Accurate internal clocks/schedules

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I'm curious if anyone else here has a pretty accurate internal "clock" or schedule. Most people I know have no idea what I'm going on about, so I thought perhaps it's an AS thing.

For example, I wake up before my alarm, at about the same time every day. It's set for 7, I wake up around midnight-thirty and then 6:30 a.m. What's odd is that it seems to adjust eerily well to yearly schedules. During the school year, I go to bed by 10 and am totally dead if I stay up past about 10:30, but in the summer I'm up late and can't get up early(over the years it's gotten to where I can be up until 2 a.m. within a day or 2 of school ending). School should have ended last week, but we've got an extended year. My body has already changed to its "summer schedule" and I'm not tired at night while having a hard time getting up early. It's like it knows school should be out by now and just went *click* right onto what it thought it should be doing.

I thought it could be an AS sort of thing because nobody I know that hasn't got it doesn't work like this. Either they're consistently night owls/early birds, or it takes them longer to adjust(a week or two rather than a couple of days) and it doesn't do it at the same time every year. It also seems to correspond a bit with things like repetitive behavior and patterns.

Hah, hopefully all that babble made some sense. I wouldn't be surprised if the two aren't really related and I'm missing another, obvious explanation for it. =)

It's a human thing.

Mmk, thanks. I hadn't really heard much about it being accurate to that degree, and Google...well, I'd be there all night writing a research paper on the subject. =P

Every once in a while when I'm out of the house I will try to guess the time, and then look at my watch to see how close I am. Sometimes I'm way off, like by more than an hour, but most of the time I'll be shockingly close to the actual time--almost always within five or ten minutes. My body's internal clock really exists off the daylight. When it's sunny outside, such as it tends to be during daytime, my body automatically goes into daytime mood, where it is as active as needed. But when it's dark outside, I go into nighttime mood, where I am initially energetic after sunset but wear out quickly. This is even true on days I take all-nighters--I'm still fairly energetic in the daytime. Because of this dependence on sunlight, it's almost impossible for me to take daytime naps, unless I'm feeling ill.

i wake up every day at 7:36, regardless of the time i go sleep. if i set an alarm clock and wake up earlier, i feel sleepy around the lunch time. i know more people (NT's) who have this 'internal clock'...

Usually I'm in the "night-owl department", but I've managed to "beat the alarm clock" by waking up on my own shortly before the alarm went off; usually on mornings when I had to get up for something extraordinary important (like a job interview).

I've talked that thing about being "tired dead" after some no-so-late hour at night with an NT relative: Both she and I seems to feel "extra tired" on friday nights compared to the other four work-days of the week. And when friday is a holiday for some reason, the "extra tiredness" just "moves" to thursday night...

So as Rasmus put it; it's a human thing. It may be part of some "clockwork syndrome", but it doesn't seem to be comorbid with AS...

I have a very good internal clock.

Tim

Yes, I've got a good internal clock as well. I've been a shift worker for over 7 years, so I kinda assumed that was what caused it, rather than AS.

If I'm working a day shift, I'm up at 4am. I set my alarm clock just to be safe, but seldom need it.

When I do night shifts, I'm in bed around 2am. Trouble is, I got locked into waking up around 8.30 in the morning, leaving me tired. When I was a teenager, and unemployed in my 20s, I'd stay up till 1 then sleep to midday, I can't do that anymore. The latest I sleep in to is around 1030.

I can also go without sleep for long periods, 30 hours.

I USED to in the REAL way(Like knowing I have to do something in 15 minutes, and being able to do it without checking the time.), and that IS an autie/aspie thing. In the way YOU mean, it is an animal thing, and most people have it to some degree. I use an alarm, but I usually wake up before it. I can even set MYSELF to wake up at a certain time, and usually do.

Steve

The cats invariably wake me up at 4 a.m. I generally begin my day at 6.

My sense of time is extremely weak. I usually have no idea what the time of day is unless I deliberately watch where the sun is in the sky. I may go for a walk and lose track of time completely, so that I end up thinking that I spent most of the day out in the city, and then discover, with surprise, that it was just a couple of hours. Coming somewhere on time is difficult. It's hard to guess how much time I need to spend on the journey in order to arrive at the necessary hour, so I'm almost always either early or late (more often than not, it's late).

It's as if the points on the clock face or the numbers on the calendar somehow didn't coincide with the actual time they are supposed to measure. I know they are there, formally, but they don't have much meaning. I think this is part of why I am so disorganized - I simply have no concept of what it means (internally) to do something "at a certain time", because my own time stands still.

It's by far not as bad as some people report, though, apparently some autistics too. I remember reading "The Special Childhood", - the place where Johansson describes how she was never able to come on time (or didn't turn up at all) until she was forty-something, and had to tell the seasons by watching the weather or the way the leaves changed because she had no natural sense of them, - and thinking that compared to her I do have a sense of time.

Everyone has a body clock

I wake up early on occasion, but I attribute it to just "getting lucky"-normally I'll keep asking what time it is over and over just to find out I just asked 2 minutes ago, or I will check the clock on my comp constantly if I'm to be somewhere at a certain time.

I check the time a lot and am usually accurate, but not much more than most people. I've experimented with various sleep schedules over the last three years and noticed that the clock used to control sleep is more accurate than using conscious effort to tell time during the day. I guess most people don't consciously think about the time a lot so that might be why they don't notice what you're talking about. I tell myself that I need to get up at a certain time in the morning and I usually wake up a few minutes before the alarm. When experimenting with slightly different schedules such as moving from a 24-28 hour day, or shifting the phase of it, I noticed it takes three cycles to get adapted to it. Many people sleep out of phase of the normal workday. That is why some people have sleep problems, because their clock resets every day and they're programmed to sleep at different times.

For significant differences such as a polyphasic sleep schedule, it may take several weeks to adapt. These people report that they can sleep in 15-30min segments out of every four hours. After the first two weeks of adjustment their internal clock can wake them up without an alarm.

I think, also, that the more reference points that a person has during a day, the more accurate their clock will be because it can reset itself more often.

Conclusion: Almost everyone has an internal clock. Having a routine schedule may make it more accurate. If aspies like having a routine schedule then their clock will probably be more accurate. It is an effect of an effect of AS, not an AS related trait. Most people can do that with some conscious effort.

I don't think this is an Aspie trait as I know lots of people with good internal clocks. My Mum particularly only takes a day or two to get into a routine where she'll wake up just before the clock goes off. A friend of a friend never wears a watch and apparently always knows what time it is.

I'm occasionally spot on with the time, where I'll wake up 2 seconds before the clock goes off, or I'll guess the time accurately, but most of the time I'm no different from everyone else.

I don't have much of an internal clock at all. If I forget to wear my watch, I practically feel lost. I also have a really hard time getting up in the morning. I have an alarm clock, but I probably I need to get another one and put it across the room so I can't turn it off in my sleep.