> I think that pretty heavily depends on natural level of ability. I saw that you say in another comment that you think you probably have dyspraxia, so maybe t

> I think that pretty heavily depends on natural level of ability. I saw that you say in another comment that you think you probably have dyspraxia, so maybe there's something organic that prevents you from doing this. I'm no expert! But I would encourage you to experiment before you rule it out, eh? I should point out that I don't have any information about the prevalence of this ability, just that (some) people have known about it for a fairly long time (1000's of years?) and it's not uncommon. > Is there some kind of special training program people use? Some people have a little "ritual" of tapping their head on their pillow N times where N is the hour at which they wish to awaken. E.g. six times to wake up at six AM. That's nice and all, but you can get a resolution of a minute or two. (I mean that you can "set a reminder" for, say, 6:38 AM and you'll wake up at 6:37 AM.) > I've never really heard anyone describe it, ... It's one of those things that "everybody knows" and yet "no one knows", y'know? Like how some people can seal their nostrils against water voluntarily, or curl their tongues in unpsidedown taco shape. Here's a random article I found from a quick search "head tap to wake up" on DDG (second result): https://www.personal-development-planet.com/Internal-Alarm.html https://www.personal-development-planet.com/Internal-Alarm.h... https://www.personal-development-planet.com/Internal-Alarm.html https://www.personal-development-planet.com/Internal-Alarm.h... > ...and the ones who can seem to not have done anything special to learn Yeah, it's intrinsic. You don't have to learn anything special to do this. The article linked above mentions "a study by Jan Born at the University of Lubeck in Germany, which found that our body knows when it is due to wake up and starts releasing “wake up” chemicals a full 90 minutes before the scheduled wake-up". So you're already doing it, just not deliberately. > Is it some kind of polling strategy ... Goodness no! That would be so inconvenient. It works like an interrupt, to use computer metaphor. > the correct thought "I need to check the pot on the stove" just comes from nowhere at the right time, without any external stimulus or process that you can learn from a book. Exactly. One minute you're, say, typing a comment on HN, and the next moment you just "know" it's time to get the laundry out of the dryer. So you stop, grab the basket, and go to the dryer, and reach it just as it stops.