Predicting alarms and time keeping while asleep

Anyone else have an alarm clock in their brains!? I was half woken up with the question of 'whats the time' last weekend, and I was so sleepy I fell right back to sleep and immediately dreamt leaning over to pick up my iPad and reading the time. I started to say what the time was aloud and upon hearing myself realized I was still asleep - which woke me up. As I leant over to really look at the iPad I said I had dreamt the time was 8:10. By the time I grabbed it and turned it on it read 8:11
:blink:

I know in the past I often feel like I wake up just moments before my alarm goes off. It is a funny feeling waking up and having enough time to wonder what time it is and then hear the alarm start. My alarm is a song so the beginning is unique to the rest of the track.

The human body has several biological clocks which it uses to synchronize and control biological activities, but it is interesting to consider that it can track time in such a dynamic setting as different sleep times, changing seasonal dawns and cloud coverage. One of the best indicators I had was the sound of morning traffic, but this last weekend's experience with time alone makes me wonder just how accessible and accurate this subconscious timekeeping could be (no traffic on weekends)!!

Unfortunately the only way I know to train it is by getting woken up early by an alarm clock!! Perhaps doing things at specific times during the day might also work, such as Islamic Salah prayer five times a day... but I dont know if they care so much about the particular exact time (which would be required for what I'm talking about).

Digital watches used to be able to bip every hour, or perhaps something like movement of the sun across the sky; dawn, noon, dusk or if you wanted to do more, the midpoints such as midmorning and midafternoon... which happens to equal 5 as well.

If I'm not thinking about it and someone asks me the time I give the correct answer before I know I'm speaking. If I try to think about it and identify it on my own, I'm always an avarage of 15 minutes off.(Though I've been off more than an hour and I never get the date right.)

It's really funny, when I want to wake up at 5, I exactly wake up at 5 and turn the alarm off before it begins...

Or when I'm studying, I usually do 1:30 study, and 15 minutes relax. When I look at clock, it's exactly 1:30 or 15 minutes and time to switch to the other thing...

I guess doing things in exact time train the brain to act like this. Just like you said Adder.

p.s: and about Muslims prayer, they can say it in a time interval, but it is suggested to do it exactly the moment Azan is said (it has exact time in each day, like for the night prayer, it is when the first star appears in the sky, for another example, when sunlight reach the end of a well, ...)

I do this all the time, I always beat my alarm by 15mins...in boot camp they drilled it into us to always be 15mins early "to be on time is to be late, to be early is to be on time"...but before boot camp I would always wake up just before my alarm...before falling asleep i'd think of what time i'd need to be up....I'm able to estimate how much time has passed fairly accurately...to within 5mins or less...

I think we all do. Cows know exactly at what time they are supposed to be milked, no matter the season. They don't appreciate daylight saving time though

The best 'function' of that subconscious clock is "wake me at the right time". It works for me very good and saved me also many trouble at times.