The Sleep Problem That Has Nothing to Do With Sleeping Badly
By Daniel Schotborgh, MD, Holistic GP & Lifestyle Coach | Nut House Ambassador
I used to be a night person. Or at least, that’s what I told myself.
The truth was different. My days were full: getting the kids to sleep, finishing administration,
handling whatever else needed handling. I told myself that once all of that was done, I’d earned
some time for myself. So I’d push through the list, and only once it was finished would I let
myself relax.
The problem was that by the time everything was actually done, it was already late. And I’d
think, I’ve earned this. I deserve a little downtime. So I’d take it anyway, even though I knew
what it would cost me.
The next day, I’d be tired. Slower. The same tasks that used to take an hour would take longer.
Which meant I finished even later that evening. Which meant I told myself I deserved the
downtime even more. It was a loop, and I was fully aware I was in it.
If that sounds familiar, I want you to know two things. First, you’re not lazy, and you’re not
undisciplined.
Second, there’s actually a name for what you’re doing, and understanding it is
the first step to breaking the loop.
Why You Do This
There’s a term for this pattern: bedtime procrastination, sometimes called revenge bedtime
procrastination. It was first described by Dutch researcher Floor Kroese in 2014 as going to bed
later than intended, with no external reason stopping you from going to bed on time.[1]
Here’s what the research points to as the actual driver. It isn’t that you don’t value sleep. It’s
something researchers call low perceived daytime autonomy: when your day is packed with
obligations, work, caregiving, other people’s needs, you end up with almost no time that
genuinely belongs to you. Night becomes the only window where nobody needs anything from
you.[2] That’s not a character flaw. That’s a rational response to a day that gave you nothing
back.
There’s also a practical reason this happens specifically at night, and not earlier. Your ability to
resist an impulse, to choose the harder but better option, isn’t constant throughout the day. It
depletes the more you use it. By 11pm, after a full day of decisions and demands, you have the
least self-regulation left, at exactly the moment you need it most to close your laptop and go to
bed.[3]
What It Actually Costs
This isn’t only about feeling tired the next day, though that’s real too. Sleep duration itself, not
just sleep quality, has a measurable effect on your body.
One study followed over a thousand adults and measured their appetite hormones directly.
People who slept five hours a night, compared to eight, had fifteen percent lower levels of
leptin, the hormone that tells you you’re full, and fifteen percent higher levels of ghrelin, the
hormone that tells you you’re hungry.[4] Less sleep doesn’t just make you tired. It makes you
hungrier, and it makes it harder to feel satisfied when you eat.
Over time, that’s not a small thing. It’s your body’s chemistry working against you, night after
night, simply because you didn’t get enough hours.
A Small Exercise to Try This Week
Don’t start by trying to fix your bedtime. Start by fixing your day.
Pick one thing you actually want to do for yourself, something small, twenty minutes or less.
Then schedule it earlier in the day, before the evening, even if it means doing it before
everything else is finished.
This matters because the core problem usually isn’t the evening. It’s that the evening is the only
time you’ve been giving yourself anything. If you claim even one small pocket of time for
yourself earlier in the day, the pull to stay up and reclaim the night gets weaker. You’re not
depriving yourself of your only free moment. You already had one.
Small Things That Help
- Set a bedtime alarm, not just a wake-up one. You already have an alarm that tells
you when to get up. Set one that tells you it’s time to start winding down, before you’re
too depleted to listen to it. - Give yourself permission earlier, not later. If you’re waiting until every task is
done to allow yourself to rest, that permission keeps arriving too late. Build in small
breaks during the day instead of saving all your rest for midnight. - Notice the thought “I deserve this.” You do deserve rest. The question is whether
stealing it from tomorrow is actually the rest you’re looking for, or whether it’s costing
you more than it gives. - Lower the bar for “done.” Not everything has to be finished before you allow
yourself to stop. Some tasks can wait until tomorrow without anything falling apart.
The Bottom Line
This isn’t a discipline problem, and it isn’t really about sleep hygiene. It’s about a day that
doesn’t give you enough time that feels like yours, so your body takes it back at night, at a cost
you pay the next morning. The fix isn’t a stricter bedtime. It’s giving yourself something during
the day, so you’re not stealing it from the night.
If your sleep problem looks different, if you struggle to fall or stay asleep even when you go to
bed on time, that’s a different pattern with a different fix. [Read that story here →]
References
- Kroese, F.M., et al. “Bedtime procrastination: introducing a new area of procrastination.” Frontiers in Psychology,
2014. - Simply Psychology. “Revenge Bedtime Procrastination: Why You Stay Up Too Late.” 2026.
- American Association of Sleep Technologists. “Revenge Bedtime Procrastination.” 2025.
- Taheri, S., Lin, L., Austin, D., Young, T., Mignot, E. “Short Sleep Duration Is Associated with Reduced Leptin,
Elevated Ghrelin, and Increased Body Mass Index.” PLOS Medicine,
