Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The psychology behind ‘revenge bedtime procrastination’

bbc.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

131–140 of 281 posts

Re: The psychology behind ‘revenge bedtime procrastination’

#131

Post by amoldan »

tremon wrote: post #94
mym1990 wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sleeping feels so fleeting, you close your eyes and poof there go 8 hours(not to say that it isn't beneficial or necessary of course). To work 8 hours, sleep, and then work another 8 hours felt not much different than just working 16 hours with a small break in the middle. So I would stay up for a while to have fun at the expense of the next day...and probably many days thereafter.

you close your eyes and poof there go 8 hours I wish I could say that about myself. Since a few months, I often lie awake for hours waiting for sleep to come along and poof the night away. More often than not, it takes until 3am for me to fall asleep, and I feel as broken as you might expect the next morning. I don't really have a good handle on what changed, or how to get back into my old sleep cycle. I just know it…

What I have observed (in my case) is that if 1. I am too tired, it actually takes longer to fall asleep. 2. If I have watched some heavy / thought provoking movie / series etc., those thoughts keep playing out in my head and then it takes longer to fall asleep.

In such cases, I have devised a strategy. I have developed a fantasy of my own which I keep playing out in my head consciously. I am fast asleep before I know it.

Re: The psychology behind ‘revenge bedtime procrastination’

#132

Post by prionassembly »

monkeynotes wrote: post #56
eru wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tried stimulants?

Stimulants to work around depression seems like a recipe for more depression. A high is usually followed by a low, not to mention fucking up your brain long-term. I would suggest seeking professional mental health help. I'd also suggest meditation and a bit of self discovery. If it wasn't 2020 I'd also suggest travelling, break the pattern find some perspective. Life is too short, find some help, get to the root of y…

> A high is usually followed by a low

I've had both Ritalin and modafinil. They're different.

Re: The psychology behind ‘revenge bedtime procrastination’

#133

Post by _9omd »

nend wrote: post #128
_9omd wrote: post #92

Everyone is talking about shifting time around by doing things like getting up earlier, but that doesn't get around a fundamental problem of not enjoying the working part of your day. You still have the same amount of time, just shifted to a different end, and maybe you're a bit better off that way, but it's still the minority of the day. The real solution is to figure out how to love a larger percentage of your day.…

This same phenomenon is seen not just with work/leisure (with time being the limiting factor), but also with food/leisure (with money being the limiting factor). Studies show that people who are malnourished due to living in poverty, still spend money on leisure activities despite not having enough food to eat. Leisure time is important for people. Even if you enjoy your work, it's still work, and you're still going…

Yes, I think scheduling plays a large role in things too. But, the main thing I'm getting at is how to find creative ways to integrate leisure time into your working day. Taking a nap in the sun at lunch time not only gives me extra leisure time, it also makes the afternoon work more enjoyable. This is a huge win for me, so I do it often, yet I've rarely ever had a colleague who did the same.

I do have to remind myself that I speak from a place of privilege with extremely in demand skills being a software engineer. But I feel a lot of people in a number of different lines of work fail to take advantage of the freedom they have.

Re: The psychology behind ‘revenge bedtime procrastination’

#134

Post by strangegecko »

monkeynotes wrote: post #56
eru wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tried stimulants?

Stimulants to work around depression seems like a recipe for more depression. A high is usually followed by a low, not to mention fucking up your brain long-term. I would suggest seeking professional mental health help. I'd also suggest meditation and a bit of self discovery. If it wasn't 2020 I'd also suggest travelling, break the pattern find some perspective. Life is too short, find some help, get to the root of y…

I'm not sure there's a root to discover that I don't already know about. I'm on the autism spectrum, I have some other health issues, I've missed out on a lot of development and experiences in life due to the ASD and mental health issues resulting from it. I struggle to keep up with work and all the other requirements life throws at you, how the world works is fundamentally depressing to me because it's in conflict with my values and I'm helpless to do anything about it.

Etc.

Lots of things that can't really be changed.

Re: The psychology behind ‘revenge bedtime procrastination’

#135

Post by pb7 »

TheLegace wrote: post #97
cap66 wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would also recommend this app called “Intellect,” it is designed to help individuals beat their bad habits and alleviate their personal psychological problems!

The book is difficult to track down since Intellect is a pretty generic term. Could you post the author?

He said "app", not "book".

Re: The psychology behind ‘revenge bedtime procrastination’

#136

Post by cbozeman »

sandworm101 wrote: post #121
hinkley wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Part of this is establishing a narrative that you will be less productive when burnt out than you are now, where you disappear an extra 20 minutes a day to be outside. There was a point where I was worried about my fitness, which reached its apex when I had a long commute and a stressful job. Some research was published that changed my life. Cardio improvement can be seen with 3x7 minute intervals, rather than the pr…

Ever see the BBC series "The IT Crowd"? There is a great scene that illustrates the class differences when it comes to work and fitness. The boss is giving a speech about stress. He is head-to-toe in spandex having just commuted in on a bike. Everyone else is in office attire. Only certain people in certain jobs enjoy the luxury of mixing work and fitness. Even something as simple as having some free weights at work…

Reading the first post in this chain makes me laugh, not just at the cluelessness of this person, but that this person could be mid-30s and still think this way.

I have a distant cousin that I see only at family gatherings. She's an injection molding worker for an automotive parts company (IAC). She gets one 10 minute break and one 30 minute break in an 8 hour shift.

The rest of her time, she's picking up plastic car parts off a conveyor belt and inspecting, labeling, and placing them on metal racks.

Tell me how she's supposed to do literally any of what the OP said.

Those suggestions work great if you're like most of us, and lucky enough to be a knowledge worker, working for a Fortune 500 / 1000 / 5000 company. If you're not...

Reminds me of what the Athenians told the Melians, "The strong do as they can and the weak suffer what they must."

Re: The psychology behind ‘revenge bedtime procrastination’

#137

Post by cbozeman »

bradlys wrote: post #106
malux85 wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The real solution is to figure out how to love a larger percentage of your day. A lot of this has to do with cultivating the right attitude and not getting exploited by others. At work, don't allow your employer to work you to the bone; work at a steady and enjoyable pace, take lots of breaks to socialize with colleagues, get coffee, go for walks, eat a long lunch in the park, etc. ^ This people, THIS. Programmers…

Don’t overexaggerate the facts. Programmers are /not/ in massive demand. Even skilled ones. It’s why there’s essentially no compensation growth for the last few years outside of FAANG. All growth has been through stock. The sheer massive number of people entering the field and how hard it is to get a job as an engineer should make this more obvious. If massive demand were true, we wouldn’t have ever increasingly diff…

I'm not saying you're wrong, I'm just curious if you can back this statement up with any facts? Maybe some data from the BLS? Or is this your personal sentiment? If so, could it be tied to your local or regional economy for programmers?

Re: The psychology behind ‘revenge bedtime procrastination’

#139

Post by b0rsuk »

In my last job, boss would pretty often come up with something important to do near the end of my shift. Watch out for that. How do you deal when your employer (it was a small company) engages with you personally when your shift is coming to an end? Discussing, planning, that sort of thing. I could set my borders with others well enough, but at workplace it's a delicate thing.

Re: The psychology behind ‘revenge bedtime procrastination’

#140

Post by outworlder »

dandare wrote: post #138

"Privileged" European here: it is totally beyond me how can anyone be any productive on a 996 schedule. I can't write code for more than 4-6 hours a day, 5 days per week. I would probably not be a good programmer if I was born in China.

Let me tell you a secret: no one can be productive in such a regimen. It doesn't stop companies from trying.

This is not just a Chinese thing. The US is not much different.

Post reply on HN