Note: It’s more than just about nighttime delays for me

I discovered this Glamour article ‘Revenge Bedtime Procrastination’ Is Real, According to Psychologists today. I began to read it, and not too long after that, I got distracted and started doing other things. Later, I started reading it and after the first section I decided to tell my wife about what I was reading, which turned into us commiserating about how much sleep we’re not getting. After helping my child with her school work and starting dinner, I’m determined to finish reading this article.

As a microcosm of my day, it’s illuminating how a lack of meaningful sleep can affect my waking life. And it’s not just this, because I’m a knowledgeable and capable adult that understands the importance of sleep. And it’s not that I can’t get to sleep early. It’s because I sabotage myself into actually going to sleep late. “Lights out” for the child is at 8:20pm every night. This should give me plenty of time to comfortably get to sleep. However, even if I can get myself into the bed by 9:00, I’m still not asleep until maybe 11:00 or 12:00.

My drug of choice is Candy Crush Soda Saga. I’ve been playing this game almost every day for I don’t know how many years. My second go-to is a tie between Twitter and a national news app. If crushing candies isn’t satisfying enough for me, I have whatever infinite scrolling app will have me. Inevitably, I will feel the inevitable turn that is my body turning off for the night. And I think to myself, “why didn’t I just fall asleep when I got into bed? I would be so much happier tomorrow.”

As the article points out, this behavior tends worse right now during the pandemic, in general, because of all the more attention we give to our families.

“Demands on our time have gotten higher during the work-from-home period of time, not lower,” Ashley Whillans, Ph.D., a researcher and behavioral scientist at Harvard Business School, tells Glamour. She’s been studying how people are using their time during the pandemic in five countries, including America—her group’s research found that women, especially mothers, are spending more time on childcare and household chores than fathers do. (Surprise, surprise.)

As a male, I am taking on many of what people think of traditional female roles in the family, and I am heavily feeling this description. It’s now 5:30pm and my wife is still in her Zoom meetings, and my daughter has gotten very tired of being in virtual class and trying to do her offline school work. We all have our issues, and I’m not trying to deny anyone theirs. I’m writing this today in order to give myself permission to just go the hell to sleep tonight.

“So I worry that people are creating a vicious cycle by ruining what leisure time they do have by not getting enough sleep.” Of course, we all know that we should get more sleep. But Santos offers it not as an annoying cure-all, but as a real, strategic opportunity to potentially break the “revenge bedtime” cycle.

…

Ryan and Shapiro both recommend carving out breaks while it’s still light outside—calendaring them in and taking them seriously. Ryan, knowing that later in the evening she’ll be busy with her kids, builds 15 minute segments into her workday. “I shut my office door, I put my music on, and I just breathe,”

I hope that finishing this blog post today will help satiate my need to be in my own brain for a while, and that I’ll use this as a tool so as to try to fall asleep at a decent time tonight.