🪷 Wellbeing
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Jul 22, 2024
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4 min read
You stay up late, resisting sleep until the last moment, binge-watching videos or series despite knowing you'll be exhausted the next day. If this sounds familiar, you might be experiencing Revenge Bedtime Procrastination, a type of procrastination where you delay sleep to reclaim personal time.
The problem is that it's likely a bigger issue than it seems. Today, we tend to underestimate the importance of sleep, especially the need for at least 8 hours of it. We think we'll sleep later! Big mistake.
Sleep is crucial; it allows your brain to rest and process information. It eliminates unnecessary data, integrates new ideas with existing knowledge, and organizes the daily influx of information. While your body rests, your brain remains active.
The catch is that not respecting this rest time pushes the brain's limits, continually ingesting more data and depriving it of the sorting phase, which eventually leads to overload. The result: you wake up exhausted, feeling foggy, with unclear thoughts, and sometimes even memory and cognitive function loss. One day of this isn't a big deal, but over time, it becomes a problem. As bad nights accumulate, you build up what's called a "sleep debt," owing your body hours of rest.
Why has sleep become so complicated? Why do we deprive our bodies of this essential recovery time?
What is Revenge Bedtime Procrastination?
For many of us, we experience what's called "Revenge Bedtime Procrastination." Unsatisfied with our day, we refuse to go to bed. We're not ready to move on to the next day, so we fight to extend this one, intentionally delaying bedtime. The most insidious part of it is that we often procrastinate passively: we consume rather than produce – watching TV, YouTube, series, or browsing TikTok or Instagram.
One might wonder how we arrived at this point. The explanation, surprisingly, is quite simple.
Stress and lack of control: If a person has a busy day with professional or personal obligations and little time for themselves, they may feel a lack of control over their own time.
Revenge against a busy day: Delaying bedtime becomes a way to "get back" at the day that left no moments for oneself, by taking free time at night, even if it reduces sleep time.
Constant stimulation: Recent technologies are incredibly captivating. The looping images, paired with light and sound, act like candy for our brains. Once caught in this cycle, it's a vicious circle: the captivated brain consumes more, and the more it consumes, the harder it becomes to fall asleep, as blue light disrupts the production of the sleep hormone.
With evolution, humans no longer experience the same levels of physical fatigue as before. We no longer risk our lives as hunter-gatherers, work 13-hour days in fields, or travel hundreds of kilometers on foot. Despite this, the modern world has become more stressful, stimulating, and demanding for us.
What Are The Impacts?
Naturally, "Revenge Bedtime Procrastination" is not without consequences. You can quickly experience:
Lack of sleep: By going to bed late, you reduce the number of sleep hours, which can lead to fatigue, decreased concentration, and lower performance the next day.
Health problems: Chronic sleep deprivation can increase the risks of health issues like obesity, diabetes, heart disease, and depression.
Disrupted sleep cycle: Regularly delaying bedtime can disrupt the natural sleep cycle, making it even harder to fall asleep at a reasonable hour.
Overcoming Bedtime Procrastination
Breaking out of this vicious cycle is essential, but it will require effort on your part (we are not selling fairy dust). Here are practical, simple, and accessible tips we've gathered from the internet and books to help remedy the situation:
📅 Create a Clear and Regular Bedtime Routine
Consistency is often underestimated, yet it’s key. Go to bed at the same time each night and aim for a consistent number of sleep hours, ideally similar between weekdays and weekends—our bodies dislike Sunday sleep-ins. So:
Go to bed at the same time every night (within 30 minutes)
Favor non-stimulating activities in the evening (reading, meditation, breathing exercises, etc.)
Avoid screens and especially ultra-stimulating activities like social media. You can download the Jomo app for free. Available on iPhone, iPad, and Mac, it automatically cuts off screens at bedtime. So, when it's time to sleep, you won't have a choice.
Clear negative thoughts (through journaling, for example)
😴 Prepare Your Body for Sleep
Sending the right signals to your body is very important; you need to condition it a few hours before to gradually reduce tension and induce natural fatigue.
Avoid strenuous physical activities before bed
Limit alcohol and caffeine/tea consumption before bed
Recognize the importance of sleep and don’t postpone it
Condition your environment for rest (dim lighting, no phone near the bed)
📍 Structure Your Day
Even though it doesn't directly relate to sleep, the following factors significantly impact it: poor work-life balance, stress, lack of physical activity, and poor diet. These elements act as poisons, gradually deteriorating the body. Here's how to manage them better:
Learn to manage stress to reduce the "rumination" effect at bedtime through activities like yoga, meditation, journaling, cardiac coherence exercises…
Structure the professional sphere (work stays at work). Arianna Huffington emphasized a crucial point:
“We need to accept that we won’t always make the right decisions, that we’ll screw up royally sometimes – understanding that failure is not the opposite of success, it’s part of success.” —Arianna Huffington
Exercise is very important. We often accumulate mental fatigue more than physical. And the body needs to be physically tired to regenerate better. So, integrate minimal physical exercise into your daily routine (10k steps, 30 minutes of running, 30 minutes of fitness: your choice).
We hope this article will be useful. If you know people around you, don't hesitate to share it. If you take away one thing from this article, it’s that it’s important not to give in to the temptation of screens at night, to watch "one last episode," and to learn to manage your frustration to maintain good sleep quality. By the way, if you haven't read our article on screens vs. sleep, here's the link!
