RESEARCH_FILE
Clock watching
Clock watching is the habit of monitoring the time while trying to fall asleep or after waking at night. Experimental work shows it is not neutral information-gathering: people with insomnia randomly assigned to monitor the clock worried more about sleep and took longer to fall asleep than those monitoring a neutral display, and attention research shows the clock itself becomes a magnet for selective attention in insomnia.
How it sounds in your head
You wake, check: 3:12. The script instantly does math — "if I fall asleep right now I get four hours" — and the countdown becomes the thing keeping you awake.