Is revenge bedtime procrastination a sign of ADHD?

Go to sleep, or watch another episode of the show you’re binge-watching? ADHD and staying up late often go hand in hand, and a common culprit is procrastination — bedtime procrastination. 

The tendency to delay activities that are boring (in this case sleep) in favor of something interesting (the show) is just part of how the ADHD brain works. It’s bedtime, but you can’t help but watch another episode or two. Next thing you know, it’s really late.

Revenge bedtime procrastination (RBP) is different from other kinds of procrastination because it’s intentional. It happens when your days are so full with work and obligations that there’s no time for you to relax and do things you enjoy. So you choose to “reclaim” a few hours at night for personal time, even though you know you’ll pay for it the next day. 

RBP isn’t insomnia, although they both result in too little sleep. Insomnia is a sleep disorder that makes it hard to fall asleep or stay asleep, even when conditions are ideal and you want to be sleeping. If you have ADHD, you may also have insomnia. The two often co-occur.¹

Signs of RBP

RBP is intentional, so one clear sign is that you’re aware of what you’re doing — purposely giving up sleep to gain personal time. This isn’t the same as being a “night owl” who prefers a late bedtime. Although you may be that, too. 

With RBP:

• The delayed bedtime must result in less sleep that night.

• It can’t be attributed to other factors, like being sick or being in a noisy or bright environment.

• You know it might have negative consequences, but you choose to do it anyway.²

Causes

ADHD doesn’t cause RBP, but it can be a contributing factor. Common symptoms of ADHD can affect how efficiently you spend your time during the day, and how much time you have left over for downtime. 

People with ADHD often need to stay up later to finish what they didn’t get to during the day, according to Understood Expert Ari Tuckman, PsyD, a clinical psychologist specializing in ADHD. “Bedtime simply arrives before they’re ready to call it a night,” says Tuckman. “In revenge procrastination, it’s more intentional, but it comes out of those unintentional causes.”

Prioritizing and thinking about consequences are also common challenges for people with ADHD. So, even though you know that good sleep is essential, choosing to make it a top priority can be difficult. 

Changes in work habits may also play a role. With more work-from-home options, boundaries between work and leisure have blurred. Many people feel perpetually on-the-clock, and struggle to enter an evening routine.

Why people with ADHD are prone to RBP

Many people are so busy that they need to take time away from sleep to have any downtime. But with ADHD, RBP can be a regular habit. This habit is particularly common in women with ADHD, according to Ellen Littman, PhD, a clinical psychologist and expert in gender differences in ADHD.

“It is only at day’s end, after children and partners are asleep, that women with ADHD feel entitled to time for themselves,” she says. “Often, it’s the 11 p.m. to 2 a.m. time slot.” Certain activities, like playing games online, can also help women with ADHD reach a meditative state, and have less anxiety and self-blame, according to Littman.

There are many ways ADHD can contribute to RBP, starting with making it harder to get through tasks throughout the day. It’s typical for people with ADHD to struggle with:

• Managing time

• Staying focused

• Starting and completing tasks

• Remembering information

• Prioritizing tasks

• Getting and staying organized

• Following instructions

Two other ADHD challenges — hyperfocus and time blindness — can also cause problems with getting work done during the day, according to David Fazzari, PhD, a clinical psychologist who specializes in adult ADHD. 

Hyperfocus can make it hard for people to pull away from a task or project and move on to another. Time blindness makes it hard to keep track of time.

“This means that there may be longer stretches of time before someone even realizes that they should switch gears, and then when that does occur, they are less able to do so,” says Fazzari. 

“On top of this, individuals with ADHD have significantly more difficulty considering the future consequences of their present behavior,” he adds. “So, the threat of tomorrow’s exhaustion triggers less anxiety in someone with ADHD.”

Sleep chronotypes

People have natural preferences for when they sleep and wake. These are called sleep chronotypes. Many people with ADHD have a late chronotype (“eveningness”), so they have a tendency to go to sleep late to begin with.³

Preferring a late bedtime isn’t the same as choosing to delay sleep so you can have time for you. But having this chronotype means staying up past midnight fits into your body’s natural sleep rhythms more easily than if you naturally wanted to go to sleep at 10.

Effects of RBP

Sleep deprivation, or getting too little sleep, has short- and long-term effects on your functioning, mood, behavior, and health. You may feel these consequences after just one night of too-little sleep.

When you shorten the amount of sleep you get at night, it can cause:⁴

• Reduced alertness and slow reaction times

• Trouble paying attention 

• Reduced cognitive ability and impaired logical reasoning 

• Mood changes, including irritability

• Anxiety 

• Depression 

• Reduced sex drive 

• Poor judgment 

• Brief daytime sleep periods, called microsleeps 

• Unplanned naps 

• Reduced quality of life 

• Reduced social activity due to tiredness 

Sleep deprivation is linked to many long-term health problems, too. These include:⁵

• Heart disease

• Kidney disease

• High blood pressure

• Diabetes 

• Stroke

• Obesity

• Depression

• Higher risk of injury

How to break the habit

Downtime is important for your mental and physical health, so you don’t want to cut it out entirely. But sleep is equally important. Breaking RBP habits can be difficult. There are steps you can take to better balance time for you and time for sleep.

First, if ADHD symptoms are making you less productive during the day and causing you to lose time, talk to your health care provider about ADHD treatment.

Here are simple steps to try to combat RBP:

Set a time limit. You may want to take three hours at night to make up for all the time you spent on work or other obligations. But see if you can manage with two, or even one. Set an alarm for five minutes before your designated quitting time and put it across the room.

Create a bedtime routine. Structure is great for many of us with ADHD. Create a bedtime routine that begins with stopping your personal-time activities. It can include anything — set up the coffee maker, make a to-do list for tomorrow, do mindfulness exercises, wash up, etc.

Remind yourself of the consequences. You know what they are, but it can help to think about them before taking your downtime. (Try making a list of consequences you’ve experienced.) Picturing what the next day could look like may help you choose an earlier bedtime.

Pick a late night. Instead of drastically cutting back your downtime across the board, try designating one stay-up-late night during the week. Do what you enjoy in smaller doses the other nights. Maybe watch two episodes of your show most nights, and four on your late night.

Create time by setting boundaries. Don’t bring work home with you or check your work email unless you really have to. Don’t work on big home projects during the week (unless you enjoy them). Cut back on outside obligations. And try to create a good division of labor at home.

These strategies may feel like more work, and you may not always feel motivated to do them. That’s fine. It can take time to replace bad habits with better ones.

Summary

When you regularly make the decision to delay sleep in order to get some personal time, you may be engaging in “revenge bedtime procrastination” (RBP). This type of procrastination happens when you have no time to do the things you enjoy without staying up late and giving up sleep. 

RBP is different from regular bedtime procrastination because it’s intentional, but both are common with ADHD. With RBP, you choose to shorten your sleep despite the consequences of being sleep-deprived the next day.

ADHD doesn’t cause RBP, but it can be a contributing factor. For example, ADHD symptoms like trouble with focus, time management, and prioritizing can make it harder to get your work done on time. You may have to work later to finish it up, eating into your downtime. 

Breaking RBP habits can be difficult, but there are small steps you can take to balance out sleep time and personal time.