<story><title>Revenge Bedtime Procrastination</title><url>https://annehelen.substack.com/p/revenge-bedtime-procrastination</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>pdpi</author><text>With all due respect, this is nonsense written by someone who doesn&amp;#x27;t deal with this problem.&lt;p&gt;This argument comes from people seeing movement from A to B, and assuming all movement from A to B is identical. This particular pattern is that they&amp;#x27;re motivated to &lt;i&gt;move toward&lt;/i&gt; B (and the fact they started at A is incidental), and can&amp;#x27;t understand that other people can move from A to B because they&amp;#x27;re motivated to &lt;i&gt;move away&lt;/i&gt; from A (and ending up at B is irrelevant). For an extreme example: A Saudi man and a Saudi woman both moving to Norway. The man might be motivated to move towards a country with snow where he can ski, while the woman is motivated to move away from somewhere where she has limited rights.&lt;p&gt;I understand (and sometimes fall prey to) the stereotypical Civilization &amp;quot;one more turn&amp;quot; phenomenon, and have e.g. booked holidays and pulled an all-nighter to power through a new Warcraft expansion or some such nonsense — a clear case of &amp;quot;movement toward&amp;quot;. But I also have anxiety issues, and this sort of &amp;quot;movement away from&amp;quot; procrastination is very much part of how it manifests itself. The two are distinct things that feel very, very different internally.&lt;p&gt;Ultimately, I don&amp;#x27;t actually care what it is that I&amp;#x27;m doing, scrolling through reddit or playing a game, or even tidying up the house. I might even be exhausted and struggling to stay awake — the point is I don&amp;#x27;t want to go to bed, because high anxiety usually triggers my brain going into uncomfortable thoughts when I go to bed, and because going to bed puts me that much closer to the next day&amp;#x27;s anxieties and stresses.&lt;p&gt;A different (and ultimately unhealthy) sort of &amp;quot;movement toward&amp;quot; is the choice to not go to bed as an act of self determination by way of rebellion. Sort of &amp;quot;I don&amp;#x27;t feel in control so I exercise control on the one thing I feel I can, consequences be damned&amp;quot;. The important part isn&amp;#x27;t the thing you&amp;#x27;re doing, it&amp;#x27;s that you&amp;#x27;re choosing to do it. AIUI, self-harm works along these same lines.&lt;p&gt;In short: please don&amp;#x27;t patronise people struggling with real problems by telling them they&amp;#x27;re just over-intellectualising things.</text></item><item><author>kritiko</author><text>Ed Zitron just wrote about this, and I agree with him:&lt;p&gt;&lt;i&gt;The whole conversation around “revenge bedtime procrastination” is a frustrating example - it is the idea that we are staying up late doing things we want to do instead of going to bed, which is otherwise known as “being a person.” I’ve seen several different articles about it, going into depths about “the why” of people staying awake doing stuff before bed. The answer is probably that they’re intellectually stimulated by the thing they’re doing and like doing it and are more interested in the thing than going to sleep. Big deal! But it’s now yet another codified entity for people to chew over and ask themselves about - am I “revenge bedtime procrastinating?” A take that seems profound and thoughtful, but is laser-focused on being shared by people saying “hey, I also do stuff instead of going to bed!” Entire articles now exist of people talking about why they stay awake instead of sleeping, as if that’s new, or thoughtful. And now people have a new term for something that didn’t need a term, and can bring intellectualism to “I stayed up until 1am playing Slay The Spire.”&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;ez.substack.com&amp;#x2F;p&amp;#x2F;hot-takes-and-the-new-portable-intellectualism&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;ez.substack.com&amp;#x2F;p&amp;#x2F;hot-takes-and-the-new-portable-int...&lt;/a&gt;</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>haswell</author><text>This is really well stated and resonates with me deeply.&lt;p&gt;The “doing things I don’t even want to do” aspect of this is what also separates this from “just staying up late”.&lt;p&gt;For me, I’ve had some vague notion of trying to build a time buffer between today and tomorrow. Something to separate today’s stress from tomorrow’s stress.</text></comment>
<story><title>Revenge Bedtime Procrastination</title><url>https://annehelen.substack.com/p/revenge-bedtime-procrastination</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>pdpi</author><text>With all due respect, this is nonsense written by someone who doesn&amp;#x27;t deal with this problem.&lt;p&gt;This argument comes from people seeing movement from A to B, and assuming all movement from A to B is identical. This particular pattern is that they&amp;#x27;re motivated to &lt;i&gt;move toward&lt;/i&gt; B (and the fact they started at A is incidental), and can&amp;#x27;t understand that other people can move from A to B because they&amp;#x27;re motivated to &lt;i&gt;move away&lt;/i&gt; from A (and ending up at B is irrelevant). For an extreme example: A Saudi man and a Saudi woman both moving to Norway. The man might be motivated to move towards a country with snow where he can ski, while the woman is motivated to move away from somewhere where she has limited rights.&lt;p&gt;I understand (and sometimes fall prey to) the stereotypical Civilization &amp;quot;one more turn&amp;quot; phenomenon, and have e.g. booked holidays and pulled an all-nighter to power through a new Warcraft expansion or some such nonsense — a clear case of &amp;quot;movement toward&amp;quot;. But I also have anxiety issues, and this sort of &amp;quot;movement away from&amp;quot; procrastination is very much part of how it manifests itself. The two are distinct things that feel very, very different internally.&lt;p&gt;Ultimately, I don&amp;#x27;t actually care what it is that I&amp;#x27;m doing, scrolling through reddit or playing a game, or even tidying up the house. I might even be exhausted and struggling to stay awake — the point is I don&amp;#x27;t want to go to bed, because high anxiety usually triggers my brain going into uncomfortable thoughts when I go to bed, and because going to bed puts me that much closer to the next day&amp;#x27;s anxieties and stresses.&lt;p&gt;A different (and ultimately unhealthy) sort of &amp;quot;movement toward&amp;quot; is the choice to not go to bed as an act of self determination by way of rebellion. Sort of &amp;quot;I don&amp;#x27;t feel in control so I exercise control on the one thing I feel I can, consequences be damned&amp;quot;. The important part isn&amp;#x27;t the thing you&amp;#x27;re doing, it&amp;#x27;s that you&amp;#x27;re choosing to do it. AIUI, self-harm works along these same lines.&lt;p&gt;In short: please don&amp;#x27;t patronise people struggling with real problems by telling them they&amp;#x27;re just over-intellectualising things.</text></item><item><author>kritiko</author><text>Ed Zitron just wrote about this, and I agree with him:&lt;p&gt;&lt;i&gt;The whole conversation around “revenge bedtime procrastination” is a frustrating example - it is the idea that we are staying up late doing things we want to do instead of going to bed, which is otherwise known as “being a person.” I’ve seen several different articles about it, going into depths about “the why” of people staying awake doing stuff before bed. The answer is probably that they’re intellectually stimulated by the thing they’re doing and like doing it and are more interested in the thing than going to sleep. Big deal! But it’s now yet another codified entity for people to chew over and ask themselves about - am I “revenge bedtime procrastinating?” A take that seems profound and thoughtful, but is laser-focused on being shared by people saying “hey, I also do stuff instead of going to bed!” Entire articles now exist of people talking about why they stay awake instead of sleeping, as if that’s new, or thoughtful. And now people have a new term for something that didn’t need a term, and can bring intellectualism to “I stayed up until 1am playing Slay The Spire.”&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;ez.substack.com&amp;#x2F;p&amp;#x2F;hot-takes-and-the-new-portable-intellectualism&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;ez.substack.com&amp;#x2F;p&amp;#x2F;hot-takes-and-the-new-portable-int...&lt;/a&gt;</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>rosstex</author><text>&amp;gt;going to bed puts me that much closer to the next day&amp;#x27;s anxieties and stresses&lt;p&gt;Rarely is this cycle of self-harm behavior expressed so plainly. Sorry you are dealing with this.</text></comment>