![]() ![]() Now, the Netherlands-based researchers are warning that we shouldn’t underestimate the importance of self-control in keeping you up later than you intended. In February, they reported in the journal Frontiers in Psychology that night owls delayed going to bed most at the beginning of the workweek, perhaps because they were still well rested from sleeping in on their days off. But another camp of psychologists has recently proposed that chronotype- our biological preference for waking and sleeping at certain times of day-may be a better explanation for bedtime procrastination. The team in the Netherlands who coined the term have argued in favor of poor self-regulation. Yet psychologists only came up with a name for this behavior-bedtime procrastination-a few years ago, and still don’t entirely understand why we do it. But you just…don’t.įor many of us, putting off going to bed is an all too familiar problem. You should probably just call it a night, at least if you don’t want to be tired and cranky tomorrow. Or that final email for work you didn’t get to earlier. It’s late and you were supposed to be asleep 20 minutes ago. They found that bedtime procrastination was a very real problem, and one that was associated with regular old procrastination as well trouble with self-regulation, defined by the psychologist Steve Stosny as "the ability to act in your long-term best interest, consistent with your deepest values." The Takeawayīedtime procrastination is unique, the researchers write, because while people often procrastinate to put off undesirable tasks, sleep is not generally considered undesirable.You know the feeling. Participants were also rated for self-control, conscientiousness, impulsivity, and action control. Researchers collected information on participants' demographics, general habits ("I generally delay before starting on work I have to do"), sleep schedule, and (self-reported) fatigue. I can easily stop with my activities when it is time to go to bed. I want to go to bed on time but I just don't.ĩ. I have a regular bedtime which I keep to. I easily get distracted by things when I actually would like to go to bed.ħ. Often I am still doing other things when it is time to go to bed.ĥ. If it is time to turn off the lights at night I do it immediately. I go to bed early if I have to get up early in the morning. They asked participants to rate, on a scale of 1 (almost never) to 5 (almost always) how much the following statements applied to them ("R" items are those that are not typical of bedtime procrastinators): 1. The research team, led by Floor Kroese, surveyed 177 people on Amazon's Mechanical Turk to assess what bedtime procrastination is and who is likely to do it. The Utrecht researchers wanted to explore how procrastination behavior might affect health, and whether procrastinators were also less likely to do things like exercise and eat vegetables (as previous research has shown) because both behaviors are associated with poor self-control. He says people want to go to bed on time, and yet many don't. “It’s a longstanding puzzle in philosophy, since Aristotle: why it is that people fail to do what they know is good for them to do,” Joel Anderson, a researcher in Practical Philosophy who coined the term "bedtime procrastination," told Morais. The study was recently highlighted in an article by Betsy Morais in the New Yorker online. "Bedtime procrastination is defined as failing to go to bed at the intended time, while no external circumstances prevent a person from doing so," a team of researchers from Utrecht University write in a recent issue of the journal Frontiers in Psychology. If you're exhausted and you know you need to sleep, but can't bring yourself to close your laptop, get up off your couch, or stop organizing your kitchen cupboards, you may be a bedtime procrastinator. Account icon An icon in the shape of a person's head and shoulders. ![]()
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