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I'm the absolute opposite. Mornings are for endless procrastination, what can be done in 10 minutes before sleep can be done in an hour in the morning, even if I drink a lot of coffee. This is a really unhealthy habit as sometimes if the activity proves engaging, it keeps me from sleeping, obviously.

What's weird is psychoactive substance rarely seem to change this productivity dynamic. Even if I'm well rested and drink coffee in the morning, I'm still inclined to procrastinate, whereas in the evening even after drinking alcohol or smoking weed, I can be productive even for intellectual tasks. Obviously I do not condone working while under influence, but if it's a friday and I have literally nothing to do (e.g. during lockdown) drinking a few beers, smoking some pot and programming for my side-projects or playing chess around midnight is really fun for me. In the mornings, I just infinite-scroll reddit for at least an hour before I can even leave the bed.

I do the same. It’s typically a symptom that I don’t really care for the job I’m supposed to do. When I do care, I can barely brush my teeth and I’m right at work. When I don’t care, the morning is full-on procrastination; the boring but necessary stuff gets done mid-afternoon, often out of restlessness.

I reckon something happens at the physical level that triggers a tiny bit of adrenaline in the afternoon, so I get sharper. If I skip lunch, for example, I get sharper sooner - the body is actually slightly starved of resources, why am I feeling better? There must be something in me that goes “body tired -> let’s power it up”, probably some sort of small-scale adrenaline deployment.

Note that coffee can take 2 hours to actually work its magic, depending on one’s metabolism and tolerance, so drinking more of that won’t necessarily help your mornings. The only thing that helps me is doing something I actually care about.

Nah, I like my job. I'm equally unproductive on weekends on my hobbies etc. I'm just groggy in the mornings and get better in the afternoon, and after dinner I'm the sharpest and most energetic both mentally and physically.

Logging in to note that these are classic ADHD symptoms, should you want to investigate that aspect of your psyche further.

Created a throwaway to say that as someone being treated for ADHD as of recently, 100% this. Every day at work for years had been doing exactly what the GP describes. If I'm really interested in the work, I'm all in and focused. But when I'm not, I push off every task that can be pushed off as far as possible. And the overwhelming majority of the time, it's the latter. To the point that I've sat at my desk quietly questioning my career choice dozens of times.

Please look into this, GP.

This perfectly describes me as well, although I don't use substances much at all. I have learned to embrace it as well as I can. I accept that my productivity is much lower in the morning and attempt to get the most done after lunch and dinner.

It's pretty clear that the "unhealthy habit", like most unhealthy habits, is a symptom not the disease.

In this article the problem is being overworked. The solution isn't to remove that little bit of extra pleasure from your life so you can sleep better and be an even better, harder worker, but to find a better balance.

If you have this problem is very likely because you have a major part of your life you don't feel like you have control over: maybe your jobs is awful, maybe your marriage is awful, maybe you just feel too stressed about the world.

Treating the symptom and not the root cause will not yield the results you are looking for even if you succeed.

Exactly. The parent comment is missing the point. People are doing it because their life would be an endless unbearable grind of work and basic bodily needs. For my mental health it's definitely a worthy trade-off, I can do the grind for a few days but it really sucks the joy out of life if you can't do anything enjoyable every day.

I think the answer lies in the sentence "people who don’t have much control over their daytime life refuse to sleep early in order to regain some sense of freedom during late-night hours". Now, obviously, very few people have complete control over their daylight hours -- we need jobs, after all. But we can still feel like we're in control if we at least agree with the path we're on. If you're struggling with 'revenge bedtime procrastination', consider whether you feel in control of the direction your life is heading, and if not, how you might wrest some of that control back.

I would recommend reading “Atomic habits” it’s a small and easy book to read. It has a lot of “aha” moments were stuff you already know click in your mind on how to develop good habits and remove bad habits, it provides good guidance.

I second this book.

I also think being sleep deprived destroys your willpower. So getting enough sleep for a few nights, perhaps on the weekend, and then trying to keep a streak going.

Additionally I’ve had a lot of success using a habit tracking app (I love way of life but habitica is also great and free).

I would also set an alarm every night.

I would also recommend this app called “Intellect,” it is designed to help individuals beat their bad habits and alleviate their personal psychological problems!

The book is difficult to track down since Intellect is a pretty generic term. Could you post the author?

He said "app", not "book".

Quit - different job.

Its a management/company culture thing.

Burn out, find something healthy. The fact that most wont since they need the money tells us how nasty this is.

Nothing in their comment indicated to me that anyone is making them work too much.

Yes, for many, their job is a matter of survival. There is something really horrific in how a society as technologically advanced and productive as ours has almost eliminated leisure time, rather than increased it.

Its interesting, we have developed several time saving inventions over the past 50 years, only to have that time we saved filled up with more work.

I was reading the book '168 Hours: You Have More Time Than You Think', and the author mentions how researchers in the past were predicting we would have so much free time in the future.

I think there was a comment about this regarding the speculation that more efficiency in parallel processing architecture would make all the work faster- the retort, so to speak, is that instead nodes would be expected to do more work in the same amount of time as before.

Humans are being treated like this. As technology increases, humans are merely expected to produce more in the same amount of time. There's no law that guarantees humans would have more free time due to increased efficiency.

So, I'm not going to say this is definitely the reason, and there's no way around it currently, but this is partially a function of a competitive work environment. Someone is bound to be willing to put in the time, or the threat of it will keep people from exploring (demanding) progressive things like 25-35 hr workweeks.

On the edges, where people are forced to work 60+ hrs a week there's enough leverage of people simply being unwilling to do the job (though even this isn't as true for some elite jobs). On the other hand, if they're just being asked to clock in from 9-5? There would need to be some outrage and push, but this makes you look lazy. There seems to be some progress made on vacations in corporate America, though.

Also, some roles would legitimately suffer or not work at all at 20-30 hrs. I think the ideal is to normally work 40-60 hrs "busy weeks", but not try to load people down when things naturally get slower and let them dip into the time for personal, so it's usually 30-35, or occasionally a bit less.

People have been wondering where the extra time is for a century, probably more:

https://harpers.org/archive/1932/10/in-praise-of-idleness/

I think Keynes talked about it a lot too.

I fall into that habit a lot. For me it largely comes from a feeling that there are a large number of tasks that I have to get done.

The biggest thing I do to overcome that is to take a day off and don't do anything productive at all (easy if it happens to fall on a weekend, more effective if I do it on a weekday). This breaks the first step -- less productive does not mean spend more time working, it means taking time off to recover.

For me it's about "reminding myself I don't have to do things". That voice in my head telling me how vital it is I get all the things done is just one voice. All I need to do is work well enough to ensure me and my family are fed, clothed and have somewhere to sleep.

This is going to sound strange, but the only thing that has ever worked for me was HQ, the live trivia game app. It was nightly at 9PM, so I'd my various daily tasks done and then I'd have to go to my bed to plug my phone in to play because it killed the battery. When it was over around 9:15 I was kind of settled in and would usually be able to fall asleep by 10 which is ideal for me.

So I guess if you can build in some sort of "hard stop" a little before you want to fall asleep that might work, but I haven't really found anything since.

Stop blaming yourself. Even the article mentions that it is the employer to blame. It even suggests that the solution is to show solidarity and put pressure on your employer by talking to him as a group. Otherwise I don't think there is anything you can do.

Watch the sun set!

I recently took a trip to the beach and spent a half hour or so outside in the transition between full light and darkness. It was surprising how tired I was feeling as early as it was. Let yourself experience the transition to night and then limit your light exposure.

Heh, around here (61° N) the sun currently sets at about 3:15 pm or so :D Need a light therapy lamp to convince my body that no, it's not time to go to sleep yet. Paradoxically, once it's actually time to go to sleep, my brain/body suddenly refuses to feel tired! Melatonin helps, though.

Not that far north myself, but the pain is definitely real. During winter it is dark when I get up and dark when I leave work. The sun is a thing that only exists outside office windows.

It's not as bad here at 51° N, but that does not mean it's possible to see the sun set or even be in a bright outside. (Though we were lucky and able to see the sun only the day before yesterday.)