Turn the Bedside Clock Face Away in Five Steps

At 2:40 a.m. the glowing digits do one job: they turn into arithmetic about the hours you have left. Turn the clock around. In a 2007 experiment by Tang, Schmidt and Harvey, people told to monitor a clock while trying to fall asleep reported more pre-sleep worry and took longer to nod off than people who did not, and that held for good sleepers and poor ones alike.

Does looking at the clock when you can’t sleep make insomnia worse? In that experiment, yes, on the night it was tested. Clock-watching appears to feed the worry it was meant to settle. The paper (Journal of Behavior Therapy and Experimental Psychiatry, 38(1), 2007) ran two studies. The first had 30 good and 30 poor sleepers. The second had 38 people with primary insomnia, who watched either a clock or a digit display. The clock-watchers worried more, reported longer sleep onset times, and overestimated those times more than the display group did. The evidence is thin in one respect: these were single experimental nights, so they do not show that hiding the clock cures anything.

1. Set the alarm before you get into bed

Do it first, so there is nothing left to check. If you fear oversleeping, add a second alarm on a different device 10 to 15 minutes later, across the room if you can. Two alarms are what let you stop watching one.

2. Turn the face away, or cover it

A bedside clock goes to the wall, or under a dish towel. A phone goes face down with Do Not Disturb on and the alarm still allowed. A plug-in clock with a dim or switch-off display, like the one in this two-week field log, does the job without props.

3. Know what you’ll do when you wake and want the time

You will want it. Ask what you would do with the answer. The number only feeds the sums — five hours left, then four and a half. Tell yourself the alarm has it covered, then run your usual wind-down, such as a short routine for falling back asleep at 3 a.m..

4. Write the one rule for checking

No time checks between lights-out and the alarm. Two exceptions: once you have decided you’re up, look as much as you like. And if you really suspect the alarm failed (power cut, travel), check once, then turn it back.

5. Run it for seven nights

Each morning, write one line: how the night felt, nothing more. Seven nights is long enough to see whether the urge to check is easing; it is a test of the habit, not a promise of better sleep. Pair it with a steady wake time, the anchor in CBT-I. If sleep trouble persists, see a clinician.

FAQ

Does a phone count as a clock?

Yes. A lit lock screen shows the time, and a notification gives you a reason to look. In the 2007 insomnia experiment the comparison group watched a digit display unit rather than nothing, so what stood out was reading the time itself, not just staring at a glowing screen. Set the phone to Do Not Disturb with the alarm still allowed, and put it face down.

How long before hiding the clock helps?

Nobody can give a reliable number. The 2007 experiments measured single nights, so they show what clock-watching does on the night and say nothing about how long a change takes to settle. Expect the urge to check to be strongest in the first few nights. If trouble sleeping continues beyond a few weeks, see a clinician instead of extending the trial.

What if I need the time for a reason, like a feed or a dose?

Give that job to a second alarm. Set it for the feed or for the medication time your prescriber gave you, and it replaces the look at the clock. On-call workers can do the same with a dedicated alarm set for the check-in time.