Deliberate Bedtime Procrastination Can Have Surprising Recovery Effects

Abstract

As a society that romanticizes busyness and working long hours, we do not have sufficient time to get enough sleep and engage in leisure activities which help us detach psychologically from work. In this paper, we explore the possibility that people can deliberately procrastinate their bedtimes to create more time for themselves. We propose that this can potentially increase the experience of psychological detachment, leading to positive outcomes despite a reduction in sleep. In an archival study (Study 1), we apply modern topic modelling techniques to Twitter data to demonstrate that deliberate bedtime procrastination is a prevalent phenomenon which differs from traditional conceptualizations of mindless bedtime procrastination. We then developed a theoretical model to examine possible benefits associated with deliberate bedtime procrastination and tested it with an experience sampling study (Study 2). Controlling for objective sleep hours, results suggest that deliberate bedtime procrastination increases the experience of psychological detachment and reduces cyberloafing. Combined, our results extend the literatures on sleep and work recovery by providing empirical evidence for the existence of deliberate forms of bedtime procrastination and showing that sleeping less does not always lead to negative outcomes if it means that people can create a temporal barrier between their work and personal time.