Revenge Bedtime Procrastination (and how to beat it)
Is it worth it?
Revenge bedtime procrastination, or RBP, is what happens when you know you should be going to sleep and you want to go to sleep but you keep yourself up in an attempt to snatch more waking hours.
I think we’ve all felt the temptation. Perhaps after a busy day where you felt like you didn’t get enough ‘me time’ or maybe after a day full of free time that you squandered doing something less than satisfying. It is true that keeping yourself up will prolong your day, but is it worth it? Not really.
Sleep debt is like taxes, you can put them off but eventually you’re going to have to pay up. Hours gained one day are lost in another. Not only that, but by losing out on sleep you’re setting yourself up for reduced quality waking hours later. That doesn’t sound like a fair trade to me.
A vicious cycle
When RBP strikes once, it tends to strike again. This might be for quite a few reasons, but I think it boils down to three big ones.
Firstly, staying up naturally causes you to sleep in (unless your alarm gets in the way). Many people notice that when they sleep in past their regular wake up time they experience a panicky feeling of the day running by too fast, usually when they’ve noticed dinner time creep up on them sooner than anticipated. The panic to cram more activity in your shortened day could very well cause you to experience RBP all over again (and again and again).
Secondly and as we’ve already mentioned, RBP can cause you to rack up some sleep debt. One symptom of sleep deprivation is reduced executive cognitive function leading to poor habits like procrastination. It stands to reason that putting off your day’s to-do list (or even fun things you planned to do) can result in your feeling unfulfilled at night time and pushing your bedtime later to try to fill that void.
Lastly, when your body is ready for bed you don’t tend to be particularly active, therefore whatever you get up to during your RBP hours might never feel satisfying enough. For example, if midnight hits and you find yourself feeling unfulfilled with the day you might turn to social media to doomscroll or funny videos on youtube. Surely you’ll find something really interesting or entertaining and then feel fulfilled enough to sleep, right? Wrong. Low-effort activities like these are rarely satisfying and not likely to scratch the itch that RBP presents.
How to stop it
If you struggle with RBP, fear not, there are things you can do to stave it off. The first is recognizing that the feeling is an artificial one. There is no cosmic quota by which you have to fill your day with a certain number of hours or activities. So when you feel like you just didn’t do enough, reject that feeling and try to ground yourself in the present moment. Mindfulness practices like meditation or journalling can really help like this (and is partly why so many sleep experts recommend journalling before bed).
Of course, it’s not usually easy to ‘think’ yourself out of how you feel. So if you really feel strongly about it then try refocusing your attention on the next morning instead of the night. Make a deal with yourself. Instead of staying up and trying to find fulfilling things to do (which always goes way later than you intended) set your alarm for an hour earlier and promise yourself that you’ll have a productive and/or enjoyable morning instead. This usually results in less sleep loss because you’re taking away a controlled chunk of time (an hour) rather than staying up for an undetermined amount of time.
Failing that, you can try to go to sleep and promise yourself that if sleep doesn’t come quickly enough you’ll get up and do something. Most times, sleep will come, but if it doesn’t then getting up and doing something sleep friendly (like reading or journalling) can put you in the mood for bed.
The Nuclear Option
If none of the above works then you can always try to become an early morning person. Not all people can achieve this (some people are night owls and there’s little they can do to change that), but if you can it’s worth considering. The nice thing about having free time in the morning before the responsibilities of the day begin (e.g. work, kids, school etc.) is that it’s a time with little distraction.
In most cases, when nighttime rolls around you’ll feel so sleepy you really won’t want to stay up any later than you have to. Having free time at the beginning and end of your day while still getting enough sleep is a tricky thing to achieve, but well worth it if you can manage it.