Checking the Clock at Night?What Clock-Watching Studies Show

You wake at night, roll over and check the time. 2:47. Then 3:15. Then 3:40, and now you’re counting the hours until the alarm. Researchers have tested whether that habit makes sleep harder.

The clock experiments

Researchers in London ran two experiments.¹

Experiment 1. 30 good sleepers and 30 poor sleepers were told either to watch a clock or not to watch it while trying to fall asleep.¹ Sleep was tracked with their own reports and a wrist motion sensor.¹

• Clock-watchers worried more before sleep.¹
• They took longer to fall asleep.¹
• This was true for good and poor sleepers alike.¹

Experiment 2. 38 people with insomnia watched either a clock or a digit display used as a comparison task.¹

• Clock-watchers worried more and reported taking longer to fall asleep than on their usual night.¹
• They also overestimated how long it took them to fall asleep, more than the comparison group.¹

The authors suggested watching the clock may keep insomnia going by feeding worry and making a bad night seem longer than it was.¹

In a sleep clinic

A US sleep center looked at questionnaires from 4,886 patients.² People who watched the clock more, and felt more frustrated by it, tended to have worse insomnia, and worse insomnia went with more use of sleep aids.² It was a snapshot, so the direction isn’t certain, and the authors called for trials testing whether cutting back on clock-watching helps.²

What to do instead

1. Turn the clock away from the bed, or put it where you can’t see it.
2. Keep your phone out of reach, so checking the time doesn’t turn into scrolling. UK advice is to avoid phones and screens right before bed.³
3. Get up at the same time every day, even after a bad night, rather than sleeping in.³
4. Go to bed when you’re sleepy, not just because it’s time.³
5. Record your night in the morning, roughly, rather than tracking it minute by minute.

See why you wake at 3 a.m. and what CBT for insomnia involves.

When to get help

See a GP if changing your habits hasn’t helped, you’ve slept badly for months, or poor sleep is making daily life hard to cope with.³

Try: “I’ve had trouble sleeping for months, and I check the clock every time I wake up. Could I get a referral for CBT for insomnia?”

Did I Do That in My Sleep? covers this in Chapter 10, “In Bed All Night, Tired All Day,” in a section called “What CBT-I Actually Addresses.” Its 14-Night Lights-Out Record asks for an approximate morning account, not a minute-by-minute scorecard, so you can track your nights without watching the clock. See the book.