nessuno lo veda, sorride

some web magazine that i was reading recommended turning your digital alarm clock away from you so that you can't see it in the evening, for two reasons:

1. the photons (~630nm) will penetrate your eyelids, waking you.
2. when you wake up during the night you will see what time it is, and become anxious about losing sleep and then not be able to go back to sleep.

i tried out the idea and found that #2 is worth expanding on. looking at the clock makes you worry if you have to wake up early, but it also makes you lazy if you don't have to wake up all that early. you wake up, feel more or less well-rested, then decide whether to get out of bed. how do you decide if you should get up?

deciding to wake up is like deciding whether to stop drinking; it's a hard sell unless there is a good reason to do it, and even the best of reasons can be defeated through careful, fallacious reasoning. when deciding whether to wake up, the question you ask yourself is not "what are the benefits of waking up?" rather it's "what are the consequences of not waking up? how serious are they? could i conceivably amend for them without any scandal? can something be arranged?"

so when you wake up and see that it's 7:43, the first thing you will think is "i can safely wake up at 8:00, let's go back to sleep." if you wake up and all you know is that it is daylight and the alarm hasn't yet rung, then you can no longer make calculations. it might be two minutes until TIME, or it might be a full hour. when you have an indefinite amount of free time, you will be productive, but when you have a known amount, you waste it.

time is one of those things that, when observed, becomes tainted. since it is the medium in which you act, having any information about it modifies it, restricting its domain, and thus restricting your ability to act.

from this idea, i intend to build a technique of looking at clocks as little as possible. if i have somewhere to be, or something to do, i will simply set an alarm to go off when i have to start moving or doing; i'll not look the clock.

when the clock indicates how soon a pleasurable activity will cease, conscience of the temporal nature of the pleasure degrades it. when the clock indicates how much longer a displeasing activity must be endured, we are reminded that the present is not something of esteem -- lacrimae temporum patiendorum.