Sanne Nauts

Bedtime Procrastination: A Behavioral Perspective on Sleep Insufficiency

Abstract In this chapter, we discuss a specific domain of procrastination that significantly affects health and well-being, “bedtime procrastination”: the phenomenon of postponing going to bed, typically resulting in a lack of sleep. This chapter describes how a lack of sleep affects health and well-being, how bedtime procrastination plays a role in this regard, and why people do it. Essentially, we argue that going to bed late can be conceived of as a self-regulation problem, just like procrastination in other domains. Building on this conceptualization, we suggest interventions that may help people hit the pillow on time, and discuss avenues for future research. We conclude that considering sleep insufficiency from a self-regulation perspective may be an important step to further understanding and finding ways to reduce this self-undermining behavior.

Too depleted to turn in: The relevance of end-of-the-day resource depletion for reducing bedtime procrastination

Bedtime procrastination is an important predictor of sleep insufficiency in the general population (Kroese et al., 2014b), but little is known about the determinants of this self-undermining behavior. As the phenomenon has been conceptualized in the literature as a form of self-regulation failure (Kroese et al., 2014a), we hypothesized that people’s self-regulatory resources in the evening would be predictive of going to bed later than they intended. Specifically, we examined whether the cumulative effect of resisting desires, a measure of self-regulatory resource depletion (Hofmann et al., 2012b), relates to bedtime procrastination. Participants (N = 218) reported how many desires they had tried to resist during the previous day and the extent of their bedtime procrastination. Results show that people who attempted to resist more desires were more likely to engage in bedtime procrastination, suggesting that people may be less likely to stick to their intended bedtime after a particularly taxing day. Implications for intervention strategies are discussed.

The Explanations People Give for Going to Bed Late: A Qualitative Study of the Varieties of Bedtime Procrastination

ABSTRACT Background/Objective: Bedtime procrastination is a prevalent cause of sleep deprivation, but little is known about why people delay their bedtimes. In the present research, we conducted a qualitative study with bedtime procrastinators to classify their self-reported reasons for later-than-intended bedtime. Participants: Participants (N = 17) were selected who frequently engaged in bedtime procrastination, but whose sleep was not otherwise affected by diagnosed sleep disorders or shift work. Method: We conducted in-depth, semistructured interviews and used thematic analysis to identify commonly recurring themes in the interviews. Results and conclusions: Three emerging themes were identified: deliberate procrastination, mindless procrastination, and strategic delay. For the form of procrastination we classified as deliberate procrastination, participants typically reported wilfully delaying their bedtime because they felt they deserved some time for themselves. For the category of mindless procrastination, a paradigmatic aspect was that participants lost track of the time due to being immersed in their evening activities. Finally, participants who engaged in strategic delay reported going to bed late because they felt they needed to in order to fall asleep (more quickly), which suggests that despite describing themselves as “procrastinating,” their bedtime delay may actually be linked to undiagnosed insomnia. The conceptual distinctions drawn in this paper deepen our understanding of bedtime delay and may be helpful for designing effective interventions.

Introducing a Continuous Measure of Future Self-Continuity

This article presents a continuous measure of future self-continuity (FSC-C) designed for use in web-based surveys. It allows researchers to assess on a continuous scale the similarity or connectedness that participants feel in relation to their future selves. The measure has an intuitive drag-and-drop interface, where participants can drag one circle over another circle to a certain degree of overlap to indicate closeness of the relation between their present self and their future selves. The measure is highly customizable and is therefore also attractive for researchers in other domains (e.g., to measure Inclusion of Other in the Self). In this regard, the measure is an alternative to that reported by Le, Moss, and Mashek in this journal. This article describes the motivation for the development of the measure as well as how it is constructed.