Living on Natural Time: What If Noon Was Actually the Middle of the Day?
What if, noon was actually the middle of the day? What difference would that make? I’ve been living on solar time for the past few weeks, and honestly, it’s changed everything.
My wife Maria and I switched our phones to solar time during the holidays — just to see what would happen. And the difference? Immediate. Every time we looked at the clock, something just… clicked. It made sense. Not in a logical, intellectual way, but in a gut-level "oh, obviously" kind of way.
Here’s the thing: right now, as I’m writing this, business time says it’s half past four. But solar time? Quarter past three. And that quarter-hour difference matters. At half four on business time, there’s this nagging feeling that the day’s slipping away — that you should be wrapping up, that you’re running out of time. But solar time tells the truth: the sun’s still properly out, the afternoon’s in full swing, and you’ve got hours of daylight left. That small shift — that alignment between what the clock says and what the sky actually shows — turns out to be surprisingly powerful.
So what is solar time, exactly?
Dead simple: noon is when the sun is at its highest point in the sky. That’s it. Twelve o’clock is the middle of your day, wherever you are. Everything else flows from that.
The app calculates it automatically using GPS, so it’s genuinely your solar time. If you’re in Amsterdam and your mate’s in Rotterdam, you’ll be maybe a minute or two apart. Amsterdam to Paris? About ten minutes. It’s based on longitude — Earth rotates 15 degrees per hour, so every degree of longitude equals four minutes of time.
Business time flattened all that into time zones for practical reasons (trains, meetings, global coordination). Fair enough. But for living? For actually experiencing your day? Solar time just makes more sense.
Why does it reduce stress?
I can’t fully explain it, but I can tell you what it feels like: every time you look at the clock, it clicks. It aligns. There’s no cognitive dissonance between what the number says and what your body feels.
Take mornings. I finally understand why monks meditate at 5am. In business time, that sounds brutal — dragging yourself out of bed in the dark to sit still for an hour. But in solar time? Five o’clock is just when the day begins. It’s not some arbitrary number you’re fighting against. It’s the natural start. We’ve been waking up around then lately, and it doesn’t feel like a struggle. It feels… right.
Or summer mealtimes. Here in the Netherlands, we traditionally eat around 1pm and 6pm. Works fine in winter. But in June, when the sun’s still blazing at 9pm, eating dinner at 6 feels absurd. Your body knows it’s not evening yet. Solar time fixes that — meals align with actual daylight, not some inherited schedule that made sense in a different season.
And the 13-month calendar does something similar. Every month is the same length. Your salary arrives on the same day every month. No more "wait, is this a 28-day month or a 31-day month?" It’s predictable. It’s boring, in the best way. Less mental overhead. Less stress.
What’s coming in the next update
We’re rolling out two big additions in the next version (still in testing, but coming soon):
Astronomical calculations — starting with moon phases. You’ll be able to see when the moon waxes and wanes, right in the app. This came partly from user suggestions (biodynamic farming was another request we built out), and we’re open to more. If there’s something celestial you’d like to track, let us know.
Solar time widget — this is the one I’ve been testing with Maria. It’s a widget for your home screen that shows solar time based on your location. It updates automatically via GPS, so if you travel, it travels with you. You can keep business time and solar time side by side — which is what we do. We joke with people that we’re not just on a different time, we’re on a different day. Most people look confused. Fair enough. If you’ve never heard of an alternative calendar system, this all sounds a bit mad.
But here’s the thing: solar time isn’t alternative. It’s not some New Age invention. It’s just… time. The way humans experienced it for millennia before we carved the planet into zones for the sake of railway schedules. We’re not inventing something new. We’re going back to what was always there.
Natural time vs business time
Look, I get it. Business time is useful. You need it for meetings, for coordination, for living in a world where everyone’s on the same page. I’m not suggesting we abolish time zones.
But there’s a difference between business time and living time. One is for schedules and deadlines. The other is for actually experiencing your day without feeling like you’re constantly chasing something.
We’ve been using both, side by side. Business time for the outside world. Solar time for us. And it’s been… genuinely lovely. Less stressful. More aligned. Just nicer.
I don’t know yet how it’ll feel in December, when noon arrives and it’s still grey and gloomy. That’s an honest confession: I only started using this a few weeks ago. We’re experimenting. You’re invited to experiment with us.
This is the first post, by the way
If you’ve made it this far, thanks for reading. This is the very first post on the Roots Calendar website, so I wanted to share not just what we’re building, but why — and what it’s been like to actually use it.
Roots Calendar is a 13-month calendar app for Android and iOS. It uses the Celtic tree calendar system (hawthorn, hazel, oak — more on that in future posts). It syncs with Google Calendar, so you can live in both worlds at once. And now, with the solar time widget, you can experience natural time on your phone.
The vision? Honestly, there isn’t some grand master plan. We’re building what the community asks for. Biodynamic farming came from a user suggestion. Moon phases came from another. If you’ve got ideas, we’re listening.
Some early testers have told us they’ve started using a calendar for the first time in their lives. Others are just having fun with it — it’s quirky, it’s different, it works. There’s a certain joy in that. Not taking it too seriously, but also… it does something. It shifts how you feel about time.
If that sounds interesting, come try it.
Join the beta and try solar time for yourself: rootscalendar.org
We’re still in testing on both iOS (TestFlight) and Android (Play Store). Leave your email on the site, or go directly to one of the platforms. Either way, you’re welcome.
Let’s see how it feels.