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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 wise - after all, you didn’t want to be early, as then you’d just stand in a freezing corridor, and you’d have wasted precious minutes of sleep. Eighth was the perfect place in line, as that was how many shower heads there were. I digress... 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. I can decide to have a 15 minute nap and it’s exactly that. If I don’t set a constraint, I sleep on until I “naturally” wake up. I have absolutely no idea how this unconscious dead reckoning of time works, but it does. I’m not as good at it awake as I am asleep - I only manage ten minute accuracy. Another plus is that you don’t get sleep inertia like you do when woken by something suddenly, and instead wake up, well, awake. |
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.