Revenge bedtime procrastination is when over-stretched workers delay lights out to sneak in some precious personal time

NT Features

China’s notorious ‘996 schedule’ — working from nine in the morning to nine in the evening, six days a week has taken over the lives of many. It has depressed and deprived everybody under the schedule of their personal lives. After their shifts, which often involve overtime, there is only a small space for eating, showering and going to bed leading to people sacrificing their sleep to take some personal time. Staying up surfing the internet, reading the news and watching online videos until well after midnight turns into a routine for many.

This is what the Chinese have called ‘baofuxing aoye’ – or ‘revenge bedtime procrastination’. The phrase, which could also be translated as ‘retaliatory staying up late,’ spread rapidly on twitter in June after a post by journalist Daphne J Lee. She described the phenomenon as when “people who don’t have much control over their daytime life refuse to sleep early in order to regain some sense of freedom during late-night hours”.

Her post clearly struck in the minds of many. In a reply ‘liked’ more than 4,500 times, Twitter user Kenneth Kwok tweeted: “Typical 8 to 8 in office, (by the time I) arrive home after dinner and shower it’s 10 p.m., probably won’t just go to sleep and repeat the same routine. A few hours of ‘own time’ is necessary to survive.”

It’s not clear exactly where this term came from. The earliest mention this reporter found was in a blog post dated November 2018, although its origins likely predate this. The post’s author – a man from Guangdong province – wrote that during the workday he “belonged to someone else,” and that he could only “find himself” when he got home and could lie down. This revenge bedtime procrastination was sad, he wrote, because his health suffered, but it was also “great” because he got a bit of freedom.

The popularity of the phrase might be restricted to China, but the phenomenon it tries to explain is likely widespread, with over-stretched workers all over the world procrastinating their bedtime to put their hands on some precious personal time – even though they know it’s not good for them.

Keeping long hours at work aside, another portion of the problem is the modern working pattern where people find it hard to draw boundaries between work and home. Emails and instant messaging allows employers to be in touch all day and night. This can make a person feel more like they are always at work because work can call on them anytime.

Experts have been consistently warning that insufficient sleep is an unheeded global public-health epidemic. The 2019 Phillips Global Sleep Survey, which received more than 11,000 responses from 12 countries, showed that 62% of adults worldwide feel they don’t get enough sleep, averaging 6.8 hours on a weeknight compared to the recommended amount of eight hours. People cited various reasons for this shortfall, including stress and their sleeping environment, but 37% blamed their hectic work or school schedule.

Even though people might resent work squeezing in their leisure time, reducing their sleep schedule to a mere few hours is probably not the best ‘retaliation’. Sleep deprivation, especially long term, can lead to a host of harmful effects, both mental and physical. In Matthew Walker’s book Why We Sleep: Unlocking the Power of Sleep and Dreams, the neuroscientist is blunt: “The shorter your sleep, the shorter your life span.”

Psychology has an explanation to why people would choose to set out a leisure time even at the expense of sleep. A growing structure of evidence points to the importance of time away from work pressure, failure to detach leading to stress, reduced wellbeing and burnout. One of the most significant parts of recovery from work is sleep. However, sleep is also affected by how well we detach. It is important to have a downtime when we can be mentally distanced from work, which is a justifiable explanation to why people are willing to sacrifice sleep for post-work leisure.

The real solution to this problem is to ensure that individuals are allowed time to engage in activities that provide the required detachment. However, this is often not something employees can achieve themselves. The tackling of the problem would not only benefit the workers but also would help ensure a healthy, efficient workplace. Employees must talk to their colleagues and collectively approach their boss, with evidence, if they require a genuine change. But many simply choose to love their job and embrace their stolen leisure time.

The pandemic has preceded and companies in many nations have implemented work-from-home laws. This has two fragments &ndas