However you feel about Daylight Savings Time in the spring, the fall-back hour is pretty great. I haven’t taken a poll or anything, but I’m willing to bet that most of you just snooze straight through the extra hour without a thought to the dozens of better ways that you could use it. Next year, if you want to be a productive member of society for an extra hour, try one of these ways to fill your time.
- Volunteer at a local animal shelter. Remember how awesome cats are? If you don’t want one full time, just go brighten their day for a while. An hour, to be exact.
- Watch a documentary (or part of one, if you’re taking this one-hour thing literally), then lord your new-found knowledge over everyone at the next party you go to. Or just be a know-it-all in some Facebook comments.
- Catch up on your favorite show. You’ve signed in to Netflix with the best intentions. You really meant to watch a documentary, but then your remote found a life of its own. Still better than sleeping!
- Set up a LinkedIn profile (or update your existing one). It’s not the “fun” social media, so this counts as productivity, unlike Facebook time. Use it to find your manager from your shelf-stocking days, and then rub in your post-grad success.
- Pick out a book. Am I the only one who gets lost in bookstores, online or off? GoodReads is a great go-to to find book recommendations, but it’s a labyrinth. If you can log in, find one interesting book, and log off, you deserve a medal.
- Learn to cook something from your Pinterest recipe board instead of letting it sit there for the next six months.
- Clean out your closet. You probably don’t need all 15 of your tacky Christmas sweaters. Just pick one or two and toss the rest (and all of the dust they collected with them). Fill up your new space and…
- Go thrifting. Digging through thrift shops and second-hand stores usually takes at least twice as long as going to a big name retailer to find what you need, but now you have an extra hour. Pull out your best Indiana Jones impression and start digging through those dusty piles.
- Take a walk. Apparently Americans are trending toward obesity, so get your heart rate up and go for a stroll. If you have a dog, take them along. If you have a cat, leave them in peace. Word is that they don’t care for leashes. If walking is too mundane…
- Host a quick dance party. Location is all on you. Work? Home? The subway? All you need is some music! Dancing is great exercise and an hour should give you plenty of time to perfect your moves.
If, after all of these suggestions, you still feel like you need to spend the time sleeping, do what you need to do, just know that you’re losing productivity points. Besides, if you try it and decide that being awake for the extra hour isn’t for you, you can always make up for it with a nap later.
