Planning to fix your bedtime procrastination?

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By Katherine Bruce

Could a bedtime plan help you go to bed on time? Researchers in Singapore have been finding out.

How often have you spent the day promising yourself an early night, only to find yourself going to bed late yet again? Frustrating, isn’t it? Now, new research into bedtime procrastination by Zhenghao Pu and team at the National University of Singapore, suggests that at least some of the issue might be rooted in a simple lack of planning.

The research

For this fascinating bedtime procrastination study, the researchers explored the relationship between bedtime planning, procrastination, and sleep behaviour. They asked 119 university students to wear a sleep tracker and complete a daily diary about their bedtime habits over four weeks. They wanted to find out:

1. Whether the students made any kind of bedtime plan.
2. Whether they stuck to it.
3. Whether the plan affected how much sleep they got.

The students also completed a bedtime procrastination questionnaire (using the well-established bedtime procrastination scale). The higher the student's score, the more likely they were to be a bedtime procrastinator.

Results

After the experiment, Zhenghao Pu and team were ready to analyse the results. Here’s a quick summary of what they found:

1. Students rarely had a bedtime plan.
2. Even when they did, they frequently overshot it by around 46 minutes.
3. Those with a higher score on the bedtime procrastination scale overran more often and for longer. 
4. Having a bedtime plan was associated with longer total sleep time.
5. The most common reasons for going to bed later than planned were studying/working and e-leisure.
   

What the researchers say

“While having a bedtime plan does not guarantee that this plan will be followed, it might be a first step towards a conscious strategy to manage night-time routines and regulate one's procrastination tendencies."

Read the full study

Zhenghao Pu and colleague’s paper was called ‘Failing to plan: Bedtime planning, bedtime procrastination, and objective sleep in university students’. You can read the full study here.

Using the research

This research was carried out with a specific population: students in Singapore. But even if you’re not at university, there are still some practical tips we can take from the results:

Increase self-awareness: Do you have a bedtime plan, or are you leaving it all down willpower?

Make a list: For the students, going to bed later than planned was often due to studying/working and, what the researchers call, e-leisure. What would be on your list?

Plan: Simply having a bedtime plan can improve your chances of going to bed on time.