Daylight Savings Time is just around the corner, so get ready to lose some time this Sunday, March 11, when clocks jump ahead one hour at 2 a.m.

If you rely on your mobile phone to tell the time, it will automatically readjust itself. Standard digital and analog clocks will require manual readjustment, of course, so the best thing to do is to change it the night before if you don't want to be thrown off the next day.

The sooner you accept that you'll be getting one hour less of sleep than normal, the sooner your body will adjust. Unfortunately, this might not happen soon enough for Monday morning early risers.

Don't feel too disheartened. Much of the rest of the world will be feeling your pain except for a few countries that don't observe the time change. China, for example, has a single uniform time zone for the entire country year-round, though it is roughly equal in width to the U.S., at approximately 3,200 miles (the U.S. is about 3,000 miles across). So maybe people in China don't lose an hour of sleep, but just think about the poor folks in the western regions that have to spend their mornings in darkness several months out of the year. Not so inconvenient now, is it?

Still, you might be asking yourself what the purpose is behind this whole Daylight Savings thing. A valid question.

Well, as its name implies, Daylight Savings Time is meant to do exactly that--save daylight. As the days get longer in the summer, the best way to maximize the daylight hours is to set the clocks ahead. Likewise, in the winter, when the days get shorter clocks are turned back an hour to get as much light out of the day during our most active hours.

This has been purported to provide a host of benefits such as increasing economic productivity, reducing energy usage and even improving personal health. So keep that in mind when you're cursing your clock in the morning and take comfort that it's all for the good of the nation.

China Daylight Saving Time China China