Ep 128 -Revenge bedtime procrastination

Do you have overdemanding days and find yourself having some time to catch your breath only late in the night? And does this make you compromise on sleep? If yes, then you indulge in revenge bedtime procrastination. Yes, there’s a term for it – god bless the internet for giving us the endless labels for our many woes.

If you’re curious to know more, let’s dive in together.

Hello and welcome to another episode of the Own Your Everyday series of the Being Meraklis podcast. I’m your host and self-awareness coach Shwetha Sivaraman back with insights and micro-practices you can use in your busy lives to Own Your Everyday. In today’s episode, we will look at a deep dive into revenge bedtime procrastination – what it is, what makes us indulge in it, its consequences, and some tips on how we can avoid going down this rabbit hole.

So let’s first understand the term. The term bedtime procrastination is not new – it has been around for a decade or more and was discovered by psychologists in a study supported by the Dutch Technology Foundation in 2014. The name as the term implies said, this was another avenue of procrastination that we delay sleep and put off going to bed to do things we couldn’t do during the day. So basically prioritising leisure over sleep. The word revenge seems to have been added much later and is rumoured to have originated in China to describe how people working 12-hour days or more stayed up to feel like they controlled their time. This became viral when a journalist tweeted it as something when and I quote “people who don’t have much control over their daytime life refuse to sleep early to regain some sense of freedom during late night hours.”

Why do we do this?

1. We are stressed throughout the day with little breathing room
2. We feel we are compelled to engage in activities that we thoroughly dislike.
3. We have long working hours and no time for ourselves
4. Parents with very little me-time

Essentially those who don’t feel fulfilled or satiated after a long day and feel incomplete. This revenge bedtime procrastination is a means to feel that sense of satisfaction and this urge is so much in us that we are okay compromising our sleep for it.

How to know if you’re indulging in it?

I think it’s a simple 2 step check-in to figure out if you’re indulging in revenge bedtime procrastination –

1. Does staying up reduce your overall sleep time?                                                                                                    2. Is it a voluntary choice to stay up and something that means there is no other reason – external circumstance or variable interfering with sleep

If you said yes to both questions, then congratulations! You know now the term for what you’re doing.

Now, some of you might ask, is sleeping late or sleeping less every once in a while a problem? Not at all, but if it becomes a habit, it does. When we sleep late in the night and wake up early morning to honour our other commitments continuously it leads to sleep deprivation. This impacts our cognitive functioning over time and eventually affects our physical and mental health.

Matthew Walker through his research on sleep goes on to claim, “Once you drop below seven hours, we can start to measure objective impairments in your brain and your body. The shorter your sleep, the shorter your life.”

I guess for most of us tuning in to this podcast on living and thriving, we definitely don’t want a shorter lifespan. So compromising sleep is a no-no which means revenge bedtime procrastination is something we should actively avoid.

Here are some questions to reflect on to see how you can self-regulate better and replace revenge bedtime procrastination with something more constructive:

1.Understand the root cause of revenge bedtime procrastination? What makes you click next episode and binge on that latest K-drama that’s not going anywhere instead of going to bed and getting a good night’s sleep. You need to first understand what the unmet need. The reason this is revenge bedtime procrastination is because we feel some of our needs are not met in the daytime and this is a way to get back at that unmet need. So we need to first identify the cause. Is it because we’ve taken on too much and don’t have the time/energy/resources to fulfil our commitment? Is it because we don’t like what we do during the day and want to give in to procrastinating sleep out of self-pity? Find out the root cause.

2. Ask yourself, What are the consequences of bedtime procrastination that I’m ignoring or not considering today? If we don’t sleep for one or two days, nothing will happen. But if we make it a habit, over time our cognitive functioning will be disrupted, our health will take a downturn, and our wellbeing will be compromised. But our minds sometimes do not account for future consequences and regret we might feel then – it’s called temporal discounting. We discount the amount of regret we could feel at a future date and inconsiderately choose what’s detrimental to us in the present. By consciously assessing the consequences of our choices, we can make a better decision on whether we are willing to pay that price.

3. Assuming you’ve decided you’re not willing to compromise on sleep and pay the price of revenge bedtime procrastination – ask yourself, how you can constructively address the unmet need rather than hurting your health and wellbeing? If you identified overcommitting as the root cause, what can you let go of to lighten the load and feel a little more at ease? If you identified a dislike for your day job, ask yourself what’s within your control – what can you do about it? If you cannot quit or remove it from your life, can you modify it by having conversations with your boss or other stakeholders to make it more palatable for you? If you cannot do anything about it, how can you accept it so you don’t continuously resist your present choice? We need to acknowledge the unmet need and consciously ask ourselves what we can do about it so we don’t feel helpless and unfulfilled.

4. What else can I do to give me that feeling of fulfilment at the end of the day? See if you can redirect the sense of inadequacy by doing something else that could give you a feeling of fulfilment. Think journaling, singing, dancing, talking to a friend, participating in some community activity – whatever it is that soothes your soul without harming your future. Choose wisely.

So there’s your own everyday tip for this week – stop sabotaging yourself with revenge bedtime procrastination. As adults, we are responsible for our lives and our choices. Self-regulation without self-suppression becomes crucial for us to make the most of our lives while enjoying the little pleasures. If you’re engaging in revenge bedtime procrastination, stop and reassess how you’re sabotaging your own long-term health and wellbeing. Consciously choose a helpful means to overcome this lack of fulfilment from a place of care and compassion. Find a means to address your soul’s needs without affecting your own health and well-being.

Until we meet again this is Shwetha signing off hoping you have a phenomenal week ahead.