If so, you might be suffering from bedtime procrastination! Bedtime procrastination is the phenomenon in which people go to bed later than they feel they should in order to feel rested enough in the morning when they don’t actually have to stay up late1.
In the same way that we can delay tasks and not follow through on our intentions, we can delay our bedtime and not follow through on our intentions of going to bed at a specific time (e.g. when we choose to stay late to watch a show). Bedtime procrastination can happen both by delaying going to bed and then delaying going to sleep while in bed2.
If you are a bedtime procrastinator, it is important that you address this because it can significantly improve your sleep and thus your health and productivity3 on top of your ability to not procrastinate the next day1.
Note that there are a number of health and mental health conditions that can impact your sleep, and bedtime procrastination. We mention these at the end of the post. In addition, this post only addresses bedtime procrastination, for effective ways to improve your sleep check out our sleep report which also includes solutions to fall asleep faster.
Just as with regular procrastination, bedtime procrastination has many causes4.
Summary
In fact, many causes of procrastination in general are also relevant to bedtime procrastination:
- Time management issues (not planning enough time to wind down and sleep before having to wake up)
- Lacking enough self-control to go to bed, and distractions that keep you awake
- Difficulty regulating emotions
- Self-sabotage (if you do poorly tomorrow it’s not because of lack of ability, but because you were tired)
- Value of sleep (you don’t think it matters that much to sleep 8 hours) and the delay before the benefits are received (the benefits of sleeping don’t come immediately, but those of watching another episode do)
- Task aversiveness (you don’t like doing the steps required to go to bed)
- Genetic predisposition (Night Owls)
- Bad bedtime habits.
Solutions: key solutions to these are further down in this blog post. For more recommendations, you can check out our upcoming in-depth report on procrastination.
Insufficent time for work or pleasure
It has been suggested that some people procrastinate their bedtime because they procrastinate during the day, so at night they have unfinished tasks and need to catch up on work.
They can also have had a bad day due to procrastinating bringing negative emotions or having spent the whole day working because they procrastinated the days before and now need to catch up on pleasure1. Alternatively, they can simply want to spend more time doing enjoyable activities (a less important cause for regular procrastination) and the only time available is late at night.
Solutions: Working on your regular, during-the-day procrastination should help you address these causes and thus reduce your bedtime procrastination. You can also plan your days and weeks with enjoyable activities at an earlier time, and not have these be afterthoughts. If this is the major reason why you are sleep deprived, try making enjoyable time a higher priority and taking steps to be able to enjoy yourself without it interfering with sleep.
If you are unable to sleep because of unfinished work tasks try spending five minutes before bed writing down everything you have to remember to do tomorrow and over the next few days to help free up your mind and fall asleep faster.
Self-control and Self-regulation
As with procrastination in other areas, a failure of self-regulation leads to bedtime procrastination. In turn, this results in insufficient sleep which sadly then further hinders self-regulation. It’s the classic “just one more episode” – you need self-control to stop an enjoyable activity and get to sleep.
The more desires you have to resist (for example, chocolate pie for lunch, walking out of a boring meeting, watching a YouTube video instead of working), the harder it is for you to resist the next one – in this case, continuing your activities and not sticking to your intended bedtime5.
Going to sleep at a reasonable hour will be even more complicated on a taxing day, which can then result in a vicious cycle. You need self-control to put down your phone and sleep, but by bedtime, your self-control resources are low.
Failure to translate sleep intentions into sleep preparation behaviours is partially responsible for lack of sleep. Even though we value sleep, we often fail to prepare adequately for a good night’s sleep.
Solutions: We are not saying you should indulge yourself in each and every one of your desires here! However, you can be mindful of this, and try to remove temptations from your daily life.
We also don’t mean to remove all your heart’s desires, otherwise your mood will be down which isn’t good either. Simply look at your daily life, and find what you usually try to resist which you personally think your life would be best without and remove it!
You can also try to remove the need for self-control in sleep hygiene behaviours. Instead of having to get up to turn down the lights at a certain time, or make the choice to stop scrolling on social media or watching the TV, you can use technology to help you!
Buy smart lightbulbs and set up a routine so they automatically turn down at a certain time, have your phone set up to block social media apps and turn to shades of grey every evening, and buy smart power outlets that turn off the TV automatically. You can even have your phone6 , Alexa (Echo), or Google Home vocally tell you it’s time to brush your teeth and prepare for sleep! Developing habits can also be a way to make these behaviours more automatic and less demanding of self-control.
Implementation intentions can help translate your intentions into actions by connecting an action to a situation with “if-then” statements. You make a mental plan, and the situation (if) can help you trigger the desired action (then). You can combine implementation intentions with mental imagery by visualising a specific plan that will help you achieve your goals.
In the case of sleep, changing clothes, relaxing in bed, doing your bedtime routine, and thinking of the time you plan to get to bed can all make a difference. In general, follow a plan of “when it will be X time, and I will be at home, then I will do Y and Z” (more specific instructions in the supplementary materials).
More suggestions for self-control are available in the full procrastination report and in the Against self-control blog post we will be publishing in the next few weeks.
Emotion regulation and self-sabotage
Racing thoughts driven by unchecked emotions have all kept us awake at least once. Feeling intense emotions, from an amazing night out or a stressful time at work stimulates our body and prevents us from falling asleep7.
Failure to regulate our emotions in other areas of life can also impact our sleep. If we think we won’t be able to handle a failure on a project or an exam, we can pre-emptively find excuses for our failures that have nothing to do with our abilities. For example, “I didn’t fail the presentation because I can’t do this, I failed because I barely slept last night and was too tired”.
Mental health conditions affecting emotion regulation such as depression, anxiety, ADHD, autism spectrum disorder, PTSD and many others can prevent you from falling asleep, and make you delay going to bed to avoid the racing negative thoughts. Those suffering from depression can also think “why bother sleeping”, but emotion regulation is harder when tired, so sleeping is even more important if you are depressed.
If you suspect you might be suffering from one of these, we recommend you seek diagnosis and treatment as this would be the most effective action you can take.
Solutions: you can try relaxation techniques to reduce your emotional activation. In general, being more compassionate towards yourself (trying to be loving towards yourself when feeling emotional pain) can also lead you to a positive re-evaluation of situations, reduced negative emotion, and reduced bedtime procrastination.
More solutions will be available in the forthcoming full procrastination report in the “Mood” and “Self-sabotage” sections.8
Value of sleep
Again, as in regular procrastination, you are more likely to delay a task if you don’t think it is that valuable. The perception you have of the importance of sleep and how much value you give to having a good night’s sleep impacts your bedtime procrastination.
While you might not think you gain much from sleeping 8 hours compared to 6 hours, you actually gain a lot from sleeping these two more hours!
Solutions: go watch this video to see how important sleep actually is! And if you want effective ways to improve yours go check out our sleep report!
Task aversiveness
Bedtime procrastination can also be due to an aversion to the steps before going to sleep. For example, you might not like flossing and taking out your contacts, and by delaying these activities, you end up delaying sleep. The activities themselves can be unpleasant in general or they can become unpleasant because at this point of the day you are too tired to do them.
Solutions: if they are aversive, try modifying the activity (get an electric toothbrush, a different toothpaste, a more convenient place to take out your contacts, …). If you’re too tired by bedtime, who said you have to brush your teeth right before bed? You can do it after dinner, sitting down, while watching a show.
In short, try to modify the task in order to adapt it to your energy levels.
Night owls
Bedtime procrastination can also result from your chronotype. Night owls are more likely to procrastinate because they tend to have social jetlag: their internal clock isn’t ready to sleep when they should if they are to wake up rested to go to work at 8am.9
Solutions: you can slowly train your brain to sleep earlier with sleep training (as provided by the DOZY app) and luminotherapy, the exposure to outside daylight or high lux light with a daylight-like spectrum shortly after waking for a sufficient length of time (e.g. 30 minutes).10
Habits
Finally, habits will help you consistently reduce your bedtime procrastination, and reduce the amount of self-control necessary to do so. You can try making the other solutions in this post a habit. CBT for insomnia also recommends sleep hygiene habits (e.g. no screen time close to bed, no activities in bed besides sleeping (and sex), consistent bedtime and wake time, etc).
It isn’t surprising that CBT for insomnia recommends avoiding screens before bed because they do have a negative impact on sleep.11 The habits surrounding your sleep aren’t the only ones that matter, in fact, authors say “the plan for mitigating bedtime procrastination should include the promotion of sleep routines, as well as the promotion of strategies that support routine schedule in different life domains.”
Solutions: Our sleep report, and the app DOZY recommended in it, will help you develop healthy sleeping habits. And our habit formation report will help you develop healthy life habits. You can also check out the other recommendations regarding time management that are in the procrastination report. There is also a small effect from dinner time, so try to not eat too late!12
Associated conditions
There are a number of health and mental health conditions that can impact your sleep and bedtime procrastination. If following the advice in this post doesn’t solve your bedtime procrastination, you should consider the possibility of an underlying condition and if one resonates with you, contact a professional.
First, if you are actually trying to fall asleep but cannot, that isn’t bedtime procrastination and could be the sign of something more dire like insomnia. It could also be both, people who suffer from insomnia can delay going to bed because they fear not being able to fall asleep and think that delaying will help them fall asleep faster.
Alternatively, bad sleep hygiene behaviours like screens in bed might make falling asleep more difficult for you. The sleep report can give you solutions for this, and you can seek out professional help.
There is also a condition called delayed sleep phase syndrome in which your circadian rhythm is delayed compared to those of the regular population, meaning that your body is prepared to fall asleep and wake up later than what is usual. Taking melatonin could help address this.
Shift work can also make it seem like you procrastinate going to bed, but in this case, your disrupted circadian rhythm is more likely to be the culprit, your body isn’t ready to sleep when you should.
In addition, any mental health condition that impacts the process of going to bed and falling asleep can also increase the likelihood that you will experience bedtime procrastination. These can be depression, anxiety, PTSD, autism spectrum disorder or ADHD, just to name a few. For example, if you consistently have racing negative thoughts when going to bed, you might delay sleeping in order to avoid this negative experience. If you are completely absorbed by an activity you might not realise how late it is. And executive function challenges can mean having bigger issues doing all the steps necessary to go to bed.
If you think you might be suffering from one of these conditions we recommend you seek diagnosis and treatment with a professional. The solutions in this report can still be useful to you but proper treatment for the underlying condition(s) is your best bet.
Final thoughts
With the solutions in this blog post and the other reports mentioned you are fully armed to beat your bedtime procrastination! If you’re reading this past your bedtime – go to sleep!
This post was written by Manon Gouiran, part of our research team at Effective Self-Help. Thanks to Stowadore for their insightful comments on this post.
- Kroese et al., 2014
- Magalhães et al., 2020
- Hafner et al., 2017
- Magalhães et al., 2021, Kamphorst et al., 2018
- Kamphorst et al., 2018: The design of this study doesn’t allow to rule out other explanations. The authors argued that self-licensing (rewarding yourself for resisting earlier desires, thinking you deserve more time to unwind), desire for mood repair and effort-allocation choices (more picky about where to put our efforts, too tired so brushing teeth becomes aversive) may all contribute to self-regulatory failure. However, we included self-control in this report because this theory offers practical steps that don’t compete with these alternate explanations.
- For this, create a new “routine” (“automation” under “Shortcut” for Apple users) where every day at a certain time, your phone sends you a notification reading “Sleep is important, go brush your teeth”, and you can add the option for this notification to be read outloud.
- Loft & Cameron, 2013
- My personnal solution is to have some type of media to focus my thoughts on, it used to be bedtime stories (on CDs), then books, and now TV shows I’ve watched 10 times. It needs to be something entertaining enough so that it keeps your thoughts focused, but with very little excitement, so it doesn’t activate you when you should sleep. You should note that the other solutions in the report recommend to avoid blue light, and reading in bed. There are very few pieces of evidence for this which is why it isn’t included in the solutions. Chung et al. (2022) found that bedtime stories could help children sleep better, Liu et al. (2015) found listening to music helped pregnant women sleep better and reduces anxiety, and finally, Calm users report improvement in sleep (Huberty et al., 2021). There are many bedtime stories for adults available on YouTube, Audible, meditation apps, and even dedicated podcasts!
- Different chronotypes can also be associated with other conditions, for example having ADHD is associated with having delayed sleep phase syndrom (van Andel et al., 2020).
- Figueiro, 2016 and it could even help improve your sleep! (Canazei et al., 2019)
- Levenson et al., 2017, and blue light blocking software doesn’t help (Duraccio et al., 2021; Smidt et al., 2021) but blue light blocking glasses can improve sleep (Ostrin et al., 2017)
- Magalhães et al., 2021 found that later dinner time leads to more procrastination, but Magalhães et al., 2020 found it depends on the type of procrastination (more for bedtime procrastination [before going to bed], but less for while-in-bed procrastination [before sleeping]). Our view is that it is best to avoid having dinner too late and that having regular dinner times which foster good sleeping habits are best. Eating during the night could also disrupt your circadian rythm and may lead to other negative disruptions in your body (Davis et al., 2022)