While preparing a forthcoming book on sleeping and dreaming, I read a recent book by Aric Prather (2022), a prominent sleep researcher and therapist Early in his book Prather (2022, p. 4) offered the following observation:
“Your body loves to anticipate your next action or need. It makes insulin in anticipation of a meal, and melatonin in anticipation of sleep. It knows to do these things because of cues in your routine and environment-cues that start the moment you open your eyes, and which accumulate through the day. If your routine is erratic, your body gets confused about what it needs to be doing and how it should be using its resources. No, you don’t have to become an automaton doing the same thing every day, eating the same meals, etc.”
I was immediately struck by this observation for I have recently written a book (Bergquist, 2026) and several essays (Bergquist, 2024a; Bergquist, 2024b; Bergquist, 2024c) in which I have explored the psychology of anticipation. Like Prather, I have concluded that anticipation plays an important role in the guidance of our daily life. As Prather (2022, p. 8) notes a little later in his book, anticipation may play a major role in guiding the onset of sleep. He writes about:
“. . . the “landmarks” that occur through our day that give unconscious yet powerful signals to your brain about where exactly you are in your twenty-four-hour [circadian] cycle, which allows your body to optimize and prepare for what’s next, a process called entrainment.”
Prather introduces the German word zeitgeber (“time-giver”) to reference the elements in our daily life that signal the state of our cycle. These zeitgebers not only signal where we are in our circadian cycle, they also have the power to change our internal timekeeping clock (circadian rhythm). Prather has more to say about these time-givers (Prather, 2022, p. 8): “These zeitgebers have the most power over us [during] Daylight or the waning of it. When we eat. When we exercise. Temperature. Even social interactions.”
It is at this point that Prather (2022, p. 8) specifically touches on what I have written about the psychology of anticipation: “These elements of your environment or routine become something your body not just responds to but anticipates. It does this to optimize, to maximize your biological efficiency.”
