Ask HN: How to Deal with Revenge Bedtime Procrastination? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: How to Deal with Revenge Bedtime Procrastination?

38 pointssujayk_3325 comments

I seem to have gotten caught up with this bad habit, after completing my daily tasks I just can't get myself to go to sleep directly before spending and hour or two on the internet.

I want to end this but I can't find a good way to deal with it.

Have you gone through this? Any tips on overcoming this?

View on HN

There's a lot of good advice about health, bedtime routines and sleep hygiene. Definitely take it on board.

However, I think reverse bedtime procrastination is mostly tied to emotions. It's easy to feel like you have no time to yourself when you have a busy job, busy commute etc. Or you feel like you "have to" put time into "worthwhile" activities like studying. Then it gets to bedtime and you finally give yourself permission to relax, and you end up scrolling on your phone for a few hours.

Here's a few things you could try:

Try scheduling fun and relaxation throughout your day. Give yourself permission to enjoy yourself at these times. Now, when you go to sleep you can remember that you had time to yourself already, and you have time to yourself scheduled for tomorrow.

I often struggled with negative emotions and looked at my phone to distract myself. Even noticing that you are doing this can be tricky. Try to name the emotions you are having throughout the day (literally saying them out loud can help). Over time this will lead you to realizing how your habits form. "Oh, I'm feeling disappointed with how work went so I want to distract myself and look at my phone".

This sounds very simple but it is surprisingly difficult. Good luck!

> I often struggled with negative emotions and looked at my phone to distract myself. Even noticing that you are doing this can be tricky. Try to name the emotions you are having throughout the day (literally saying them out loud can help). Over time this will lead you to realizing how your habits form. "Oh, I'm feeling disappointed with how work went so I want to distract myself and look at my phone".

this is so so True. Thanks

Counterintuitively, I found that forcing myself awake at 5:30am and getting 3 solid hours of work done created more breathing room in the day. Society is less inclined to interrupt those hours too, which makes them very reliable. Then, by 9ish, I’m ready for bed naturally.

True!

Quite a bit of good advice here but I'd strongly recommended a "no screens in your bedroom" rule and make sure you have a good book to read.

Put away all devices and read a book (a real book made out of paper).

Avoid anything technical, controversial or thrilling. My current bedtime book is "Cecile is Dead" a translation of a Maigret book (french detective 1942). Perfect.

That's doable, I'll start tonight only. Gracias.

As Bryan Johnson says, sleep is lighthouse.

You almost just have to punish yourself for the fraction of sleep missed during a fixed schedule. It sucks but you will adjust. An hour before bed you need to think about those awful times you didn’t get any sleep .

Now if you excuse me, it’s 8 am and I’m very hungover after a 5 hour rest.

I understand your struggle, as I have battled with this is the past but have it in check at the moment…

Step 1: wake up early every day including weekends/holidays.

Step 2: exercise vigorously and make sure your body gets tired. Lately my chosen exercise is swimming, but I’ve done boxing, running, dance classes etc - just anything that literally flogs me.

Step 3: don’t consume caffeine after 12

Step 4: say no to day naps.

Step 5: have a quiet evening routine that cues brain into accepting that bedtime is imminent. Ie, I often have a shower, then a hot chocolate, listen to music (not my usual EDM type stuff but more chill blues type stuff), sometimes I also read or draw. Usually by 11pm I’m unable to stay awake anymore, but it was only about 2 years ago where I would bedtime procrastinate sometimes until 2 or 3am when I had to be awake at 6am. But I seem to have a fairly good routine now. I sometimes will stay up later if I’m with someone else but mostly I’m good with bedtime now.

Do fewer things! If you have your days so full that you finish all your stuff at bedtime, you have too many things happening. Find a way to categorise into important/somewhat-important/not-important, and just give yourself permission to just say no to the not-important.

My lifehack was to do this in the morning, at 4 AM or so. Gaming, books, movies, whatever I want done. Often I do something more productive than scrolling reddit all night, but you can do something unproductive too if you so desire.

You also get really irrational when sleepy. There's this phenomenon of being too tired to sleep, and you end up in a loop of being too tired because you're not getting any sleep.

Another lifehack to sync your body clock is just to not sleep. You're up past 3? Take a bunch of caffeine and stay up. You'll fuck up your day and feel horrible, but you'll likely be asleep by 7 PM that day, lol.

Set up a routine. Mine consists of taking a shower immediately before going to bed, usually soon after eating dinner which happens after I exercise. Before I head into the shower, I put my devices away to charge and after I’m done, head straight to bed. Crucially I used to spend an hour ish after the shower procrastinating on my phone or whatever, but I’ve since replaced it with a routine. Now when I leave the shower my eyelids feel heavy

Do you have kids? What is keeping you up late? My kids are older and don’t go to sleep until 10 (I’m often out driving them around until 930).

Finally when everyone is asleep, I finally have “my time” — which is still intended for projects like planning home reno, fixing things, maybe some tidying, and then to procrastinate or take a break from this 3rd shift of work I’ll end up on phone (hacker news is a fave).

I’ve just made peace I won’t get proper sleep until empty nest.

oh no, I'm 21. But there's just a lot going on lately(University work, side projects, internship work, some errands, daily language lessons, exercise, writing, reading <- this is fixed) and time is of the essence.

PS: I am also having house reno, so most of my time is getting occupied over there.

> Finally when everyone is asleep, I finally have “my time” — which is still intended for projects like planning home reno, fixing things, maybe some tidying, and then to procrastinate or take a break from this 3rd shift of work I’ll end up on phone (hacker news is a fave).

What do you mean when you write that you have time to procrastinate? I have a feeling you might be confusing procrastination with not doing anything useful. Just because you watch YouTube, play games, or don't do anything particularly productive doesn't mean you procrastinate. You need some time to rest and to slack.

Replace your "doomscrolling before bed" habit with something that doesn't involve screens or something that has a definitive ending so that you can actually go to bed once it ends.

I replaced it with reading comic books and it's been working very well. Watching a movie also kinda works. The goal is to get in the habit of doing it, and resisting the temptation to doomscroll.

Myself I found drinking caffeine after 12 noon kept me up. If you drink caffeine experiment with cutting it off earlier.

Also, when it is late, and you feel hungry, it is often your brain trying to stay awake and desiring calories to continue.

My sleep is much better when I can stop caffeine by noon and finish eating by 6 PM.

Intense excercise for a couple of hours a day help with 'resting' the mind and leads to better sleep. You don't have to do a a couple hours each day, but just as much as you can handle without causing any injury.

you didnt tell us why this is a bad habit...i personally dont see anything wrong with that

I go to bed late which results in incomplete sleep and then affects things further.

There is a significant chance you have ADHD.

You are disciplined enough to get stuff you need done during the day, but you still need a dopamine hit, which is why you sit on the internet.

Getting on meds can pretty much eliminate this.

Move your phone/tablet charger to a different room. Short of getting rid of my smartphone, it was the single best move I took to taking control of my bad internet habit.

Keep mobile outside of bedroom if possible. For few days think no emergency call will come.

wind down away from the bed some time before your bedtime. dont take your devices to bed; use your bed for sleep and sex. these helped me at least.

Replace the your hour long habit with exercise.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com