If I was randomly asked what time it is, I wouldn’t be very accurate without looking at a clock. Likewise, if I was asked to guess when the clock hits exactly 8pm, I would be pretty far off. Yet I very frequently wake 2-3 minutes before my alarm goes off. How can my passed out brain be such an accurate time keeper?
In: Biology
I think its either body clock or just having a specific reason to wake up at a certain time
Maybe we all have confirmation bias. Where we just woke up randomly just before the alarm some times and we forget all the other times we randomly woke up at some random time.
I as well experience this, it is also likely because at some point I have been putting off taking bathroom break from sleep!
Don’t confuse “frequently” waking up with “accurately”
Every human are pretty bad at tracking time while awake, to know the exact time, but your circadian rhythm can be accurate to about 15-30 minute to track the progress of the whole day.
Especially if you don’t have triggers that can sway it and sleep with blackout courtains.
You can wake up to sunrise if the light hits your skin or face even closed eyes.
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If you get used to an exact schedule, your body is going to follow it and wake up at the same time every day. having a sleep schedule helps with that.
I’m stopping everything on the dot at 9PM and start my bedtime routine, washing teeth, face, peeing etc…. I’m in bed between 9:15 and 9:30 PM, a little catchin up on some youtube and I put down the phone by 10PM and I fell asleep shortly after that.
My alarm is set to 6AM but I usually up between 5:30 and 6AM
These are weekdays/workdays
On weekend If I go to sleep at my usual hours I’m also up at 6AM and I can’t sleep in, but If I stretch my night, I won’t wake up at 6.
My work schedule is all over the place. 4 on 2 off. 6 to 6. One week days one week nights.. I wake up at 4oclock and it never fails on my days off I wake up at 3:50.
I also can wake up a any desired time, well i almost never can sleep past 10AM, even if i have to wake up at 3 AM. I think about exactly the time i have to wake up and i do it like 2-4 min earlier. And it isn’t just some times is pretty much always.
Also if a have tought about a time, let’s say 7:15, and then i change my mind to wake up at 7:30 i’ll always wake up a 7:11-713.
There are two different ways your body tells time:
By counting
And by your body’s natural cycle (called circadian rhythm)
When estimating what time it is right now, your mind searches for the last “time stamp” and tries to count forward to present.
When you wake up just before your alarm, it’s because your body’s muscle memory (circadian rhythm) is in tune with your alarm and raising whatever chemicals in your body help you wake up. You wake up 1-2 minutes
Humans have two different things going on. One is our body clock (the proper term is the ‘circadian rhythm’), which is a 24 hour cycle of hormones that synchs up with sunrise and sunset. The other is our sense of time passing, which isn’t based in our hormones at all.
The body clock isn’t something you can consciously tap into. It’s a background thing that tunes things like our metabolism. But since it’s synced to sunrise and sunset, it’s very accurate. Waking up in the morning and feeling sleepy at night is triggered by the body clock system. If we were to see absolutely no light – like if we spent a couple days in cave – our body clock would keep up its cycle pretty well.
In our every day lives, it’s constantly adjusting based on when we see sunlight light with our eyes, feel sunlight on our skin, and are physically active. This means that sleep masks and blackout curtains delay when our bodies think ‘sunrise’ is, and artificial light in the evening – especially blue light – adjusts when our bodies think ‘sunset’ is. This process is also what’s behind jetlag.
Our conscious sense of time, however, is very subjective, and isn’t linked to any specific external things. When we’re stressed and thinking faster, time seems to move slower. When we’re relaxed or distracted, we think slower, so time feels like it’s going by faster.
When Covid hit and our entire group started working from home, I found myself waking up 1 or 2 minutes before my alarm every day. Since they weren’t too fussy about exact working hours, I stopped turning on my alarm. The longest I’ve ever slept in is 16 minutes.
4 years later I’m still working from home, still not using an alarm.
And my body has almost adjusted to the November time change!
Another explanation I’ve heard is that it’s a result of how sleeping and waking aren’t on/off states. It’s more of a spectrum so you can be half asleep and your consciousness (what you are aware of and what you remember and your feelings) are muddled.
So you half wake up due to circadian rhythm, check the time and see it’s 30 minutes early and fall deeper back into sleep. Then again at 23, 18, 12, 8… 1 minute before and some mental combination of alarm and acceptance makes you fully and finally awaken. And then you’ve forgotten the previous 30 minutes just like a dream or being road hypnotized.
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