I have a visual alert on my computer to remind me of drinking water every half hour. After a couple of weeks, I regularly noticed myself feeling thirsty and reaching for the bottle a mere handful of seconds before the alert went off. I think our bodies are more capable than we believe to adapt to habits and tracking time, with or without environmental cues.
Why did I wake up before my alarm clock went off? (2015)
71–80 of 86 posts
Re: Why did I wake up before my alarm clock went off? (2015)
#72In order to prevent this I bevel my week. M, T, Th I set my alarm for an hour earlier. W and F I set my alarm for the latest I can reasonably wake up and still make it to work on time if there is a minor hiccup. It prevents me from getting used to a particular schedule and waking up ahead of my alarm. When I wake up ahead of my alarm I tend to turn it off, thinking I'm awake, and subsequently fall back asleep, making myself late.
Sleeping in on Wednesdays gives me a burst of energy just as everyone else is experiencing the mid-week "hump." And doing the same on Friday keeps me from checking-out an hour before the week is done. It's a good system.
Re: Why did I wake up before my alarm clock went off? (2015)
#73Nope. I slept in a common room with 3 brothers. If my alarm went off (half an hour before they needed to get up) I got a whopping. So I would wake up moments before the alarm, scramble from bed to my desk and slap the snooze button sometimes just as the buzzer started to sound. This guy is over-thinking it. And underestimating the human brain.
Yup. I grew up in dorms at boarding school. The art was to wake up five minutes before the bell, so you could be first in line for the showers and get hot water, and then to breakfast before they ran out of the good choice. You couldn’t have an audible alarm, as you’d wake others and then you’d have competition. So, you just trained yourself to wake on time, at 0657 or whatever time shortly before 0700 you thought wi…
You reminded, my times at boarding school.
Re: Why did I wake up before my alarm clock went off? (2015)
#74Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yup. I grew up in dorms at boarding school. The art was to wake up five minutes before the bell, so you could be first in line for the showers and get hot water, and then to breakfast before they ran out of the good choice. You couldn’t have an audible alarm, as you’d wake others and then you’d have competition. So, you just trained yourself to wake on time, at 0657 or whatever time shortly before 0700 you thought wi…
The book Why We Sleep discusses the phase of our sleep that has extremely accurate timekeeping. I've forgotten the details, of course. But I think it's quite clear our brains know precisely what time it is.
A book on sleep (and more) that deserves to be much more widely known is The Head Trip by Jeff Warren:
Re: Why did I wake up before my alarm clock went off? (2015)
#75I had an alarm clock for a long time. My alarm set for 6:00am and I would wake up and look at the clock at 5:59. So, I would actually just wake up just before the alarm.
Re: Why did I wake up before my alarm clock went off? (2015)
#76Nope. I slept in a common room with 3 brothers. If my alarm went off (half an hour before they needed to get up) I got a whopping. So I would wake up moments before the alarm, scramble from bed to my desk and slap the snooze button sometimes just as the buzzer started to sound. This guy is over-thinking it. And underestimating the human brain.
Can confirm. I wake up and disable my alarm before it goes off all the time. I think the brain just has an accurate timer.
Re: Why did I wake up before my alarm clock went off? (2015)
#77I see a general chorus of disagreement in the comments, and have to agree - I wake up before my alarm and the clock is reading 6:42 or something when the alarm is for 6:45. It's not some exotic Lamport clock phenomena or some quote out of Nietzsche's "Human, All too Human" ("Everyone knows from experience how fast the dreamer can incorporate into his dream a loud sound he hears, bell ringing, for example, or cannon fire, how he can explain it after the fact from his dream, so that he believes he is experiencing first the occasioning factors, and then that sound"). We just get good at anticipating our alarms.
Re: Why did I wake up before my alarm clock went off? (2015)
#78Nope. I slept in a common room with 3 brothers. If my alarm went off (half an hour before they needed to get up) I got a whopping. So I would wake up moments before the alarm, scramble from bed to my desk and slap the snooze button sometimes just as the buzzer started to sound. This guy is over-thinking it. And underestimating the human brain.
I often wake up before an alarm even when I've not set it, or it's set to silent. Actually I rarely set an alarm but usually wake up +/- 5 minutes of the same time.
Interesting hypothesis but so easy to disprove.
Re: Why did I wake up before my alarm clock went off? (2015)
#79Nope. I slept in a common room with 3 brothers. If my alarm went off (half an hour before they needed to get up) I got a whopping. So I would wake up moments before the alarm, scramble from bed to my desk and slap the snooze button sometimes just as the buzzer started to sound. This guy is over-thinking it. And underestimating the human brain.
Yup. I grew up in dorms at boarding school. The art was to wake up five minutes before the bell, so you could be first in line for the showers and get hot water, and then to breakfast before they ran out of the good choice. You couldn’t have an audible alarm, as you’d wake others and then you’d have competition. So, you just trained yourself to wake on time, at 0657 or whatever time shortly before 0700 you thought wi…
> To this day, I have zero need for an alarm clock - I just pick the time I want to wake at, and I do, within a minute.
Are you getting restful sleep?
I can manage to do something like this within a 10-30 minute range where I’m lying in bed kind of half awake until I decide to just get up, or my alarm goes off and I hit it instantly and I’m ready to go. But I’ve come to realize that it’s not some super human time keeping ability—I’m basically staying up all night, not actually sleeping, anticipating the time I need to get up, and my mind just forgets all but the past few minutes.
I realized how I did it after I started taking naps at work. If I can get at least 20 uninterrupted minutes, I basically blink and wake up rested. If someone walks by or there’s a noise at some point during that period, it’s basically me just groggily sitting around for half an hour and then my memory of it all fades a bit after the break finishes and I forget I was basically awake the whole time.
Adapting to a schedule and waking up at the right time is one thing. Being able to arbitrarily set a time sounds either superhuman or like there’s no truly deep sleep occurring.
Re: Why did I wake up before my alarm clock went off? (2015)
#80Earlier quoted context omitted.
It should be easy to test. Just set the alarm at a random time. Something like 5 to 10 minutes earlier. To do it blindly you can have someone else do it, scramble the clock, use an app,...
In my experience, it only works if I know the time and want to wake up at that time. I'm more likely to experience it the more important it is that I wake up on time. If I have to wake up for travel purposes, it's almost guaranteed that I'll wake up before the alarm.
Please read the book "power of subconscious mind".
I had trained myself to fall asleep immediately after falling on bed and waking exactly at 6 without setting an alarm.