How to Stop Procrastinating at Bedtime and Actually Go to Sleep

Once I finally tuck my kids into bed, clean the kitchen, and shoot off my last work email of the night, it’s “me” time. It’s also, cruelly, bedtime. I know I should sleep, but instead I stay up way too late binge-watching Love Is Blind or mindlessly scrolling on Reddit. I need rest, but I push it off. This is my only uninterrupted time, and I want to maximize it. This phenomenon is so universal that there’s a scientific name for it: “bedtime procrastination.” According to the researchers who coined it in a 2014 study, bedtime procrastination is “failing to go to bed at the intended time, while no external circumstances prevent a person from doing so.” [time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”] People with stressful days and little control over their time are the ones most likely to procrastinate going to sleep, says Lynelle Schneeberg, a sleep psychologist at Yale University. Parents with young children, students, or people with extra-demanding jobs fall into this category. Schneeberg says it’s also common—not surprisingly—in people with insomnia, people who already procrastinate in other areas of their lives, “night owls,” and people with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). So—a lot of us.   We often delay sleep because we want to regain the control—and time—we lost during the day. “When you don’t have the sense that you can ma...
Source: TIME: Health - Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Tags: Uncategorized Evergreen freelance healthscienceclimate Source Type: news