Written by Katie Rosseinsky
Find yourself scrolling or streaming as soon as you get into bed? You might be stuck in the cycle of bedtime procrastination.
You’ve promised yourself that tonight is going to be an early one. 10pm arrives and you’re curled up in bed, but there’s still time for a quick glance through Instagram, right? Maybe you can even squeeze in the last 20 minutes of the TV episode you were watching. Two hours later, all of your good intentions have fallen by the wayside, and you’re frozen in the same position, squinting at your phone screen. Just one more scroll, you tell yourself, then you’ll be done.
For many of us, this scenario will be all too familiar. It’s a textbook example of bedtime procrastination, the act of putting off going to sleep, and although we’re all too aware that our late-night scrolling (or binge-watching, or whatever activity it is that’s keeping you up into the small hours) will likely leave us feeling drained and short-tempered the next day, it can be hard to stop when you’re caught up in this behaviour cycle.
Once we’ve started to associate going to bed with negative thoughts (that nagging worry that you can “never get off to sleep”, for example), this can make the situation worse. “[People] start to associate bed with a place of stress, anxiety and clock-watching,” explains Anna Campkin, sleep expert and life coach at Goldster, a digital healthy ageing platform. “[They think] ‘I’m going to be counting the hours down and going to get more frustrated,’ and therefore they try and put off going to bed as long as possible, even though they are aware that isn’t going to support them at all.”
A recent study led by researchers at the University of Arkansas sought to investigate a link between pre-sleep procrastination and anxiety. Researchers Rebecca L Campbell and Ana J Bridges asked participants how often they had felt tense, nervous or irritated over the past two weeks, and whether they found themselves daydreaming or worrying.
The patients were also asked to tell them what time they wanted to go to sleep versus the time they actually managed to get to sleep and reported the total number of hours slept and any further problems nodding off. Eventually, the study authors found that the more anxious participants showed greater bedtime procrastination, tended to sleep for fewer hours in total per night and reported more problems with sleep.
Anxiety’s not the only factor tied up in this phenomenon, though. Enter the concept of revenge bedtime procrastination, an idea popularised in China, where it is known as bàofùxìng áoyè. “People are seeking the need for some ‘me time’ – to do what they want to do,” explains Heather Darwall-Smith, psychotherapist and spokesperson for the UK Council for Psychotherapy. For many of us, the only point in our day when we can squeeze that time in is in the moments before sleep. “It’s the only time that somebody thinks, ‘That’s my time – if I want to sit and look at TikToks, I can do that and no one can see and no one can judge me,’” she adds.
So how can you start to break out of this cycle? Darwall-Smith recommends taking a more “empathetic” approach to the situation. Rather than engaging with “the internal critic” that’s telling us that we’re doing sleep all wrong, she says, it’s better to be more “compassionate” with yourself, asking: “What is going on? Why do I feel the need to do it? And what do I need?
“People who procrastinate tend to have a really tricky internal critic,” she adds. “Procrastination comes out of trying to take control of something: it’s important to have compassion [and ask] ‘What is that need? How can we work with it?’”
Campkin suggests noting your “unhelpful beliefs” about sleep then challenging that. That might mean putting your fears in perspective, she explains, “which isn’t to say you’re crazy for thinking these things, but to go, ‘OK, this is quite usual – you’re not alone in having bad moments or bad nights’ sleep. 95% of adults will experience some period of poor sleep throughout their life’… It’s about normalising these things that have turned into anxiety.”
You might want to decide on a “new positive statement” to believe instead, she says: “A little bit like an affirmation that you can read before you go to bed… so you can start to retrain your brain into thinking something new that is more helpful to you.” Campkin likens this to “changing the sheets in your brain”, a way of creating a better mental environment for sleep.
If it’s so-called revenge procrastination that you’re struggling with, the root cause probably lies in your daily routine. “Maybe you’ve been working too hard throughout the day or you’ve been eating into your breaks by continually working,” Campkin suggests. “How can you factor [more time for yourself] into the rest of the day so that it isn’t eating into your sleep, which is only going to make you feel miserable?”
If you’re working from home in a house share, it can be especially difficult to create boundaries between space for working and space for relaxing, so Campkin recommends changing your lighting. “When you go to unwind in the evening in this space, maybe you’ve got fairy lights, maybe you’ve got a candle [or] a dimmer switch – all those things are going to help take it from that work environment into a much more relaxing sleep environment.”
We all know that using devices at night disrupts our sleep (the blue light they emit disrupts the production of sleep hormone melatonin), but if we’re constantly checking them during the day, it’s unrealistic to expect that we’ll be able to suddenly go without when it gets late. Darwall-Smith recommends a slow and steady approach. “Start to practise putting your phone down five minutes earlier, another five minutes earlier, and building up the time,” she says. “Practise that during the day rather than in the last hour or two before bed… then it becomes easier to do.”
It’s worth rethinking your wind-down routine too, making sure you’re giving yourself enough time to fully relax, rather than getting into bed when you’re still wired from the day. “If you’ve been really busy, it might be that you need to go to bed slightly later,” Darwall-Smith explains. We’re often told to stretch, have a warm bath or perhaps read, she notes, but says that our pre-bed routine shouldn’t feel at all onerous. “What’s pleasurable – is it a nice skincare routine?” she asks. “It’s about taking a bit more care of that breakpoint between the day ending and time to go to bed. It’s recognising it’s not about ‘I’ve got to get my eight hours sleep.’” You might delay and get seven hours, but the sleep quality is going to be far better.”
Anna Campkin’s next sleep programme will be available on Goldster in December
If you, or someone you know, is struggling with their mental health, you can find support and resources on the mental health charity Mind’s website and NHS Every Mind Matters or access the NHS’ list of mental health helplines and organisations here.
Additionally, you can ask your GP for a referral to NHS Talking Therapies, or you can self-refer.
For confidential support, you can also call the Samaritans in the UK on 116 123 or email [email protected].
Images: Getty
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