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The psychology behind ‘revenge bedtime procrastination’

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Re: The psychology behind ‘revenge bedtime procrastination’

#271

Post by dTal »

_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.…

For what it's worth, I find that getting up earlier doesn't just shift my free time - it results in a qualitatively different (and better) day. Something about starting the day with "me time" puts me on a nice trajectory, compared to the stressful experience of rolling out of bed and immediately confronting the specter of duty.

Re: The psychology behind ‘revenge bedtime procrastination’

#272

Post by P_I_Staker »

godot wrote: post #161
_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.…

The thing is for many other people it's not about enjoying work or not. I enjoy my job a lot, it's the best one I've had in the past decade. I also have a toddler. After I finish work promptly at 5 (sometimes before, and I work from home), it's a non-stop series of "work" bathing for the kid, either playing with the kid (while my spouse cooks) or I cook (and she plays with the kid, so either way it's busy work for bo…

Yeah, even without families that can be hard. When I was living healthy - cooking good meals, getting ample exercise and sleep, there was essentially zero free time. I was doing every group twice a week, and 2-5 hrs of cardio weekly, which might seem like a lot, but technically that's a pretty basic routine; and what's generally recommended.

I'm totally out of shape now, partially because it winds up being very unsustainable. I'm not working crazy hours at all, but I basically had to eat my meal, do chores, and immediately go to bed. I could probably swing 0.5-2 hours of leisure and that left 5-8 hrs of sleep. There's a ton of corners that can be cut, but there's always a penalty.

I love working out and work. If my body/mind could tolerate it, I'd work for 10 hrs, exercise for 4, a few hours for relaxing with family/friends, and 9 hrs of sleep, but that would take like 30 hrs (technically only 23-25 hrs listed there, but there's overhead, travel, and chores)

Re: The psychology behind ‘revenge bedtime procrastination’

#273

Post by P_I_Staker »

ses1984 wrote: post #173
tyre wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When I read things like this, it makes me not want to have children. From friends, it doesn’t sound like your experience is much different. I’m sure you’re biased and it’s culturally unacceptable (to say the least) to say that you’d rather not have had kids, but I wonder how often you think about that loss of individuality? Maybe it’s that what you’d do were you to have the time wouldn’t be as “productive” in a broad…

My experience hasn't been the same, I have two kids age 4 and 6, and my experience has been more laid back. Most of the time I spend with this kids is fun. Sure, there can be bad times that are stressful and/or exhausting but it's mostly been very rewarding. My kids are asleep by 830 or 9pm, I'm not sure why this person feels they don't have free time until 11pm, that seems like an exaggeration to me. Even when they…

Considering that I don't have kids and feel the same, I'm not surprised by OP. Depending on your commute and chores, that's not so crazy. Of course as someone without kids, I have way more time, but if I cook a dinner and do chores... There's also overhead and time spent overwhelmed. You can work harder, and take less breaks, but that's the rub. Being a flurry of constant activity burns people out.

Re: The psychology behind ‘revenge bedtime procrastination’

#274

Post by P_I_Staker »

KittenInABox wrote: post #83
robotnikman wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Its interesting, we have developed several time saving inventions over the past 50 years, only to have that time we saved filled up with more work. I was reading the book '168 Hours: You Have More Time Than You Think', and the author mentions how researchers in the past were predicting we would have so much free time in the future.

I think there was a comment about this regarding the speculation that more efficiency in parallel processing architecture would make all the work faster- the retort, so to speak, is that instead nodes would be expected to do more work in the same amount of time as before. Humans are being treated like this. As technology increases, humans are merely expected to produce more in the same amount of time. There's no law…

So, I'm not going to say this is definitely the reason, and there's no way around it currently, but this is partially a function of a competitive work environment. Someone is bound to be willing to put in the time, or the threat of it will keep people from exploring (demanding) progressive things like 25-35 hr workweeks.

On the edges, where people are forced to work 60+ hrs a week there's enough leverage of people simply being unwilling to do the job (though even this isn't as true for some elite jobs). On the other hand, if they're just being asked to clock in from 9-5? There would need to be some outrage and push, but this makes you look lazy. There seems to be some progress made on vacations in corporate America, though.

Also, some roles would legitimately suffer or not work at all at 20-30 hrs. I think the ideal is to normally work 40-60 hrs "busy weeks", but not try to load people down when things naturally get slower and let them dip into the time for personal, so it's usually 30-35, or occasionally a bit less.

Re: The psychology behind ‘revenge bedtime procrastination’

#275

Post by P_I_Staker »

umvi wrote: post #63
throwawayyipyip wrote: post #57

It may raise eyebrows, but with the current WFH culture, I simply take naps during work time. If I feel tired, then it's in my and my employers' best interest for me to nap since I will be much more productive for the next few hours. I've tested this also by not sleeping, and my code becomes worse and I need to rewrite a lot of it anyway. In fairness, I do try to go to bed on time, but my issue is that I sometimes on…

I'm not sure I completely agree with this logic because you are saying "if I neglect in personal time, then it is in my and my employer's best interests for me to address during work time (because otherwise I will be less productive)" However, X could be a wide range of things. To use an extreme example, I could neglect fixing my furnace during personal time, and thus I can do it on my employer's dime so that I don't…

Your example isn't even bad though. The point is that why do we have to eat the personal cost of that? My work follows me home and I don't get compensated. If you aren't structuring your time around this, I do think it's often in the best interest of the company.

Re: The psychology behind ‘revenge bedtime procrastination’

#276

Post by mym1990 »

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…

I often self sabotage myself, as humans are prone to do. I used to get into this cycle of playing video games or watching some show until like 6am and then I would go to sleep for 5-6 hours. I knew what I needed to do to get myself out of that cycle, as eventually it became unpleasant/anti-social/etc... but I just didn't want to take the steps. As can be seen in some of the comments, there is often a chasm between giving advice and taking it.

Re: The psychology behind ‘revenge bedtime procrastination’

#277

Post by fatnoah »

drewcon wrote: post #233
fatnoah wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Sounds like they're just behaving like parents with young kids. That was my thought as well. After the wife and kid (not so young now) get to bed is when I actually get quiet time to myself, which I need to unwind from the day. It's actually gotten much worse due to WFH. My daily commute (via transit) provided some of that quiet time to gear up in the morning and unwind in the evening.

So much worse. I never thought the 45 min spent in the car was actually useful time! Turns out sitting in traffic was basically meditation.

Hah, 45 minutes in the car is VERY different than 45 minutes split between sitting on a bus/train and random waiting in between.

Re: The psychology behind ‘revenge bedtime procrastination’

#278

Post by Viliam1234 »

DyslexicAtheist wrote: post #218
godot wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The thing is for many other people it's not about enjoying work or not. I enjoy my job a lot, it's the best one I've had in the past decade. I also have a toddler. After I finish work promptly at 5 (sometimes before, and I work from home), it's a non-stop series of "work" bathing for the kid, either playing with the kid (while my spouse cooks) or I cook (and she plays with the kid, so either way it's busy work for bo…

> or anyone with a 2-year old have been there around 18 years ago. and I think GP's point still holds. time with young kids is special in a sense that I felt it would never end. it was awesome but it was also a tunnel without a light. at least that's what it felt like. all of what you said plus the sleep deprivation, stress with the partner because there isn't enough of "us time" and the constant feeling that whateve…

> these times were the best times ever. my kids are grown up now and I'm proud of them. but those moments will never return.

I think the complaint is not about having to spend too much time with kids, but rather that "work + kids" is too much. Like, a part-time job would improve the situation a lot. But finding a part-time job can be quite difficult.

Re: The psychology behind ‘revenge bedtime procrastination’

#279

Post by Viliam1234 »

watwut wrote: post #258
InitialLastName wrote: post #241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think multi-generational households necessarily need to put a heavier burden on women. In fact, my argument is exactly that households like that do a better job of allocating labor to those who are less able to earn. I don't think there's a real argument to be made that the nuclear household developed because of feminism. The New Deal and post-WWII policies that gave returning vets and their families cheap mo…

They do, because many grandparents will expect women to do more of traditional household and will treat her more badly or with more resentment if she does not. Also, full time childcare is quite tiring for older people, grandparents who are strong enough are typically employed.

> full time childcare is quite tiring for older people

Full-time, sure. But what about flexibly available when necessary?

Also, traditional household provides too little privacy, but living within 10 minutes walking distance is fantastic.

There are all these situations like "grandma, I need to go shopping, could you please take care of the kids for about 30 minutes? maybe later if it is more convenient for you" where having good social infrastructure is awesome, and I cannot imagine how more difficult life would be without it.

Seems to me that as a society we went from one extreme to the other, skipping over the point where things could work really great.

Re: The psychology behind ‘revenge bedtime procrastination’

#280

Post by Viliam1234 »

pojzon wrote: post #206
tyre wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When I read things like this, it makes me not want to have children. From friends, it doesn’t sound like your experience is much different. I’m sure you’re biased and it’s culturally unacceptable (to say the least) to say that you’d rather not have had kids, but I wonder how often you think about that loss of individuality? Maybe it’s that what you’d do were you to have the time wouldn’t be as “productive” in a broad…

Thing is - not kids are the problem. The problem is 9-17 work so many companies force us into. I can finish my work in 2h of my 8h workday. Just let me leave at 11am. I’ll have plenty time to learn new things, play with kids, get enough sleep, maintain a healthy social life. TBH current covid situation is like a blessing for me. I don’t have to “be there”, my work is still done and I can finally spend some time with…

Yeah. In the office, when I look around, I see people browsing web, watching YouTube videos, socializing at coffee, taking long lunch breaks, and I suspect that many meetings are actually just an excuse to chat. And that's all okay. Only leaving sooner and being with my family is not.

Working at home, instead of wasting time socializing at coffee with the same people every day, I can use my breaks to go shopping, cook, have a lunch together with my family, do the dishes, exercise, pick up kids' toys, etc. I am not taking more breaks than in the office; I just do something useful during the breaks, and it probably makes me relax better than reading web.

I wish we could have 6-hour workdays, or 4-day workweeks, or both, in the 21st century. The productivity is supposed to be so much higher than 100 years ago that we really could afford a bit more free time.

Until then, I will enjoy the benefits brought by the COVID situation, and dread the moment it will all revert to the usual 8-hour prison time. (Or even worse, business trips, when you have to be 24 hours a day without your family, just because someone couldn't explain something over video.)

When "work + family" is too much work, the proper solution isn't to give up having kids. That's insane.

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