Are leap years excessively confusing? Solve this problem with a new system that never requires a leap year again! Note: this does NOT use Swatch™ Internet Time, but maybe it should!

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Background:

A year is apparently around 365 days, 5 hours, 48 minutes, and 46 seconds long.

This is annoying, since that isn’t an exact multiple of 24 hours. To account for this situation, February will occasionally have either 28 or 29 total days on it.

Aggravatingly, the exact calculations for 28-vs-29 are based on several rules. We have the simple rule that everyone knows: “every fourth year is a leap year.” But then there’s also: “… unless the year is divisible by 100” and “…unless-unless it’s also divisible by 400.” (This last rule is why 2000 actually was a leap year.)

The Issue:

It’s annoying to have February keep flipping between different numbers of days. Ideally, it would always be be around 28-and-a-half days long.

Proposal:

Let’s just have February have a single “extra” day that is 5 hours and 48 minutes long—every single year!

This means that a year will have 365 normal 24-hour days plus one weird mini-day (a February 29th that is only 5 hours and 48 minutes long). In other words, the next minute after 5:47 AM on Feb 29 would be 12:00 AM (Midnight) on March 1, as shown in Figure 1.


Fig. 1: This figures shows the correspondence of clock times to “day/night” times. This system means that March 1 will begin at a very weird time of day: every hour of the day is effectively “actually” almost six hours later than the clock says. On the first year when this calendar-switcheroo is implemented, “midnight” on March 1 will effectively be 5:48 AM. Then, later in the day, at “noon” on March 1, the sun will almost have set (since it will “actually” be 5:48 PM).

Conclusion:

This does of course mean that March 1 will begin at a very weird time of day. On the first year when this calendar-switcheroo is implemented, “midnight” on March 1 will effectively be 5:48 AM. Then, later in the day, at “noon” on March 1, the sun will almost have set (since it will “actually” be 5:48 PM).

The meaning of the time of day will change from year to year: every year on Feb. 29 / March 1, the clock will effectively be moved back by 5 hours and 48 minutes. So on some years, noon will be daytime, sometimes it will be nighttime, etc.

BUT, you won’t have to remember the Feb 28-or-29 rules anymore, so it should all be worth it!

PROS: Removes the need to learn any complicated rules for leap years.

CONS: Might be annoying to have the hours of the day no longer correspond to “daytime” or “nighttime.” But perhaps this is the perfect time to ditch the 24-hour clock and switch to Swatch Internet Time™ (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swatch_Internet_Time).

Originally published 2025-06-09.

Idea originally suggested by RWW.