Whenever I wake up in the night (as I regularly do, tonight being no exception) I always attempt to guess the time before putting on my specs and looking at the clock.The amazing thing is that I can accurately (within ten minutes or less) predict the time 99.9 times out of 100.
Can anyone else do this?
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Yes I do, and I think is very common. No matter what time I go to bed, usually I wake up at the same hour in the night. A question of biorthym I suppose.
ReplyDeleteYes - but it may be that it's always roughly the same time every time I wake up!
ReplyDeleteAnd it may be related to another odd phenomenon: I usually wake up a few minutes BEFORE the alarm goes off, as if I don't actually need an alarm clock. Does THAT happen to anyone else?
blecing: waking up before the alarm, and cursing that you could have had a few more minutes sleep.
Eudora and Phil - You two, too?! Damn! And just as I thought I had found a new job as a Speaking Clock...
ReplyDeleteThe knack of preempting the alarm (which, like Phil, I also do) is interesting. I wonder if it would still work if you only thought of a time for the alarm, but didn't actually set it?
I wake up so many times during the night, that it's not difficult to predict what time it is.
ReplyDeleteAnd I don't need to put my specs on. My highly inexpensive Casio Watch has a back-light and all I need to do is hold it up in front of my face to tell the time.
i have a pretty good record of guessing the time, maybe 75%. As far as the alarm goes, if I am not extremely tired I almost always wake before an alarm.
ReplyDeleteYes Phil, I wake up too a few minutes before the alarm begins with that "ti-ti-ti".
ReplyDeleteBelieve me, biorythm. When I go to another house, my parents house for example, the time of my wake up change completly, then I wake up at the same hour they wake up (and they wake up later than me), is a problem because in this case I don't notice the alarm clock...
Yes, I have the same 'ability'. I have even been known to be exactly right to the minute.This is more than I manage in the day :-)
ReplyDeleteI find your responses really interesting because calibrated time is such an artificial concept that I wonder at the fact that we seem to be able to learn to 'tell the time' even when we are asleep...
ReplyDeleteAnyway, it's 11:45 and,, after an horrendously bad night last night, I am hoping for a better one, tonight.
It's worth remembering that the human being operates under instruction from the sub-conscious which never actually 'sleeps'. This complex entity can retain highly detailed information,judge distances when we drive (or indeed walk) and make any number of computations about a wide range of subjects during any given day. It's not really surprising it can make a good stab at estimating the time whether its day or night !
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