is already dark here they have no daytime except when they are at school think about what that does the kids in Minnesota that’s bad that’s very bad. Kids need a chance to play to get out to do things instead they sit in there rooms play their devices and think about ways to shoot up their school! Get real this needs to change. If not for your state it definitely does in Minnesota! But why would anybody think about the kids they don’t got time to think about that when it gets dark so fast 🤔
You know it’s the same thing ever year people complain about falling back or spring forward why don’t fall back 1/2 hours from daylight savings and leave it 🤔 so you gain 1/2 in the fall and winter and lose 1/2 hour in the spring and summer but probably won’t miss it because the days are longer any
I agree. Move it a half hour and NEVER move it again. But, we have to wait for our dysfunctional congress to do their job. We are so screwed.
Pretty sure there will be no time change this fall. Trump promised to keep us on daylight savings time forever. This November will be his first chance to do that. Let’s hope for the best.
I certainly hope you are wrong. Trump originally promised to *abolish* DST. If we had it in the winters, here in ND and the whole northern tier of states, the sun wouldn’t come up until 10 AM in parts of the state. People who work indoors or go to school wouldn’t see the sun until the noon hour, which would play havoc with our circadian rhythms. The amount of light and dark wouldn’t change, just be shifted to where dark is less tolerable. Winter evenings are pleasant: everyone has Christmas lights up, and it’s still relatively warm from the daytime. Winter mornings are bleak, and the coldest part of the day is just before sunrise. Forcing people to be up then, driving in the dark, children waiting for the school bus when it’s 20 below – it wouldn’t last. The population wouldn’t tolerate it any more than they did in 1974.
When was the last time Trump said something truthful?
Stay in your lane. The subject is the clock and how it’s set.
I pray you are right. I get so sick of leaving work at 5:00 in Ohio and it’s just about dark. I feel like it’s dark all the time when we go switch the time back. We already lose so much daylight naturally after the first day of summer. How much darkness to people want?!!! It’s like your body just wants to stay in after work because it’s dark. I get so sick of it. I don’t understand the concept, we already lose so much light anyway after the first day of summer – Why do we take more light away and for anyone who complains about long afternoons being too hot and long – my advice to you is take into consideration us people up North, we don’t have real hot weather and we get such deep snow. Try to be snowed in all the time and it starts to get dark at 5:00, wet roads after snow turn into sheets of ice without any light. Try driving in that for 35 minutes to an hour fighting the horrible roads. It gets old and it gets old fast.
I like it staying light later. The days are too short with Eastern Standard time.
I like that idea.
I agree stop messing with the time they go back that hour as deer hunting is stating out where I live in indiana and when the time goes back there are so many accidents uncalled for due to them making it darker that hour earlier. It’s ridiculous if the kids has a long bus ride like I did as a kid your literally home 45 minutes before it starts getting dark. The farmers has advanced si much so much in farming they do t need the time messed with. They did a survey on people that stayed on this time to the ones that went back that hour on there brains and it was damaging the evidence they found in our chemical imbalance. Cuz they do every 6 months so we dont know how to adjust right. I dont know why the transportation people want to keep doing this to our kids but I disagree so bad with this. The seasons already done a time shift like it should they shouldn’t mess with our darkness anymore than that and making it get darker an hour easier by do it this back time. In late August you see it gets darker earlier right before labor day weekend comes up who agrees with everything I’ve said it’s so true we american people keep up with what’s going on!!
What about the yearlong when workers change their work shifts do they adjust their biologic clock every day depending on the request of their bosses or supervisors?!!
In the past people were following the seasons natural changes because they were working from the sun rise in the morning to sun set in the evening and go home to take care of their families and then go to sleep. No 3 shifts in 24 hours.
Leave it as it is gaining an extra hour of sleep is beneficial for everyone. OVERALL BETTER HEALTH IF IT CHANGES IT WOULD BE AWFUL FOR EVERYONE EVERYONE WILL NEVER GET ENOUGH SLEEP WHICH MAKES YOU WOULD FEEL TIRED ALL THE TIME
The Earth is doing what it does why do we have to fall back an hour which the body is set to light and dark automatically nobody wants to get up in pitch Black and head out to work and the children to school in pitch Black. The Earth’s rhythm is doing what it does we come home at 6:00 in the evening we’re driving from work and it’s dark still we have things to do because it’s not bedtime when it’s dark the Earth is doing what it does it’s rhythm is correct I disagree falling back the mornings are already darker and I hate that my body wants to sleep and get up when it starts getting light outside I think America needs to slow down businesses should open later school should open later we should go with the flow and let our bodies tell us when it’s time to get up and when it’s time to go to bed which are set to circadian rhythm not spring forward and fall back time
Stfu Amanda
The people speaking about the time change are so much into the woke movement. I don’t know any person that goes to bed the same time every night. They must really be messed up every day. I’m in my sixties and it hasn’t affected me yet.
I think Ontario or all the Canada stop changing time its make me depressed and my anxiety goes up . We are not in the past its done now its cost society too much. And so on
Every time the time changes we have a spike in heart attacks strokes, car accidents and roadkill. Even the friggin animals suffer because we are now k. The road when they move around at night. Then as soon as it balances out we change and go back to heart attacks, strokes, car accidents, and roadkill…. It’s grossly weird that the house doesn’t notice all this but they notice permanent jet lag?????? Makes no sense at all….
Exactly
I guess people don’t mind losing or gaining hours when flying, or awake. Not to mention that south of the equator you are changing seasons if not hours. And what about leap year?
Yes, it’s time to stop this stupid practice.
I thought they were going to stop this sh*t with the time changing clock, we are tire of this sh*t.
Lived in Arizona 1968 to 1989. 1 year they tried time switch. Drive-in theaters didn’t start until 10pm. Restaurants lost millions. Too hot to go out. Indian nations were on Standard time and that caused issues.
I’d rather have longer sunlight for my depression its so much better
I’m happy that it’s time to fall back. I wish we could leave it that way always. I hate it when spring comes and we have to spring forward. It makes the day seem very long. I don’t adjust well when we spring forward. Love the fall and winter, and would really like to see the clocks stay that way.
A smart friend of mine once recommended we just move the clocks 30 minutes between the two and be done with changing back and forth!
Why is this comment section full of people with subpar brain power? DLS is for exactly what it’s name is. Saving daylight. That’s it. It’s so our business hours remain during the daytime because sunrise and sunset times naturally change and most of us don’t want to work in the dark. It’s also much safer to drive during daylight hours. No, you aren’t getting jet lagged twice a year. You’re just not smart, have put zero effort into understanding why we use DLS, and want an excuse to complain about it like your words are significant. Do better.