MPKGD Photo by NeONBRAND on Unsplash
I recently came across this phenomenon dubbed as the Revenge Bedtime Procrastination. Its nothing new really. Almost everyone has done it. Simply, it is putting off an early bedtime to sleep late so that you can take some more time for yourself. We literally borrow a little of tomorrow for today, just to reclaim what little time we have for ourselves.
Its quite a sad thought though: the idea that a lot of us are actually moving through our lives doing things we don’t really like and have to “borrow” a little of tomorrow because we are losing ourselves in our everyday.
Everyday, we are bombarded with emails and phone calls, most of which aren’t really important to us. I say bombarded because they aren’t really welcome but it’s a necessary part of society. Still they feel like it forcibly enters our bubble and it is very difficult to avoid. To some degree, they almost dictate how we live our lives and unknowingly we change to suit what has been dictated.
Our revenge bedtime procrastination usually results in the mindless scrolling of our Instagram feeds, slightly and almost wholeheartedly wishing we were something or somewhere else. Our thumbs get really numb and our eyes get red and itchy after awhile but still we insist on staring at that 6-inch screen.
Because of our daily social media activity, we get the ads that almost tells us how to feel, how to think. In the manipulation of emotions and thoughts, we gradually and unknowingly lose ourselves. And then we find ourselves falling into the fabric of an idealized society monopolized by the big names.
Then we turn it off. Now we are sitting in the vast dark of the room.
Too silent.
We turn it back on. Then we get the ads for the cheapest flights to paradise if we get it within the next 10 hours. If we avail of it, we will get undeniable bliss.
We lose a lot of our sleep time because of this: daydreaming.
Ironically.
Turning them off at the end of the day to do the things that we like is like a reboot button that we do at the end of our day. We go back and find ourselves, to salvage the tiny bit of us that are gradually lost in the system. Even if it means losing a little bit of tomorrow.
I am guilty of this practice, thanks for shedding light on this topic. What are some tips to avoid bedtime procrastination? I find myself unconsciously doing it.
I found a couple of tips online stating that if you are the type of person to schedule everything out, then the best way to avoid this procrastination is inserting (ie, scheduling) the activities that you want to do in your day-to-day. It is some sort of break away from the mundaneness of every day. It’s like a break and you have to follow that break. Breathe, even just for 10 mins… It helps a lot!