Mentis- Turn any clock away from the bed, and put the phone across the room, face down, with the alarm still on.
- Clock-watching sets off "sleep maths" and worry, which keep you awake longer.
- In a study, people allowed to watch a clock took longer to fall asleep and worried more.
- In Mentis: "Hide The Clock", a step in chapter 6 of the Sleep plan, "Bed means sleep".
How do you do it?
- Find every clock you can see from bed. Wall clock, bedside clock, the AC display, a smartwatch.
- Turn, cover or move them. Face the clock to the wall. Switch the watch face off at night.
- Phone across the room, face down, alarm on.
- If you wake up: don't check. Notice that you're awake, and do your 3am routine or the get-up rule.
Why does hiding the clock help?
Every time you check the time at night, your brain does a quick, anxious calculation: "It's 2:40, alarm's at 6:30, that's under four hours, tomorrow is ruined." That thought raises arousal, which is the opposite of what sleep needs.
Researchers at Oxford tested this directly. People with insomnia slept in a lab, and some could see a clock while others couldn't. The clock-watchers took longer to fall asleep and reported more worry (Tang, Schmidt & Harvey, 2007). It fits the wider model of insomnia, where monitoring sleep keeps the problem going (Harvey, 2002).
What does it look like in real life?
Neha, 31, works in Gurugram and wakes most nights around 2:30. Her routine was always the same: grab the phone, see the time, work out how many hours were left, feel her stomach drop, then scroll "just for a minute" to calm down. It was often an hour before she slept again.
In the first week of hiding the clock, she still woke up. But without the number, there was nothing to calculate. She did three slow belly breaths, and on the nights her mind stayed busy, she got up and sat in the hall with a paper book until she felt heavy-eyed. By the second week, most wake-ups were brief and she barely remembered them in the morning. The wake-ups hadn't stopped. What had stopped was the 2:30am maths.
When should you use it?
- Every night, if you wake in the night or lie awake for a long time.
- Especially in the first weeks of keeping a fixed wake time, when nights can feel shorter.
Where is it in the Mentis app?
"Hide The Clock" is a real-world step in chapter 6 of the Sleep plan, "Bed means sleep", together with the get-up rule and the sleep window. You can try it tonight. If you wake with racing thoughts, try The 3am thoughts, at 10am.
Frequently asked questions
Why does checking the time make it harder to sleep?
Seeing the time sets off worry about how much sleep you're losing, and that worry raises arousal, which keeps you awake. In one study, people who could watch a clock took longer to fall asleep and worried more than people who couldn't.
How do I wake up if my phone isn't nearby?
Keep the alarm on, but put the phone across the room, face down. That also helps with getting up at a set time, because you have to get out of bed to switch it off.
What if I need to know the time for the get-up rule?
Use your sense of time instead of the clock. If you feel you've been awake for about 20 minutes, that's enough. You don't need exact numbers.