Sleep procrastination- Why and how you should stop it!

By Prathyusha Vedula

All of us, in one way or the other, procrastinate jobs or tasks. This conscious procrastination of responsibilities will lead to a mini-panic stroke where we usually end up deciding to do all of it in the night. This kind of situation where you avoid or delay your sleep to do some other tasks is called sleep procrastination.

Why do we sleep procrastinate?

Let’s start off from the basic grass root level hypothesis. Let us take the example of a student who has certain jobs to finish in a day.

1. He/she procrastinates work during the day, which leads him to procrastinate his/her sleep that night.

2. He/she works the entire day and still tends to work in the night to finish it in one go, thereby procrastinating sleep.

In most of the cases, people tend to be more satisfied or productive with work when they postpone their sleep to do it. There doesn’t seem much satisfaction when they spend the same amount of time to do it during the day.

Not to shun away advantageous reasons as to why people like sleep procrastinating to work, many of them feel they are more efficient, undisturbed, focussed, and determined at that point in time.

While one category of people works procrastinating sleep, another equal set of people procrastinate unintentionally. Going to bed on time, gazing at the mobile or laptop screens is the most observed reason for sleep procrastination.

Sleep procrastinating not only disturbs your sleep time but also shifts your sleep-wakeup cycle to be delayed by several hours. This shift is said to have a lot of ill effects on health and mental conditions.

Since now we know why we usually sleep procrastinate, let’s know how we can stop doing the same.

How to stop sleep procrastination?

1. Prepare yourself to sleep

Sleep is a very tender moment that gets easily swayed away by any disturbing action.

In order to prepare yourself to sleep, take a warm water bath, get dressed in pleasant light-colored clothes, listen to some light music, and drive into a sound sleep.

2. Avoid foods that harm the sleep process

The foods you eat for dinner or shortly before bed can prevent you from getting a sound sleep. In order to not let this happen, avoid foods and beverages like green tea, coffee, cheese, dark chocolate, etc.

 3. Keep your gadgets away from the reach

It is a human tendency that we pick up our mobile and decide to use it for 10 min or so to check on some updates and get back to sleep. But this gets carried away for 20 min, 30 min and forever, thereby activating yourself from sleep.

So, keep your mobiles and laptops away from the reach so that you won’t go and pick them up. This also helps you to get down from your bed when your alarm goes on. This also helps you to wake up on time.

4. Schedule your work during the day, avoiding sleep procrastination

Since procrastinating during the day leads to sleep procrastination at night, do not give procrastination a chance.

Divide the bulk work and schedule by organizing a part of it for a defined set of days. Give yourselves small rewards if you lack motivation.

This ensures your work to be completed on time, avoids panic, stress, and most importantly does not give any chance for you to procrastinate.

5. Give your sleep what it needs

Sleep is not everybody’s pal. For a few blessed ones, it comes to them in a jiffy. If you’re that person is habituated to sleep in a peaceful place, don’t compromise on it. Sleeping in a dark, cool, and comfortable place helps you have a good sleep.