Revenge bedtime procrastination is that thing you do when you know you should go to sleep, but do something else instead – even though the main person who will suffer from this is you. By Richard Godwin
The term originated in China. It is a rough translation of the Mandarin phrase bàofùxìng áoyè, or ‘staying up late in retaliation’.
Its rapid spread through social media tells us that revenge bedtime procrastination is a human universal. As the Chinese-American journalist Daphne K Lee explained, ‘People who don’t have much control over their daytime life refuse to go to sleep early, in order to regain some sense of freedom during late-night hours.’
It can afflict anyone, at any age. Her Majesty the Queen is a revenge bedtime procrastinator at 95, or so the Sunday Times implied after she was hospitalised back in October. Apparently, one of the reasons Queen Elizabeth II was feeling so ‘knackered’ was that she was watching TV long into the night. Line of Duty is a particular favourite.
How much of The Queen’s time is truly her own? Not much, clearly.
Common forms of revenge bedtime procrastination include: playing the same foolish game on your phone over and over; rewatching episodes of a 1990s sitcom you’ve seen three times before; filling in sudoku after sudoku until the numbers become a blur; arguing with the internet.
Who or what is being avenged here? In the Chinese context, it is the ‘996 working hour system’ – an expectation that you will work from 9am until 9pm, six days a week, and not complain about it. More broadly, it is a culture of always-on industriousness made worse by the toxic combination of smartphones and globalised capitalism.
More locally (as a working parent with young children) I identify it as a feeling, when I turn in at 12.13am, that at no point in the day have I had a couple of moments when someone isn’t asking something of me. The Chess.com app doesn’t need feeding or changing or wiping. The Chess.com app is pleasurable, undemanding and compulsive. The Chess.com app is … wait, how did it get to be 1.37am?!
At some point, we need respite and it’s much easier to find that respite when everyone else is asleep. And late at night, when we’re tired, self-control is harder to exert.
While this is a digital-era term, there are analogue forms of revenge bedtime procrastination. Reading novels, for example. Filling in the middle bits of a 1,000-piece jigsaw. The other night, I found myself revenge bedtime procrastinating by wandering into the garden after midnight with a torch in order to ambush the snails feasting on my lupins.
The bitter irony the revenge bedtime procrastinator faces at 7am is that the only person they have avenged is their future self. They must now perform all their tasks on an extremely suboptimal amount of sleep. ‘I have wasted time and now doth time waste me!’ as Richard II wailed.
The revenge bedtime procrastinator is thus advised to begin winding down at least 30 minutes before bed. Turn off the ‘auto-play’ feature on Netflix. Banish all screens from the bedroom. And buy a good, old-fashioned analogue alarm clock to ensure an early start that must not be shifted thanks to a late-night revenge bedtime.
