Revenge bedtime procrastination is staying up later than you meant to, often scrolling or watching shows, because late evening is the only time that feels like your own, even though you know you'll be tired tomorrow. The name comes from a Chinese phrase that spread in English in 2020. Researchers call the wider habit bedtime procrastination: going to bed later than intended when nothing outside you is stopping you (Kroese et al., 2014). It's linked to less sleep and more daytime tiredness. What helps is getting some free time earlier in the day, setting a wind-down alarm, keeping the phone out of bed and deciding in advance what you'll do at bedtime.
What is revenge bedtime procrastination?
Revenge bedtime procrastination means delaying sleep on purpose to get some free time, after a day that didn't leave any. The "revenge" is against the day: work, study or caring for others took every hour, so you take a few back from the night. The cost arrives the next morning.
The Sleep Foundation describes three features that set it apart from just going to bed late: the delay cuts into your total sleep, there's no real reason for it such as a night shift or an emergency, and you know while you're doing it that you'll probably regret it. Researchers sometimes use the broader term sleep procrastination, which also covers going to bed on time and then lying there on your phone. A study of 400 high school students found that putting off going to bed and putting off sleep once in bed were only weakly related, which suggests they're two separate habits (Magalhães et al., 2020).
Where the term comes from
"Revenge bedtime procrastination" is a translation of the Chinese phrase 报复性熬夜 (bàofùxìng áoyè), roughly "revenge staying up late", which was linked to frustration with long working hours. It reached English-speaking social media in June 2020, when the journalist Daphne K. Lee tweeted the term with a short explanation and the tweet went viral (Das, 2021; Boston Globe, 2021). It caught on during the pandemic, when many people's days blurred together and evenings felt like the only time that belonged to them.
The research term is older. In 2014, psychologists at Utrecht University introduced "bedtime procrastination" as a new area of procrastination research, without the "revenge" part (Kroese et al., 2014).
What research says about bedtime procrastination
Research on bedtime procrastination is still small, but it consistently links the habit to getting less sleep. In the first study, 177 adults answered an online questionnaire. People who reported more bedtime procrastination slept fewer hours, felt more often that they hadn't slept enough, and were more tired during the day, and this held after taking age, gender and education into account. They also scored lower on measures of self-control (Kroese et al., 2014). The study was a one-time survey, so it can't show which came first, and the authors point out that poor sleep could also make self-control worse.
Later studies disagree about the role of a tiring day. In one, people who had resisted more temptations during the day were more likely to go to bed later than they intended, which fits the idea that a draining day leaves less willpower for bedtime (Kamphorst et al., 2018). In another, which followed 108 employees over a working week, people actually procrastinated less on evenings when they felt more depleted. The stronger factor there was body clock: evening types, or night owls, procrastinated on bedtime more on work days (Kühnel et al., 2018).
Why do I stay up late even when I'm tired?
Most people stay up late for a mix of reasons: the evening is their only free time, going to bed means ending the one enjoyable part of the day, and the phone makes it easy to keep going. The common causes:
The day didn't leave any time for you
This is the "revenge" part. If your day runs from work to chores to bed, the hour after everyone else is asleep may be the only time nobody needs anything from you. Giving it up for sleep feels like losing the only bit of the day that was yours.
Bedtime is a task, and an unpleasant one
Going to bed has steps: stopping the show, brushing your teeth, setting an alarm. It also ends the part of the day you've been enjoying. Like any task that feels unpleasant, it gets put off. The guide on why you procrastinate explains the pattern in more detail.
You're a night owl on an early schedule
If your body clock runs late, 22:30 may simply not feel like bedtime. In the diary study of employees, evening types procrastinated on bedtime more on work days, when their schedule was set by an early start (Kühnel et al., 2018).
The phone comes to bed with you
Feeds and autoplay have no natural stopping point, so "one more video" can last an hour. In a survey of 844 adults in Belgium, six in ten took their phone to the bedroom, and using it after lights out was linked to worse sleep quality, more insomnia symptoms and more tiredness (Exelmans and Van den Bulck, 2016).
How to stop revenge bedtime procrastination
To stop revenge bedtime procrastination, work on what's driving it: if the problem is no free time, move some free time earlier; if it's the phone, move the phone. Match the fix to the cause.
| What's driving it | What to try |
|---|---|
| No free time during the day | Protect 30 minutes of free time earlier in the evening, such as right after dinner, so bedtime isn't the only time you get. |
| You lose track of time | Set a wind-down alarm 30 to 45 minutes before your planned bedtime. |
| Going to bed feels like a chore | Make the first step tiny: when the alarm goes, all you have to do is brush your teeth. |
| The phone in bed | Charge the phone outside the bedroom, or at least out of arm's reach, and use a cheap alarm clock. |
| "Just one more episode" | Turn off autoplay and decide how many episodes you'll watch before you start. |
| You're a night owl | Choose a bedtime you can actually keep, and keep the same wake time on days off. |
| Your mind is on tomorrow's tasks | Before winding down, write tomorrow's first task and its first small step, so you don't have to hold it in your head. |
Planning the moment in advance seems to help in particular. In two randomised trials with university students, a short exercise in which people pictured what they wanted, named what got in the way and made an if-then plan for it reduced the average minutes of bedtime procrastination per night compared with control exercises (Valshtein et al., 2020). The results were self-reported and from students, but they match a large body of research on implementation intentions. An if-then plan for bedtime can be as simple as "When the wind-down alarm goes, I'll put the phone on the charger in the kitchen."
A 7-night plan to get to bed on time
This plan changes one thing each night, so you can see what actually makes a difference for you. Most adults need at least seven hours of sleep, according to the CDC, so work back from your wake time to find a bedtime that gives you that.
| Night | What to do |
|---|---|
| 1 | Change nothing. Write down when you meant to go to bed, when you actually did, and what you were doing in between. |
| 2 | Pick a realistic bedtime, about 30 minutes earlier than last night, and set a wind-down alarm 30 minutes before it. |
| 3 | Move the phone charger out of the bedroom or out of reach of the bed. |
| 4 | Put 30 minutes of free time earlier in the evening and protect it like an appointment. |
| 5 | Write your if-then plan: "When the wind-down alarm goes, I'll ..." and put it where you'll see it. |
| 6 | Turn off autoplay, and before you start watching, decide how many episodes you'll watch. |
| 7 | Compare your planned and actual bedtimes for the week. Keep what helped, drop what didn't, and move your bedtime 15 minutes earlier if you'd like more sleep. |
Missing a night doesn't undo the week. Write down what happened and carry on the next night. If you want a broader set of methods for putting things off during the day, see how to stop procrastinating.
When to see a doctor
Revenge bedtime procrastination is choosing to stay up, while insomnia is trying to sleep and not being able to. If you go to bed on time and still lie awake, wake up often or wake far too early, that's a different problem. The NHS advises seeing a GP if changing your sleep habits hasn't helped, if you've had trouble sleeping for months, or if poor sleep is making it hard to cope day to day. A GP may suggest cognitive behavioural therapy for insomnia. It's also worth talking to a doctor if you're very sleepy during the day even after enough sleep.
If you put things off all day as well as at bedtime, and you've wondered whether attention problems are part of it, the guide to ADHD and procrastination explains what to look out for.
Where Startr fits
Startr isn't a sleep app, but it can help with one reason people stay up: the task you avoided all day that's still on your mind at night. Startr has a 30-second check each evening where you note whether you started, what got in the way and tomorrow's first step. Writing that down lets you put the task aside for the night, knowing exactly what you'll do first tomorrow.
Questions people ask
Why is it called "revenge" bedtime procrastination?
Because the late hours feel like getting back at a day that took all your time. The term is a translation of a Chinese phrase linked to long working hours, and it spread in English after a viral tweet in 2020.
Is revenge bedtime procrastination a sleep disorder?
No. It's a habit, not a diagnosis, and it's different from insomnia. With bedtime procrastination you could sleep but choose not to yet. With insomnia you try to sleep and can't.
How much sleep do adults need?
The CDC recommends at least seven hours a night for adults aged 18 to 60, and seven to nine hours for adults aged 61 to 64.
Is sleep procrastination the same thing?
Mostly. Sleep procrastination is the broader term researchers use. It includes delaying going to bed and also delaying sleep once you're in bed, for example by scrolling on your phone.
Startr is a procrastination app for the one thing you keep putting off during the day. You type it in, it writes a first step that takes two minutes, you pick a time and a place, and at that time it counts you down and starts a 5-minute timer. There's no sign-up, and the web app works on any phone or computer.
Get my first stepSources
- Kroese, F. M., De Ridder, D. T. D., Evers, C. & Adriaanse, M. A. (2014). Bedtime procrastination: Introducing a new area of procrastination. Frontiers in Psychology, 5, 611. doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2014.00611
- Kamphorst, B. A., Nauts, S., De Ridder, D. T. D. & Anderson, J. H. (2018). Too depleted to turn in: The relevance of end-of-the-day resource depletion for reducing bedtime procrastination. Frontiers in Psychology, 9, 252. doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2018.00252
- Kühnel, J., Syrek, C. J. & Dreher, A. (2018). Why don't you go to bed on time? A daily diary study on the relationships between chronotype, self-control resources and the phenomenon of bedtime procrastination. Frontiers in Psychology, 9, 77. doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2018.00077
- Exelmans, L. & Van den Bulck, J. (2016). Bedtime mobile phone use and sleep in adults. Social Science & Medicine, 148, 93–101. doi:10.1016/j.socscimed.2015.11.037
- Magalhães, P., Cruz, V., Teixeira, S., Fuentes, S. & Rosário, P. (2020). An exploratory study on sleep procrastination: Bedtime vs. while-in-bed procrastination. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, 17(16), 5892. doi:10.3390/ijerph17165892
- Valshtein, T. J., Oettingen, G. & Gollwitzer, P. M. (2020). Using mental contrasting with implementation intentions to reduce bedtime procrastination: Two randomised trials. Psychology & Health, 35(3), 275–301. doi:10.1080/08870446.2019.1652753
- Sleep Foundation. Revenge Bedtime Procrastination: Why You Self-Sabotage at Night. sleepfoundation.org
- Das, M. (2021, June 4). 'Revenge Bedtime Procrastination': The Story of Our Lives. The Wire. livewire.thewire.in
- The Boston Globe (2021, June 18). Staying up too late? Welcome to revenge bedtime procrastination. bostonglobe.com
- Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. About Sleep. cdc.gov
- NHS. Insomnia. nhs.uk