I have always been an early riser and used an alarm clock as a back up until maybe 10 years ago. Don’t use one any longer unless it’s something extremely urgent, but I don’t ‘need’ it per se it just makes me feel better I guess.
To the point, for the last 10 years or so I wake up every single morning w/o fail at 4:13 or 4:14. I know this b/c my coffee maker is set to 4:15 and when I roll over I lay there for a minute or so and voila…off the coffee goes. None of this has surprised me it’s just how my body rolls now. This morning I had to take my neighbor to the airport at 4 as in wheels up from the driveway at 4 for their flight overseas. So, I wanted to wake up at 3:45 and I set my alarm for 3:45. I woke up, rolled over and looked at my phone: 3:43.
How does the body do that? How does it know? There has to be some discipline of science that can explain how the subconscious can be that spot on with timing.
Same with me. I set my alarm for 5:30 each morning, and almost always wake up just a few minutes before. It still seems to be 5:30 even after changing between standard and daylight time. You’d think if the biological clock was set to the sun/moon, there’d be a period of adjustment. But for me, there isn’t.
As to how it knows I have no idea, but my body pretty much does the same thing.
I completely get the routine of a the same time every day, but the way I automatically backed my clock up by a half hour for a single event is a head scratcher.
I’m only halfway there. I tend to wake up a minute or 2 before when the alarm is usually set to go off. If I get to sleep in, I will still wake up at the regular time (and then go back to sleep). But if I need to get up earlier than the regular time, I definitely need the alarm.
Same with me. I set my alarm for 5:30 each morning, and almost always wake up just a few minutes before. It still seems to be 5:30 even after changing between standard and daylight time. You’d think if the biological clock was set to the sun/moon, there’d be a period of adjustment. But for me, there isn’t.
Ha! I didn’t even think about that aspect with the time switch. It’s such a non-event I haven not even taken notice all these years. Oh well…one of life’s little mysteries.
Exceptions for me have been sometimes when when I’m sick or drunk the night before. The most common exception is when I make a conscious decision before going to sleep that I’m going to sleep in, usually after a late Friday or Saturday night when I don’t have anything that needs to be done the next day. For some reason, when I decide in advance I’m going to sleep in, I don’t wake up as usually, or at least I don’t remember waking up.
I don;t do this consistently but I have experienced a few mornings when I knew I had to be up at xx time and without alarm it happened. Usually it was for tris.
Most recently though I was going hunting early one morning with my step-brother. We were going to leave the house at 4am to go out. Somehow, I fell asleep in my clothes from the night before with my phone in my pocket. I was tired from early rise the two previous days to get out to the deer blinds I guess. I failed to charge my phone or set an alarm. I jumped awake at 3:25am with my heart RACING like it was about to beat out of my chest. I looked at the phone and it was dead. No idea how my body knew it needed to wake me up but perhaps my brain told it I would never live down the shame of sleeping through the morning hunt.
This morning I had to take my neighbor to the airport at 4 as in wheels up from the driveway at 4 for their flight overseas. So, I wanted to wake up at 3:45 and I set my alarm for 3:45. I woke up, rolled over and looked at my phone: 3:43.
BTW, you’re an excellent neighbor, I can;t imagine waking up for many people at 3:45am.
I was just talking about this last weekend. The mind is amazing and even though I work a schedule that would make an ER doctor cry I still can do it if I choose.
Sleeping and still hearing and reacting to everything around you is another phenomenon that is amazing. I had a new LT fresh from IOBC and Ranger School who requested I be his RTO. About 48 hours into no sleep I told him " I can sleep with the radio. We need to get so e sleep because I need you sharp and you can’t just keep not sleeping". He started his usual " in Ranger School" line and I stopped him for the thousandth time to inform this wasn’t school and the grading here was much more severe. Twelve hours later after laying in an ambush position he looked at me and asked " you can sleep while listening to the radio?" I said " you bet your ass"
The reason I mentioned all that was because I would answer the radio, monitor the other platoons and automatically mentally switch to the next days SOI at the required time all while memorizing large amounts of info. I even corrected the CO one time while " sleeping" after listening to him use the incorrect call.sign three times. He was pissed until I calmly told him to switch days.
The lesson here is the mind is amazing and we rarely push its limits.
Another confirmation of this phenomena…I don’t profess to wake up at the ass-crack of dawn like you do, but my alarm is generally set for between 6:30-7:30 (commute to work is 10 minutes…it’s a beautiful thing), regardless of the alarm time I’m up a few minutes ahead of it. I also have an incredibly, incredibly tough time falling asleep, there are nights I lay in bed until 2, 3 in the morning–sometimes many nights in a row. I wake up dead to the world, feeling like a truck ran me over…but it’s still (almost always) two to three minutes before the alarm. It’s fascinating.
The weekends can be particularly frustrating, though…no alarm set, trying to sleep in at least until 7:30 or 8. More often than not I wake up BEFORE my usual mid-week time, usually around 6. Frustrating as hell…fascinating, but frustrating.
Just making shit up here but I’m sure there’s something I’ve read, seen and definitely on the internet that will back me up so here goes.
For most the time we are in bed are we really sleeping? It is my understanding that we go in and out of deeper levels of sleep. The rest of the time maybe we are way more aware of our surrounding subconsciously then we realize.
I say this because most of the night if a gnat farts in the room that is downstairs on the opposite side of the house I wake up. However there are rather short periods of time when I’m REALLY asleep where you could drive a spike into my eye and I could sleep right thru it.
We also have experienced those moments that happen when you’re in this light stage of sleep where you do something, you know you did something because of some other evidence, someone tells you do did something etc., and you don’t remember it. I’ve done this with my wife many times when she asks me a question, I answer, and then have no memory that she ever asked me.
So what I’m saying is, is it possible that you’re really not asleep from 2AM to 5AM and that there are subtle hints in your surrounding letting you know what time it presently is and so on. For instance my clock is right next to my bed. I may roll over, look, and not remember looking. If however I look 15 minutes before I get up it may click in my mind that the alarm will go off in 15 minutes and hearing my alarm sucks balls so open your eyes in 10 minutes and turn the alarm off. So I open my eyes in 10 minutes and don’t remember anything before that and think “Man my inner clock is spot on” when in fact my “Inner clock” has only told you a rough estimation of the last 10 minutes.
I’ve read a couple studies where they put people in caves devoid of any night day cycle or access to anything that had to do with time. That seems like a place to start for actually scientific information.
Like you, I usually wake up right before my alarm on weekdays, which is at 430. On weekends, when I don’t need to get up for work, I usually naturally wake up at 6-630. So there’s definitely some subconscious awareness that some days it’s necessary to get up earlier than others.
Yesterday, my 2yr old son had apparently been playing with my alarm clock, and set the time zone to pacific time. So I woke up naturally, but when I looked at the clock, it said 230am. I could for the life of me get back to sleep, but I still laid there dozing for the next two hours waiting for my normal 430am wakup. Not a pleasant moment when I realized it was actually 630. Got to work 90 minutes late. Still, I should have just listened to my body since it knew what time to get up regardless of what the clock said.
I’m in the same boat, I wake everyday whether I need to or not between 3:40-4:00. The only time I set an alarm is race mornings if I have to travel a bit and I also usually wake right before it goes off. I’ve thought about trying to use this superpower for picking the winning lotto numbers but mo money = mo problems.
The worst part is I will wake up by 4 no matter what time I go to bed and I’m usually falling asleep on the couch between 7:30-8 PM.
A lot of folks seem to be in the same boat as me with body clocks on auto. Like a lot of you I wish there were days I could just sleep in, but it doesn’t happen. During the winter when it’s cold and dark out still on a weekend I wish I could get more sleepy time, but at the end of the day waking up at 415 leaves me very well rested. Oh well…the mystery of my body clock will go on! Sleep tight all.
It’s the same for me, rarely do I not wake up at least 10min prior to alarm.
Not only has it affected me but on weekends one of the 4 legged fur alarms wakes me up at the time I normally get up for work. Guess they are used to getting up at that time also.
Though I find it fascinating, even more so I’m amazed that my dogs know to within about 5 minutes when their feeding time is….and they can’t read clocks.
Though I find it fascinating, even more so I’m amazed that my dogs know to within about 5 minutes when their feeding time is….and they can’t read clocks.
That you know of… I was going to post a story I saw or read years ago, that covered some dogs that “knew” when the master was going to get home. Shortly before the arrival, the dogs would get up from wherever they were in the house, and trot to the door to lay in wait for the final minutes.
Though I find it fascinating, even more so I’m amazed that my dogs know to within about 5 minutes when their feeding time is….and they can’t read clocks.
This. I was at a few jobs over the years where some people would bring their dogs to work (working in construction). In one rural area, the dogs would roam free for the morning, then every day at 11:55, sure enough they would be sitting up around our lunch area very patiently waiting for us to stop at 12:00. If 12:05 came around and we hadn’t stopped yet, they would start howling at us. They knew what was going on!