Areas › Focus, starting, and ADHD › Your sense of time
Almost everyone has an alarm to get up and almost nobody has one to go to bed, which is odd, because bedtime is the one with nothing else pushing on it.
Set it for half an hour before you want to be asleep, so it catches the start of the wind down rather than the end. Expect to ignore it for the first week. It still works, because even ignored it tells you what time it is at the hour you are least likely to know.
Qur’an and Sunnah
He made the night a garment for you, and sleep a rest (Quran 25:47). Sleep is presented as something given to you, not as time taken away from your evening.
وَهُوَ ٱلَّذِي جَعَلَ لَكُمُ ٱلَّيۡلَ لِبَاسࣰ ا وَٱلنَّوۡمَ سُبَاتࣰ ا وَجَعَلَ ٱلنَّهَارَ نُشُورࣰ ا
It is He who made the night a garment for you, and sleep a rest, and made the day like a resurrection
Qur’an 25:47read it in the library
Translation: M.A.S. Abdel Haleem, The Qur'an, Oxford University Press, 2004.
What the research says
A systematic review and meta-analysis mapped what goes with bedtime procrastination, meaning delaying sleep for no outside reason, and its link to not getting enough sleep. A separate meta-analysis in university students then measured its association with depression, anxiety and stress, something that had been assumed more than tested. Both are syntheses of correlational work, so they establish that this matters without showing that an alarm is the answer.
Hill VM, Rebar AL, Ferguson SA, Shriane AE, Vincent GE. (2022). Go to bed! A systematic review and meta-analysis of bedtime procrastination correlates and sleep outcomes.. Sleep medicine reviews doi
Azeem O, Sulaiman F, Haidong Z. (2026). Bedtime procrastination and psychological distress in university students: a systematic review and meta-analysis of their association.. Frontiers in psychology doi
Strength of evidence: one line of research. A single study, or a theoretical account.
Why it works
The morning has work and other people forcing the issue, while the evening has nothing at all, so the evening needs the alarm more.
This one is still a draft. It is waiting on a scholar and a clinician to read it before it is published.
Near this one
Walking away from a course or a job that was never going to fit can be the sensible move rather than a failure of nerve. It is also frightening, particularly when other people are paying for it.
Some people do not really perceive time passing. It is more like weather, something you are inside of, and then it is suddenly six o'clock.
Fasten a time you keep missing to another person. Go up when your partner goes up. Ask a colleague to knock for you on the way to the meeting.