The real impact of staying up late

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By Katherine Bruce

In 2023, a group of researchers in Pakistan published a study exploring the link between revenge bedtime procrastination and academic performance in medical students.

Here’s a quick summary of what the researchers did, what they found, and – most importantly! – what it might tell us about how to stop bedtime procrastination.

The big idea

Lots of us will be all-too familiar with the concept and experience of revenge bedtime procrastination. It’s a behaviour that sees people deliberately delaying sleep in order to reclaim personal time after long, demanding days. And while it might feel like a guilty pleasure or well-earned treat, it often means missing out on much-needed sleep.

Medical students, with their intense schedules, heavy workloads, exam pressures and, well, just being students, could be likely candidates for revenge bedtime procrastination. But if you keep going to bed late, can you still do well academically?

That’s exactly what the researchers wanted to explore. And, rather than just focusing on grades, they looked more broadly at academic performance, including engagement, attention, and participation.

The research

The researchers carried out the online study between February and May 2023 with a diverse group of 239 undergraduate medical students from a range of disciplines.

To ensure the results were specifically related to bedtime procrastination, they excluded any students who were taking sleep medication or had diagnosed sleep disorders.

Participants completed three sets of questions:

Basic demographic info: Age, degree, year of study etc.

Bedtime habits: Using the 10-item Bedtime Procrastination Scale (BPS).

Academic performance: Using the Academic Performance Scale (APS). This is an eight-item scale assessing academic behaviours such as attention, participation, and perceived performance, rather than exam scores alone.

The researchers then analysed the results to explore the relationship between bedtime procrastination and academic achievement.

The results

It probably won't come as any surprise that when the researchers looked at the data, there was a clear pattern:

Students who struggled to disengage from activities at night, felt distracted in the evenings, and regularly went to bed later than intended (in other words, the revenge bedtime procrastinators!) were more likely to experience worse academic outcomes.

On the other hand, students who were more successful academically were more likely to:

• Keep a regular bedtime
• Go to bed early when they needed to get up early
• Turn off the lights on time
• Stop activities at bedtime without difficulty

What the researchers say:

In their conclusion, the authors said...

“By sacrificing sleep, individuals experience insufficient rest, leading to daytime fatigue that can impair cognitive functions crucial for effective learning and academic success, such as attention, memory, and information processing. Chronic sleep deprivation resulting from bedtime procrastination can also increase stress levels and decrease overall well-being, further hindering academic performance.”

Using the research to stop bedtime procrastination

If you’re a revenge bedtime procrastinator (or any other kind of bedtime procrastinator!) here are some of the tips we can glean from the study:

Notice the impact of tiredness: This study suggests that the tiredness caused by constantly going to bed late can affect your ability to focus, engage and perform. Throughout the day, start paying attention to all the times sleep deprivation might be affecting you.

Focus on routine: Students with regular bedtimes performed better. Rather than relying on motivation, focus on building a habit you can stick to.  

Think about your evenings: The strongest academic performers were those who could disengage from activities at bedtime. But we all know that some activities are easier to stop than others, particularly in a 24/7 digital world. Do you need to be more selective in what you’re watching/doing in the evenings?

Find out more

This study was published in the Global Journal of Medical Pharmaceutical and Biomedical Update. Here’s the full citation:

Azwar M, Shafqat A, Fatima M, Ijaz F, Naseem R, Aftab RK. Correlation of Revenge Bedtime Procrastination with Academic Performance in Undergraduate Students of Medical Sciences: An Online Cross-sectional Study. Glob J Med Pharm Biomed Update. 2024;19:4. doi: 10.25259/GJMPBU_92_2023