If your sleep schedule is from 12 to 8am like mine, 11 is a scary number.

If the time is 11am, you’re aware that three hours of your waking day has passed. If you haven’t done anything useful so far, that’s three hours of your day wasted. You can do a lot in five minutes, let alone three hours.

On the other hand, if you see that the time is 11pm, you’re aware that you have to sleep very soon. This is when you think back on what you’ve accomplished since 8am and if it’s not much, you have a mild panic attack. Now you’re faced with a dilemma: scramble to finish a whole day’s work in one hour, or skip it and leave it for tomorrow’s self who will hate you for it. Either one sucks.

Here are some other reasons why 11 is scary:

When you’re 11 years old, you’re in that weird time in your life when you’re not really a kid anymore but still a bit too young to think for yourself. Which means that people expect you to be somewhat “grown-up” but you’re still 11 so you just pretend you’re someone you’re not.

11 is the atomic number for the element sodium, which is troublesome in physiology because so many ion channels in the body are Na+ channels.

11 is the smallest two-digit prime number. Prime numbers give me menacing vibes in general. A number which cannot be divided by anything other than one is to be feared.

11 is the numerical month of November, which is always examination period. If you’re born in October (10) like me, November is also a great guilt reminder that “hey look, a month has passed – how are those resolutions going?”

And this concludes my point: 11 is a scary number.