Good Life Project
Is Sleep Procrastination Messing With Your Health & Mindset? | Vanessa Hill, PhD
20 Apr 2026
Chapter 1: What is bedtime procrastination and why do we struggle with it?
So have you ever found yourself on the couch at 10, 11, 12, 1 a.m. watching videos on how the pyramids were built, even though you know you have to be up in three or four or five hours? Or maybe scrolling on your phone, it's that strange moment where your brain says, you quote, should go to bed, but some other part of you just isn't ready to let the day go.
We call this bedtime procrastination and most of us carry a lot of guilt about it. We feel like we kind of should be falling asleep or that we just lack the willpower to put the phone down or stop watching TV.
But what if the late night scrolling or watching is actually a search for something deeper, like a sense of agency or me time or meaning or identity that you just didn't get during your busy workday? Today we're looking at sleep through a very different lens. We're moving away from the quote sleep hacking performance sport and towards something much more human. And joining me is Vanessa Hill.
She is a sleep scientist and research fellow at CQ University who's dedicated her career to studying why we delay sleep, what it actually does to us when we do it, and how we can actually bridge the gap between our intentions and our behaviors. We drop into why, quote, revenge bedtime procrastination is often a cry for help and autonomy.
We explore the intention behavior gap and why it's hardest to close at night. We really think about a simple pattern interrupt to help you move towards bed without struggle and why being consistent might actually be more important than being perfect with your devices. And we bust a really huge myth about blue light and screens at bedtime. I'm so excited to share this conversation with you.
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Chapter 2: How does revenge bedtime procrastination relate to our daily lives?
I'm Jonathan Fields, and this is Good Life Project. I've been somebody who is fascinated with sleep for a number of years. I've gone through seasons of my life where sleep was great and seasons of my life where sleep was not so great. And as I grow older, also I'm 60, I'm getting curious how age affects sleep.
And also I think you can't be online for more than a hot minute without seeing something about sleep often being blasted at you. And there's a lot of head spinning around it. I'm really interested in where your focus has been now, especially on the research side. So you study sleep and more specifically bedtime procrastination.
For people hearing that phrase for the first time, which I'm guessing is a lot of people, what is it really and why do we care?
I think for a lot of people hearing that phrase, they will feel guilt around bedtime procrastination. They will feel cautious of their bedtime behaviors. They may feel like they're doing something wrong. And this is something that my research has found. And I would love to dive into that. Bedtime procrastination is when you intentionally delay your bedtime.
Chapter 3: What role does blue light play in sleep quality?
And an important caveat is without any external circumstances. So not because your kid has been sick, because your dog is up in the middle of the night, because you're a shift worker and you can't go to bed until 2am. You delay your bedtime because you want to.
There's something intrinsic and internal that makes you say, you know, I know I'm not going to feel as good tomorrow, but my night brain just wants some me time and wants to do something now. And that's what I'm optimising for. So you really optimize for the moment rather than your future self.
Now, bedtime procrastination really started doing the rounds online during the pandemic, actually, in early 2020. And it was called revenge bedtime procrastination. And in the public media, there was this concept that we were getting revenge on our employers or our kids or whatever the thing was that was taking our time and attention during the day.
I mean, that's such an interesting point, though, because it implies that there's like a lack of agency in other parts of life. So maybe like the revenge part of it is, oh, this is something where nobody can stop me from doing this.
Right. And at nighttime, when the house is silent, when everyone has gone to bed, when you're finished with work and you're after dinner, work emails and whatever else it is you're doing, that time is one where you have complete autonomy and you can really dictate your schedule in a way that many people can't in the afternoon or other parts of the evening.
Yeah. And again, you're very intentional about carving out the fact that, you know, this is not about shift work or having to cover or having a sick kid or having something where it's just a circumstance where you really do have to respond to it.
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Chapter 4: Why is it difficult to close the intention-behavior gap at night?
And you may end up being up half the night because you got to take care of something. This is you hitting a certain moment where you're kind of your brain is like, I probably should be going to bed now. And we'll talk about that word should also. What does this look like in real life? Like what are just real life examples of this?
So what we found is that most of the time people are using screens. So you're watching TV or Netflix or whatever it may be. You're using your phone. You might be playing a game. You might be doing crossword. You might be reading a book, but mostly you're going to be using the screen. And you just want some me time.
So people will think that they should go to bed at a certain time because maybe they have a scheduled bedtime. Maybe they need to get up for a certain...
alarm time in the morning whatever it may be and people are just pushing their bedtime beyond that time so before we get into this in a lot more detail i guess the big question in my head is why does this matter i mean what what is the harm being done in just like okay so i want instead of going to bed 11 i'm gonna end up going to bed at two like what's the harm that's being done or what why why is this not an okay thing
Chapter 5: What behavioral strategies can help reduce bedtime procrastination?
To be a scientist is to not give you a definitive answer on this and to say, well, there could be harm and there could not be harm. And E, if there is harm, it is in affecting your sleep schedule, not getting the duration or quality of sleep that your body needs and having an inconsistent sleep schedule, which actually matters quite a lot.
So when I started researching this topic, there was a lot of information in the media. There were some studies that were suggesting that, hey, bedtime procrastination is bad because it affects our sleep. And if we aren't getting enough sleep, whatever that looks like to people, that is bad for their health.
So we're kind of coming in with a lot of assumptions and we said, okay, we're going to do a big review and just have a look at all of the results that exist in the literature, in the scientific literature.
So we did a big analysis of all the studies out there and we did find that there was an association between higher bedtime procrastination, lower sleep quality, lower sleep duration, and increased daytime fatigue. Okay, so if you are procrastinating your bedtime, there's a link with these different sleep outcomes being bad, right? Yeah.
So that could be the case, except there is just so much individual difference in our lives, right? Like in how much sleep we need, in are we going to work the next morning? Is it a weekend? Those types of things where it's really hard to have these blanket statements where you say, hey, bedtime procrastination is bad because maybe it's not all of the time, but perhaps it's not bad for everyone.
And perhaps there's something else going on there and i think that as a scientist you can get this high level data you can say bedtime procrastination is bad but along the way what we discovered was that no one had actually spoken to people and sat down and said hey what are you doing and why are you doing this and so we did that for a study we did an interview based study
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Chapter 6: How can understanding our triggers improve sleep habits?
where we just asked people, hey, what's going on? Tell me about your sleep routine to actually figure out what people were doing. And this is one of my favorite studies that I have led in my academic career because what we discovered was that people had this psychological need for me time.
And up until that point, a lot of the literature had kind of dismissed that there was any need or driver behind this behavior and that it was just something that should be stopped. But when people say, I have no autonomy, I need me time, I like to pursue interests, and this is the only time that I have in the day to explore that part of my identity. Or I want to socialize with my friends.
And so every Wednesday night, every Friday night, every Saturday night, I stay up half my bedtime to do that. There's this meaning and need that comes out of those conversations that to that point had really been missed.
I mean, that's so interesting, right? Because I think the normal association is to say, well, you just keep blowing past your bedtime. You know you should be going to bed early, but it's a couple hours later, and we start to moralize this decision. We start to sort of like judge, and we start to self-shame also.
But what you're saying here, if I'm getting this right, is that bedtime procrastination can, for some, really be about trying to meet a need that the rest of the day just isn't meeting.
And then it becomes really complicated as a scientist and someone who cares about sleep health and wants people to have the best possible sleep health for them. Because you're like, okay, this behavior isn't great for some people, but they also need it to fulfill different psychological needs that they have.
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Chapter 7: What are the impacts of screen time on sleep health?
So how can we meet them in the middle in a way? How can we...
ensure that they are getting the sleep that they need, that they're not tired during the day, because that can have all kinds of flow-on effects for your mood and your relationships and not showing up to work and not being productive and calling in sick and all of these consequences in everything from the workplace and the economy to your personal life.
So how can we help people have good sleep health but also be fulfilled humans?
Yeah. Did you see patterns when you were doing this research in terms of like, okay, so like maybe there are needs that are just not being met or desires not being met during the day. And here's this little window right before I go to bed where I get to control it. Were there common patterns or common unmet needs that you saw?
One of the interesting ones that came up was niche interest. I thought this was really interesting because a lot of people were watching YouTube videos before they went to bed. I have a YouTube channel as well. And so I thought that was really funny because I had never before considered that the time of day when people were watching my YouTube videos.
And it might actually be when they're up in the middle of the night or just before they're going to bed. So a lot of people would say things like, you know, It was 10 o'clock and I just started wondering, how are the pyramids made?
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Chapter 8: What practical steps can we take to improve our sleep routines?
And then I started watching videos on ancient Egypt and then all of a sudden it was 2am. So people were talking about that. Some people were talking about how they, for example, exist in a society where they can't express all parts of their identity. And then they can watch videos, join online communities in the late hours of the night to... I thought that was really interesting.
This behavior of procrastinating your bedtime, we think, may be more common in people who are new parents, in people who have ADHD, in people who... are new workers, so who have started new careers, where they may not have as much autonomy as people who may be middle-late career.
So it's really interesting to consider the populations and the people who may be more likely to procrastinate going to bed.
Yeah, I mean, so interesting, right? Because all those populations you just identified, there are a lot of them where if you ask them some version of the question, like, do you have enough me time in your life? Probably a lot of them would answer no.
So then it would make sense that at that time before they go to bed, it's like, I've got to sneak this in because I'm losing myself and my sense of identity.
Yeah.
The way that they spend that time, though, I mean, so you just shared watching YouTube videos is one particular way. So maybe it's you have a fascination or an interest or a curiosity and you're like, okay, so this is a time I get to go and play with it, explore. The community thing is really interesting to me also. Take me more into that.
In the study we did, which was the interview-based study, when we spoke to people, there was one person who we spoke to who I identified as queer. And they said that in my job every day, I can't really tell people about this. I feel like I can't talk to people about this, but I just need a space where I can be part of my community.
And whatever the need or community or interest is, often our days are so busy, are so packed with work and caregiving and appointments and all of the other things that we need to do. This time before bed or when perhaps we should be in bed, whatever should means, is the time that people have to actually explore that.
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