How to Avoid Daylight Saving Time Meeting Mistakes
The classic DST meeting mistake: a recurring call quietly shifts by an hour because one time zone changed its clocks and another one didn’t.
The most common daylight saving time mistake happens with recurring meetings. A weekly call set for "9am my time, 9pm your time" can quietly become "9am my time, 10pm your time" the moment one of the two countries changes its clocks and the other doesn’t.
Why it happens
Daylight saving time transitions happen on different dates in different countries — and some countries don’t observe it at all. If a recurring meeting was scheduled by converting one fixed clock time to another fixed clock time, that conversion silently goes stale the moment either side’s offset changes.
How to avoid it
- Schedule using each participant’s actual time zone identifier (like America/New_York), not a fixed offset like "UTC−5" — the identifier automatically accounts for DST, a hard-coded offset does not.
- For recurring meetings, re-check the time a few days before each DST transition in any participant’s country.
- When sharing a proposed time, share something that resolves to the recipient’s local time automatically, rather than a plain time in your own time zone.