I found the “revenge bedtime procrastination” concept to be very empowering. It put a name to a thing I was doing, and frustrated by, and thus let me see it more clearly.
For me, there’s a big difference between an intentional decision to stay up late doing something valuable (which could be recreational) and RBP. RBP is a black hole that captures my attention and wastes my time without rejuvenating me.
Knowing the RBP concept empowers me to be intentional with my evening hours. Sometimes I go to bed early, sometimes I stay up and play, but I never want to lose that time to unintentional mindlessness.
It works for me to manage my phone use throughout the day too. I give myself a rule that any task on my phone has to be intentional. "I am checking for an email", "I am checking my bank balance", "I am organizing a meet with a friend". Even recreation time on the phone has to be intentional, "I am reading this specific article on my phone".
Otherwise you end up caught on the seemingly endless but shallow stream of content the internet provides through feed sites and apps. If I set the rule of being intentional it's really obvious when I'm not being intentional, and should put the phone down.
I also make a habit of closing the phone or turning off my computer before I actually feel comfortable doing so. The insidious part of feed procrastination is that you're never satisfied, so you can't find a comfortable "End point", you just have to get into the habit of shutting it down mid procrastinating.
How does that work with things that aren't procrastination, like doing the dishes or folding laundry? Because I want to stop the whole time (though I've developed hacks to help me get them done, regardless), but training myself to stop doing things I want to be doing seems like it would make it easier for my brain to stop doing things I don't want to do!
I guess it's like training an exit routine that I can quickly enact in those fleeting moments of self-awareness while scrolling, it's still intentional but it has to be quick and decisive or you'll just go back to procrastinating. I wouldn't ever do it while being productive because if I became self-aware of being productive, I'd just think "Nice one!"
If you'll indulge me for a tangent, if you have heard of lucid dreaming you may have heard of strategies people use to help them recognize a lucid dream. You essentially train habits, like checking your watch or reading things twice, that will help you notice inconsistencies in the dream that wouldn't exist in real life. This will clue you in to the fact that it's a dream.
Deep procrastination is kind of like being in a dream, you're zoned out and you just ebb through it mindlessly. You can train yourself some cues, mental escape hatches, that jog you into self-awareness long enough to enact your escape routine (turn off the device, get up off the chair etc)
For people who are caught in an endless loop of television shows they've seen many times before, I encourage those people to merely set an intention of watching something new before opening Netflix.
I don't think that anyone "needs," help with this. Rather, I think this is needlessly judgemental: people have been getting stuck in ruts since the dawn of routine life.
This might sound too obvious to say, but set an alarm for your bedtime and 30 mins before (to start your wind down).
It will either get you in the habit of going to sleep at a "planned" time, or will at least make you aware of your procrastination from that point on, which can help you self-evaluate the problem.
Ed Zitron just wrote about this, and I agree with him:
The whole conversation around “revenge bedtime procrastination” is a frustrating example - it is the idea that we are staying up late doing things we want to do instead of going to bed, which is otherwise known as “being a person.” I’ve seen several different articles about it, going into depths about “the why” of people staying awake doing stuff before bed. The answer is probably that they’re intellectually stimulated by the thing they’re doing and like doing it and are more interested in the thing than going to sleep. Big deal! But it’s now yet another codified entity for people to chew over and ask themselves about - am I “revenge bedtime procrastinating?” A take that seems profound and thoughtful, but is laser-focused on being shared by people saying “hey, I also do stuff instead of going to bed!” Entire articles now exist of people talking about why they stay awake instead of sleeping, as if that’s new, or thoughtful. And now people have a new term for something that didn’t need a term, and can bring intellectualism to “I stayed up until 1am playing Slay The Spire.”
With all due respect, this is nonsense written by someone who doesn't deal with this problem.
This argument comes from people seeing movement from A to B, and assuming all movement from A to B is identical. This particular pattern is that they're motivated to move toward B (and the fact they started at A is incidental), and can't understand that other people can move from A to B because they're motivated to move away from A (and ending up at B is irrelevant). For an extreme example: A Saudi man and a Saudi woman both moving to Norway. The man might be motivated to move towards a country with snow where he can ski, while the woman is motivated to move away from somewhere where she has limited rights.
I understand (and sometimes fall prey to) the stereotypical Civilization "one more turn" phenomenon, and have e.g. booked holidays and pulled an all-nighter to power through a new Warcraft expansion or some such nonsense — a clear case of "movement toward". But I also have anxiety issues, and this sort of "movement away from" procrastination is very much part of how it manifests itself. The two are distinct things that feel very, very different internally.
Ultimately, I don't actually care what it is that I'm doing, scrolling through reddit or playing a game, or even tidying up the house. I might even be exhausted and struggling to stay awake — the point is I don't want to go to bed, because high anxiety usually triggers my brain going into uncomfortable thoughts when I go to bed, and because going to bed puts me that much closer to the next day's anxieties and stresses.
A different (and ultimately unhealthy) sort of "movement toward" is the choice to not go to bed as an act of self determination by way of rebellion. Sort of "I don't feel in control so I exercise control on the one thing I feel I can, consequences be damned". The important part isn't the thing you're doing, it's that you're choosing to do it. AIUI, self-harm works along these same lines.
In short: please don't patronise people struggling with real problems by telling them they're just over-intellectualising things.
This is really well stated and resonates with me deeply.
The “doing things I don’t even want to do” aspect of this is what also separates this from “just staying up late”.
For me, I’ve had some vague notion of trying to build a time buffer between today and tomorrow. Something to separate today’s stress from tomorrow’s stress.
Regardless of the people struggling with actual problems, most people are probably doing exactly what the original author says.
At least, I do both.
I can on one hand try to stay awake because I’m absolutely convinced I’ll die in my sleep. Or on the other hand (most days when my anxiety has not flared to ridiculous levels) it’s just the first time during the day that I have some time that is truly to myself, so I can read and comment without interruption.
> A different (and ultimately unhealthy) sort of "movement toward" is the choice to not go to bed as an act of self determination by way of rebellion.
This is actually what I've been doing pretty much my whole adult life. Revenge Bedtime Procrastination gives it a name and a framework to express the problem and (maybe) face it - which is something I found really exciting in the linked article (before the political angle was shoehorned in).
This entire comment reads worse than if he were actually patronising someone.
You are reverse-patronising someone for supposedly patronising you. Ironic.
Both comments have merit and are both problems that exist based off the original problem of not wanting to finish the day/fun thing/event that is better than the next.
You need to grow up and stop playing a victim. People are allowed to realise what something is, even if it isn't the same realisation you came up with.... and yes. "I have this problem" and I know this problem very well, in case you want to cry out that I do not.
With no due respect, Ed Zitron nailed this. Only a generation as devoid of meaning in their life as our current one could turn watching Netflix before bed into some idea that they're part of the cultural zeitgiest reaching out for collective labor action.
Bingo. Life devoid of meaning because we spend most of it working, and the work doesn't have much meaning or do much for many people other than allow them to survive... to work another day. Sure, we could pretend that the people who don't find meaningful work are just not as good as those that are able to find meaningful work. Or we could decide that life isn't about work. Which does indeed begin to look like collective action is called for.
> it is the idea that we are staying up late doing things we want to do instead of going to bed, which is otherwise known as “being a person.”
When you are hungry, you get angry more easily. This is also known as "being a person". But knowing this fact helps you realize when you are only angry because you're hungry, which can help you avoid conflicts with friends/family.
Understanding the science behind "being a person" is valuable in improving your daily life. Understanding why people revenge bedtime procrastinate can help people avoid doing so.
> The answer is probably that they’re intellectually stimulated by the thing they’re doing and like doing it and are more interested in the thing than going to sleep.
This isn't the answer. There's a strong correlation between hours worked / stress level and likelihood of staying up too late. This is why "revenge" bedtime procrastinate is such a fantastic description. You're getting revenge on your workaholic attitude. You spent too much time doing things you didn't want to do, so you're protesting by staying up late doing things you do want to do.
> And now people have a new term for something that didn’t need a term, and can bring intellectualism to “I stayed up until 1am playing Slay The Spire.”
Just because you don't experience something yourself and you don't understand it doesn't mean it doesn't exist.
Interesting. Someone should start a scientific inquiry into human mental state and behavior. HN engineer types would love it. We could call it "brainology".
More seriously:
> staying up late doing things you do want to do.
That's not revenge procrastination.
Revenge procrastination, and why it's bad, is "staying up late doing things you know isn't good for you, out of spite and a desperate need for a sense that you are in control of your time"
>Revenge procrastination, and why it's bad, is "staying up late doing things you know isn't good for you, out of spite and a desperate need for a sense that you are in control of your time"
OK, I just wanted to quote this so that people would read it again, because this is what they need to understand about revenge bedtime procrastination.
* "I am finally home from work, I'll play Civ for 3 hours till 3AM because I can finally do it" -- NOT it
* "I am finally home from work, I'll stay on HN and tire myself out arguing with people, not enjoying it a single bit, while being aware of the harm I am doing to myself and not enjoying it a single bit, just so that I have a feeling that this time is mine" -- yup.
To paraphrase: you only know something when you can freely destroy it. You can take a sledgehammer to your car if you paid it off. You can smash your phone.
You wouldn't do this normally, because you know which things are yours.
But things get interesting when it comes to yourself.
When it starts feeling like you don't have any time for yourself, people start killing time just to feel that it's theirs.
If it gets too bad, we'll get into active self-harm territory. In a way, that, too, is making sure you're in control of at least your body.
The problem here is what "want" means. When we want an heroin dose because we are craving it, but we also want to stop because it's fucking with us, what do you want?
Is "want" related to your long term goals, or short term desires?
>bring intellectualism to “I stayed up until 1am playing Slay The Spire.”
The point is that it isn't doing something fun like playing a game you enjoy, which we can all understand as being a sort of trade off, its where instead of going to bed you do sort of.. mindless, pointless, unpleasant things like refresh the same feed(reddit, HN, what have you) or browse mindlessly and for much longer than anticipated.
Maybe you just haven't experienced it? I have. It is very different from times where I make decisions that leave me worse off in the future.. when I ask myself "why did I do that?" for drinking or staying out late I usually have an answer. For another set of behaviors, where the term 'revenge bedtime procrastination' feels like a shockingly apt description, I have no answer.
Maybe you can better understand this as people finding words for their feelings.
I agree. It's stimulation, but what the article talks about is relentless scrolling rather than anything intellectual. When I'm intellectually stimulated by something I feel great afterwards, and even if I'm tired the next morning I feel like it was worth it. When I find myself having gone into a scrolling trance for 45 minutes when it feels like 15 should have passed, I feel rubbish.
maybe "intellectually stimulated" is poor phrasing.
But I think if you were to poll somebody staying up past their bedtime, they would say that they prefer their current activity to sleep in the moment. I.e. that they like doing it. Not to get too far afield, but how much evidence is there that gaming or reading or scrolling social media or whatever activities supposedly constitute "revenge bedtime procrastination" actually meet some criteria of addiction?
You clearly don't experience this phenomenon. I'm jealous! But no, the whole problem is that I'm staying up late scrolling my phone even though sleep would be much more satisfying. And I can tell you that, in the moment! It's just hard to actually put my phone down and go to sleep.
I experience this phenomenon. I have made poor sleep hygiene decisions often in my life. What I'd dispute is that I actually prefer sleep in that moment. Maybe I'd prefer to be asleep. But when I'm on Twitter past midnight, generally I am conscious of the fact that I'm choosing to be reckless and have some fun instead of trying to fall asleep.
Revenge bedtime procrastinators are aware of that too. But in that moment, the recklessness overrides your better judgment. So how can you say when you "choose" to be reckless, you are not indulging in the same akrasia that addicts do?
No, most times that's not true for me. I often even consciously think "ugh, I'm exhausted, why aren't I asleep right now" and yet still feel "stuck"—sometimes for hours more! I'll even finish what I was doing—scrolling HN, for example—and then cast about desperately for some new distraction, even though I know that what I want to do most, & will feel best, is going to sleep.
I think you overestimate people's ability to make a decision that they themselves would consider preferable. If you ask someone engaged in destructive behavior whether they would prefer to continue, I think most would say no.
Maybe more people are staying up past what is healthy as part of the greater breakdown in work-life balance as part of the pandemic. Also see the flood of articles about burnout. The pandemic is a very real material change, with very real material effects on labor, see the great resignation. So revenge bedtime procrastination is not just a media-invented bugbear, but quite possibly part of a very real change that has occurred over the past two years.
I feel the problem is more in that we are forced to work N hours per day, when realistically, we are not getting any more stuff DONE than if we were working N/2 hours per day. Unnecessary meetings and other bad practices eat up not only our time, but our ONLY time.
We only have one life. WHY are we forced to use 30-50% of our lives to be able to ”enjoy” the rest?
I want to agree, but I feel the context of our human history is missing here. If you go back a mere 150 years, 50% of us were farmers[1] who spent most of our time (winter excluded) being "forced" to subsist.
If I understand the thrust of your argument, though, I think what you're saying is that we have such an abundance of productive capability today that it's possible for most of us not to have to work for subsistence any more, if only the "leisure time" were more evenly distributed? In other words, could your question be rephrased as, "Why is enjoyment of one's time unevenly distributed in a modern high-efficiency economy?"
Field cotton plantation slaves worked 12-16 hour days six days per week. Independent yeoman farmers worked less but there are fewer records so it is harder to make statistical arguments about how much the typical yeoman farmer worked.
There are certain types of farm chores that must be done every day (like milking dairy animals) and cleaning out stalls. Others are more seasonal like weeding and the level of work is very different depending on climate. Another thing to consider is that firewood, charcoal, and dried manure are the fuel sources which are all labor intensive to gather.
So, workdays of sunup to sundown aren't abnormal but there are lots of different jobs to do on a homestead that are on different timetables. It's not the regimented kind of work you would see in a factory or on a commercial plantation. Winter is also a lot of work when you have animals, actually more work because they are just sitting in a building eating and shitting the entire season. Cleaning out shit in the winter is a deeply unpleasant chore. Some kinds of animals are culled for winter but no matter what you are still taking care of at least some of them.
Also it wasn't like winter was free time, but used to make the tools and repair them. Often in poorly lit and cramped indoors. With not so productive tools. Making textiles for clothes was lot of work.
> 50% of us were farmers[1] who spent most of our time (winter excluded) being "forced" to subsist.
Being a hunter-gatherer is the way to go!
"Hunter-gatherers do have to work for a living, and they occasionally encounter periods of want when their efforts yield little, but on the whole it would seem that even the hardest possible life for a hunter-gatherer compares favorably to the most leisured life one can expect in the world’s most wealthy industrialized societies."
> WHY are we forced to use 30-50% of our lives to be able to ”enjoy” the rest?
Never in the history of the world have people had to work fewer hours per week. Something's telling me that we are not any happier than previous generations. We are definitely going to keep reducing the work hours further, and perhaps we will in fact reach the point of no work at all - but will we be happier than today? Just look at all the people who retire and decline quickly.
There's something about work that's natural to the concept of human race, and I, for one, would continue to work even if I didn't have to. But - and that's a big but - I enjoy my work. It allows me to use my brain and express myself in ways that I never would be able to without the support of my team and my company. It multiplies my ability to make an impact on others and to see a meaning in waking up every morning.
This is not going to be a popular opinion, but everyone here has the ability to find themselves in a position of fulfilling work. In my case, it took 20 years of hard work, of which the first year was awful and it gradually got better, leading to where I am today. I don't think I possess any special qualities, and I certainly didn't come from money or any type of privilege (I wasn't even born in the US). But I was willing to work my ass off, and it all paid off.
Assuming you come from a similar background as mine, you cannot escape work. Think of it as a prison sentence of anywhere from 1-20 years. You're in jail now, and you can't get out of it - what do you do? Sit in a corner and feel sorry for yourself, or try to have meaningful connections with your jail mates, exercise your body, read books, learn something new every day. I know which way I would go.
Inequality is at the very core of how the universe operates. We all have different genes, and some of us are stronger, taller, cuter, and/or healthier than others. Some of us are dealt good cards and some are dealt bad ones. Heck, some of us are born on Earth, and there might be other species born on another planet, dealing with a very different climate other circumstances - it's highly unlikely that there's another carbon copy of our planet.
Life is different for everyone, and if you spend your life looking at someone who has to work less, you're going to miss the essence of this universe. From what you wrote, your life will have a heavy dose of work associated with it, and that makes it similar to mine. It's ok, there's a lot of pride, joy and fun to be had. It all starts with realizing that it's about living your best life and not someone else's.
> Never in the history of the world have people had to work fewer hours per week
This is false, medieval workers used to work less than we do[0]. We work less than 1800s laborers, but their life conditions was such an aberration that it gave rise to the socialist movement, mass strikes and bloody revolution attempts, which in turn forced governments and capitalists to reduce the average labor time.
That's a fair comment. In my mind, I have been focusing on the recent history, whereas technically if you go back to the beginning of human civilization, you could argue that people never clocked in and out. But they also had to do every little thing themselves rather than pay someone. Something's wrong with your roof|clothes|body|[anything]? You fix it all by yourself (and God help you if you don't know how to). Does fixing those things count as work? One way or another, we do have to take into account that free time means something different today than way back when.
> socialist movement, mass strikes and bloody revolution attempts, which in turn forced governments and capitalists to reduce the average labor time
The industrial capitalists also discovered that a 40-hour week increased weekly factory output.
Henry Ford instituted a 40 hour week (down from 48) to simultaneously improve productivity and increase the demand for transportation (to food, shopping, and leisure locations.)
He also raised wages in the hopes that workers would buy more cars and spend more to stimulate the economy - and demand for cars.
I think I did. That person was dealt bad cards (assuming they are sufficiently motivated and getting the most out of their set of circumstances), and their mission in life now is to overcome whatever challenges are currently preventing them from having a higher paying job (of which there are plenty).
I see this sentiment posted again and again. Maybe it's correct, but I'm skeptical.
You're always free to consult, plenty of people work 10-20 hours a week and make more money. But I think, for most people, they would earn less. They're not as productive as they think they are. And sure there are absolutely a lot of meetings that could be "look at the Wiki I updated" emails or Slack messages, but a lot of meetings are necessary for the functioning of the business, not just your individual productivity.
I spent a big portion of my career doing this and it's often not as simple as thinking you can cut your hours in half and now you're free to do whatever for the rest of the time.
For example if you did 20 hours a week, that's 80 hours a month at $200 / hour ends up being $192,000 a year. That's a really competitive and great wage but you'll find it unlikely to be able to work only those hours you want without constraint.
You might want to work 10 hours on Monday and Tuesday and take every other day off, but how are you going to get new business? Maybe start writing hundreds of blog posts and making videos, maybe start a podcast and make some courses or write a book. Before you know it you're working 240 hours a week all-in and feeling guilty if you try to peel back the hours because there's no paid time off when you work for yourself unless you're in the top 1% where you're wildly successful and make huge amounts of money for multiple years to the point where you have enough fuck you money to work on anything you want on your own terms for the rest of your life and drop everyone who requests otherwise.
Plus beyond that, a lot of contracts will expect a drip of input and output, not a massive amount of work quickly and then do nothing for weeks. A ton of my 10 hour a week contracts were doing something small every day, or at least most days and generally being available to at least respond to an email within a reasonable amount of time (a day, but ideally within a few hours). This isn't true freedom. It's freedom in the sense that you can decide which contracts you take on but you won't last doing contract work if you make a habit of letting your clients down.
I am aware of this, I consulted full-time for 4 or 5 years and it all but paid for my first house. I was merely responding to the very prevalent - and likely incorrect in most cases - sentiment that being "stuck at work" for 30-50% of your time is what's actually preventing you from getting stuff done.
We must be living in very different universes, because in my country full-time consulting pays off a house in maybe 20 years. Most people never get a second one.
Unnecessary is very subjective. Something unnecessary for one team member may be crucial to another. One might say that the cost of specialization and focus is a growing amount of time not spent on one's area of specialization and focus.
Communication overhead increases as the number of people increases. Due to combinatorial explosion, the number of different communication channels increases rapidly with the number of people.[3] Everyone working on the same task needs to keep in sync, so as more people are added they spend more time trying to find out what everyone else is doing.
I don’t ”just work here”; I could and often do skip extra meetings, but sometimes it’s better to not want to be an asshole towards other people, you know?
You can’t put a dollar value directly on life, creativity or freedom; it is only possible through avoidance of death, parting with the fruits of creativity, and the various binds we put ourselves in.
I don't know what you mean by "be an asshole towards other people" - it sound like you can unofficially skip the occasional meeting, not call them off for being unproductive.
The dollar value of freedom is what it costs. If freedom is painting, the dollar value is painting supplies.
A bunch of memes? There are 20,000+ words of notes there that are accompanied by comics (made specifically to raise ADHD awareness) and relatable memes. But hey, sure :)
If you find the memes interesting, but more importantly - relatable, my best tip for managing would be to get an ADHD evaluation[1] and see if medication[2] works for you.
You can also use this list to tell your therapist/coach about the issues you are struggling with - it's much easier when there's a list at hand. I simply pointed mine to this page.
If you relate to just a couple of entries, then I don't have much advice. If you find many entries relatable on most days, then joining ADHD groups on social media, learning about it, getting self-help books specifically for people with ADHD, and, yes, medication will be a life-changing experience.
If you relate to most of the entries, then you should definitely consider talking to a professional.
There are many resources available to help with ADHD, first and foremost being understanding what works and what doesn't work with your ADHD brain.
Regarding medication, there is a lot of unnecessary stigma around it. Please consider my experience with it: [1] to understand what I'm about to say.
It's not about productivity. It's about not feeling pain associated with initiating, finishing, or switching tasks. It's about slowing the thoughts in your brain a bit so that you could find the first step more easily, and have more control over either not initiating other tasks, or switching out of something that you can't stop doing.
You have to understand that most people don't have these issues to begin with. I have no idea what amphetamines do for them.
For people with ADHD, medication is like glasses for the brain. It helps us see better. If somebody takes your glasses, they won't improve their vision - in fact, they will probably mess up their own. That's why both glasses and medication have to be prescribed by a professional.
There is much more than medication though. It's about approaching the things you face in ways that work for you. It's understanding what strengths you have (e.g. acting efficiently in emergencies or under high pressure in critical tasks) vs. things that your brain isn't good at (estimating time, doing the same thing consistently, etc.)
Going into that is way beyond the scope of a comment. There is a lot to learn.
>If you relate to most of the entries, then you should definitely consider talking to a professional.
Doesn't it have to be debilitating though? I relate to a lot of those things, read some books, and nod along, etc., and even talked to a psychiatrist about it, but he was pretty dismissive about it.
There's been a groundswell on social media wherein everything functionally becomes ADHD, ASD, neurodivergent etc. - many people have taken up these diagnoses as a self-identity, and I don't think thats a bad thing to try to build community around an idea.
However, the net of symptoms and behaviors is cast really widely, and I think overall the definitions really start to lose their usefulness when so many traits are bucketed into these categories. To start, a disorder is only that if it is causing difficulty in your life, in reaching your goals, doing what you want or taking care of yourself. Most people identify as that but can't necessarily put a name on it.
My personal experience is I was Dx'd with ADHD, and then ASD (then Aspergers) at an early age of 10. The reasoning was I presented with some oversensitivity to sensory input (loud noises, etc) and had trouble socializing. I internally accepted (or was forced to accept) this definition for myself for a very long time - I was literally told as a child I couldn't read faces, and so I never really tried until I rebelled from the given model that I was somehow incapable in my late teens.
It turns out, at the very minimum the ASD diagnoses couldn't be further from the truth. I am just a very sensitive person, I read faces and expressions extremely well and if anything I'm a natural social butterfly, though emotionally very anxious.
A good few differential diagnoses for anyone looking at what they might identify with include both CPTSD and Attachment Disorders. The commonality between them is that both of those are caused environmentally rather than some innate genetic trait which is usually proposed regarding ASD/ADHD. And its also true that two people in the same environment won't necessarily develop the same disorders, or any. This is a bit of a long rant, but for me a CPTSD diagnosis and related treatment modalities has helped me develop more in the past year or two than literal decades of work around ASD/ADHD - everyone is different and YMMV, just wanted to show that there are some other options.
>There's been a groundswell on social media wherein everything functionally becomes ADHD
That sounds needlessly dismissive in the context of the link that I posted. It does not help constructively (unlike you sharing your story - thank you for that!).
The page I linked has over 100 entries about specific ways in which ADHD makes adult life difficult. Specifically, I have written a long list of reasons why I consider it a disorder that impairs me in certain scenarios [1].
I ask you to read [1] before replying to this comment, so that we have a common context.
I am guessing that you haven't done so yet, because struggling with executive dysfunction, time blindness, and five dozen other traits/symptoms on a daily basis would surely not be "casting the net too widely" to say that it might be ADHD :)
And on the other hand, while there's an overlap with CPTSD and ASD, seeing that you don't experience things the same way might help someone who has been incorrectly diagnosed with ADHD.
I am terribly sorry that you didn't get the care that you needed — but neither did I, until I learned more about ADHD from social media posts like the one I'm making now.
You see a flurry of these posts because the medical community has failed to diagnose it in many people (as well as diagnosing others incorrectly!), leaving many people without help, and is still very much ignorant about it. They didn't even believe that adults can have ADHD all the way into 1970s!
So quite a few adults — women in particular — are only getting diagnosis and care now, because of ADHD advocacy on social media.
The reason why people identify as ADHD/ASD is because getting care/meds/restructuring their lives accordingly makes life significantly less painful for them. The most common sentiment in late-diagnosed people is grief over all the years they've been needlessly living life on "hard mode", all the struggles they didn't need to face, all the opportunities missed.
The diagnosis, as you mentioned, is only useful insofar as it helps people improve their lives. I'm sorry for your experience; not seeing improvement is the reason to challenge the diagnosis.
This is why I believe the page I made could be useful to someone like you. Maybe if you saw more personal accounts of people with ADHD and CPTSD, you would have realized that CPTSD is the correct diagnosis sooner.
ADHD in particular seems to be diagnosed from the perspective of "how is this making the lives of their parents difficult". There are still too few resources dedicated to helping adults live their lives.
Again, thank you for sharing your story and perspective. It's very interesting because my case seems to be a mirror image: an unsuccessful struggle with anxiety and depression, until consequences of undiagnosed ADHD were revealed to be the root cause.
One of the ways in which the diagnosis made my life better is knowing that my brain will simply sabotage any work that I don't believe in. When I was trying to force myself to do something that I believed should not be done, no matter how big or small, I suffered greatly.
In one case, it seemed that doing X to stay at company Y with great coworkers made all the sense even if X did not (it's just one project, I'll get over it!). Now I know to quit before being assigned to something that I can't stand behind — and am living a happier (and must I say, better paid) life. Simply knowing that already changed my life for the better.
Oh, and ADHD meds have helped with my sleep issues that I've had for as long as I can remember myself.
That alone was worth it.
I can enjoy mornings on a regular basis for the first time in my life, at 34, because of that social media groundswell :)
> That sounds needlessly dismissive in the context of the link that I posted
Sorry not my intention at all, I was responding to move of a peeve I'd had recently getting stuck in ADHD tiktok.
I really appreciate your post here - I do agree that it MIGHT be ADHD, it might be related to ADHD, etc - I suppose my instinctive pushback is due that so many of these things can be ADHD, and they can be other things as well. In my case: capital "t" Trauma seems to fit better - but the differential is really difficult. I've been through the ringer trying to understand the source of my problems and ADHD was useful for some things, and it took me a long time to figure out it wasn't the full story.
The fun part with CPTSD is it effects your long term memory formation whenever you have a trigger or flashback so that you can have been going off the walls with anxiety for an entire evening and the next day not even remember what caused it, only that you "had a bad night". This creates a massive depression and anxiety complex where you don't feel you can trust any of your feelings.
> This is why I believe the page I made could be useful to someone like you. Maybe if you saw more personal accounts of people with ADHD and CPTSD, you would have realized that CPTSD is the correct diagnosis sooner.
I see really little differentiation in ADHD/CPTSD social media discourse so I was trying to provide my own. Its really easy to mistake dissociation with an attention disorder. If one treats it as ADHD, they might find it never really gets better despite all sorts of treatments, which let me tell you after a decade of expert level therapy can be really disheartening. I can roll down the entire list you posted and pick out one thing after another that might be related to CPTSD. I'm not saying its definitely one thing or another, I really just wanted to say that it can get really hard to differentiate, even with experienced professionals diagnosing people.
And who knows, ADHD might be a co-factor in all of this for me. One can have both, and they can feed off each other.
> ADHD in particular seems to be diagnosed from the perspective of "how is this making the lives of their parents difficult". There are still too few resources dedicated to helping adults live their lives.
I agree entirely - its really similar for people with ASD - so many of the resources are there for teaching parents how to manage a child, not even for the child, let alone how to manage things as an adult.
> One of the ways in which the diagnosis made my life better is knowing that my brain will simply sabotage any work that I don't believe in. When I was trying to force myself to do something that I believed should not be done, no matter how big or small, I suffered greatly.
I think this is good advice - I do the same with jobs as well. I think most people do struggle with this but they probably don't allow themselves to think deeply enough about the work to ever assign a value judgement, or they let the work be framed in the best possible light as if a detrimental thing is actually beneficial. I don't really have the ability to do either of those things.
Re: CPTSD vs ADHD vs ASD, I do run into discussion of differences and overlaps on social media; there is also a correlation (ASD and ADHD traits can lead to adverse treatment by parents and peers, resulting in CPTSD).
I have two cousins (siblings); one has ADHD, and by the looks of it, the way she's treated for her symptoms is going to land her with CPTSD if she's not already there.
FWIW, my treatment started with trauma, and then I realized that it's not all there is to it. I don't feel ADHD contributed to it that much, but in any case, I am getting help with both.
>The fun part with CPTSD is it effects your long term memory formation whenever you have a trigger or flashback so that you can have been going off the walls with anxiety for an entire evening and the next day not even remember what caused it, only that you "had a bad night".
Much fun, can relate; keeping a log helps.
> I can roll down the entire list you posted and pick out one thing after another that might be related to CPTSD ... it can get really hard to differentiate, even with experienced professionals diagnosing people.
I wouldn't put that much trust in experienced professionals, who, until not long ago, thought that ADHD magically evaporates when people grow into adulthood :)
Legit, adult ADHD was not believed to exist until the 1970s. And it's pretty common! Last week, a woman who got her diagnosis in her 40s said that it came as a surprise to her husband, who was a psychology professor (the discussion was in one of the ADHD groups on FB). The said psychology professor, educator, was looking ADHD in the eye for decades and didn't see it. The woman tried ADHD medication for the first time, and was flabbergasted by the positive effect it had on her.
While the overlap is sizable, I feel like differentiation is only hard because the professionals are, well, not that professional.
I would be very curious to know which things you don't relate to, just to get one data point on ADHD vs CPTSD differences.
To my knowledge, the following are traits of ADHD, but not CPTSD:
* Hyperfocus/Hyperfixation: being able, under the right circumstances to develop a seemingly sudden and very intense focus/state of flow, during which you go deep into whatever caught your attention (be it a work project, or an all-night Wikipedia binge to find out all there is to know about three-speed planetary gears). This includes picking up hobbies, getting reasonably good at them very fast (and at the expense of everything else), then dropping them to pick up another hobby. Hyperfocus on an activity comes with not having control over where it goes. Need to fill out taxes? Too bad, need to research the harmony of Girl From Ipanema and the history of that jazz standard in as much detail as is humanly possible!
* Time blindness: not being able to estimate the time it takes to do anything (underestimating usually), not perceiving much difference between events that happened a long time ago and last week, non-chronological organization of events in memory
* Taking 11 years to mail a package: people with ADHD have tons of unfinished projects due to running out of hyperfocus and executive dysfunction. However, these projects are never truly abandoned - and sometimes, they are brought to completion, years later. My favorite example is a gift I meant to mail to a friend for 11 years... and actually did it! The trait here is not abandoning incomplete projects way past the point where most people would.
* Paradoxical reaction to stimulants (in particular, amphetamines, anesthesia, caffeine). In practical terms: coffee can make me sleepy if it's very strong, so does Adderall.
* Feeling calm in emergencies: that's the situations where ADHD people thrive in. Particularly, jobs like EMT seem to be a great fit.
* Speaking faster than other people, and preferring to listening to videos at 1.5x - 2x speed, otherwise it feels "too slow"
* Completing other person's sentences
* Empathizing with other people by immediately bringing up a similar/relatable story from your own past to show that you have a basis on which you can relate (also in ASD)
* Auditory Processing Disorder, aka audio buffering: someone tells you something, you don't hear it and ask them to repeat. Then as they start repeating, what they said finally loads in your brain and you answer their question (before they repeated it). (also in ASD)
* Infodumping: someone brought up a special interest or a recent hyperfixation of yours? Well, well, well. If they didn't want to know the history of the golden age of hydrogen-filled rigid airships, they shouldn't have mentioned Zeppelins, and now they better be prepared to listen up for the next 30 minutes or so. (also in ASD)
* Writing overly long messages and comments compared to most of people (high five here :D )
OK, that should be enough to start. Many other ADHD traits (particularly, executive dysfunction, prioritizing, planning, initiating/switching/completing tasks, memory issues, etc etc) are, to my knowledge, exacerbated by trauma, unlike the above.
As in, trauma is not going to make you speak faster, or fall asleep from a double espresso, or give you a sudden ability to laser-focus on things (often the exciting, challenging things - but not necessarily important ones), and so on.
Thanks again for your comment, would be really curious about your take on the above!
I have about half of those traits - again I’m not saying ADHD isn’t a possible factor to some level :). I have a laser focus, but no time blindness (just memory gaps related to dissociation), I don’t have a ton of in progress projects, I feel calm in emergencies (every emergency is simpler than my catastrophizing mind has already come up with), I have a hypersensitivity to some stimulants and normal w others, I don’t really speak too fast for people nor listen to vids at 1.5/2x, I can infodump but don’t unless I’m damn sure they wanna hear it, I have auditory sensitivity/a bit of a filtering problem in loud places but rarely miss what someone in front of me is saying, I don’t complete others sentences often (it’s usually rude), and I like writing long messages about things I have spent a lot of my life learning about. I also do relate things to myself when empathizing but also sometimes don’t if someone is in obvious distress.
Broadly a lot of those can come from different sources I think. A lot of mental horsepower could explain many of them, in a way?
Otoh, I basically raised myself emotionally - I had absent (emotionally) or commandeering parents and had a very insecure early attachment. I spent most of my time from middle and high school drugged up on medications and spent a ton of time alone - a big factor there was it was I was raised in an extreme religious environment and told I was better than everyone else and that I should act in an extremely specific “godly” way that opened me up for lots of bullying. Pulling apart the pieces of “what happened” has been a lifelong task.
Thank you again for a detailed answer! From what you are saying, I would not be quick to suggest that you have ADHD either.
For one, the traits that you listed are in the overlap with ASD (to my knowledge).
Re-reading your comments, it looks like you don't feel like ASD applies to you however there is even less good information about ASD than about ADHD or PTSD. I never thought it could apply to me until I looked at some recent materials on it.
FWIW, I'm a social butterfly too, and never felt I have trouble reading faces, but growing up with a BPD parent, being able to detect an incoming rage was a vital skill which I developed early on. At the same time, self-assessments (as well as relatable experiences of autistic people with ADHD) indicate at least a likelihood of ASD for me as well.
"Autistics can't read faces" is straight up a myth. I don't know how much you looked into ASD communities on social media, but it's amazing just how many false beliefs persisted in the medical community for ages. FFS, we only stopped zapping autistic kids for being autistic last year.
There are a lot of misconceptions about ASD that have been resolved only in recent years. The traits you said don't apply to you, in fact, are known to not match the experience of many autistic people.
The thing about an autism diagnosis as an adult is that it doesn't really bring much value. There are no meds. You have already figured out all the coping mechanisms and necessary masking to get by in life. And if you are in control of your environment, then it doesn't affect you negatively.
Like, sensory sensitivity is not an issue in your own home, and you can avoid environments that make you uncomfortable. Same goes for people. Hyperfocus is an asset more than anything else.
So for me, finding out that I might be on the spectrum was a curious observation that could explain some of my behavior patterns, but didn't need much attention (unlike the trauma, which I'm only beginning to approach, or ADHD).
I wish I knew more about ASD to ask the right questions, but out of curiosity:
* What is your relationship with planning? Do you tend to plan most of the things that you do? Do you enjoy unplanned activities? How do you react when the plans you made are suddenly changed?
* How easy is it for you to lie? Do you feel comfortable telling a falsehood when answering a question?
* What's your relationship with things? When you buy something (say, a gadget), how long do you use it for? Is it easy for you to throw things away? Can you tell stories associated with most of the things that you own?
* Have you ever had other people confused about your emotions? Like, being perceived as feeling very emotional when you aren't, and vice versa; or otherwise having a mismatch about how others read you, and how you feel.
* The things that you'd be glad to infodump about upon request - how long have you been interested in them, on the average?
* Have you ever felt that you are being clear and direct, but another person took it personally and got offended for no good reason (other than them being unable to hold a coherent argument)? If so, does this happen regularly?
Thank you again for giving such detailed answers, they are very helpful, and help me understand CPTSD, ADHD, and ASD better (as well as myself)!
My relationship with ASD is that I toiled under a misunderstanding of my capabilities tied to an ASD diagnosis early on. ASD being a spectrum, finding even relevant information towards one particular area over another on the spectrum has always been a challenge. I'm of the opinion that, like ADHD, the diagnostic criteria is very open to interpretation and relatively wide. I would prefer if there were specific neurological, gene, or behavioral markers that were more "NT's don't do this, ASD people do do this".
Just as I may have some level of ADHD, I may have some level of ASD. Treatment methodologies I tried in my 20s, and were tried on me in my teens, were grouped around treatment of either or both of those. Ultimately they were not effective at giving me much better quality of life, whereas trauma-informed methodologies have been, especially in aspects like emotional regulation, and giving reasons for say dissociative episodes which had plagued me for a very long time and now are much more manageable, and also predictable.
To your q's...
I plan some of the things I do, but I don't have the need to plan everything. I do well in planned and unplanned environments. I have traveled to foreign countries solo, gotten into plenty of fun sorts of trouble, etc. When I am needing something emotionally like time alone to recharge, or support, a sudden change in environment like a ton of people coming over suddenly can be jarring or upsetting.
I don't like lying. I feel like its not worth it, and then you also have to remain consistent in the lies. If I needed to get past the gestapo in my car with a trunk full of refugee's, I would probably be able to keep a relatively straight face while lying through my teeth and not thinking another thought about the lie later :P
I use a gadget as long as I have need or want of it. I don't attach to objects more than people, if thats sort of the idea. I don't like throwing away things I've spent a bunch of money on, but I don't hoard.
Hard to say but usually I think I'm pretty obvious about my emotional state - for the most part it matches.
This is probably one of my main things to "infodump". I've been having to study psychology, pharmacology, etc from a damn early age because I was raised alongside the idea that there's something wrong with me. I've spent a very long time trying to help my at the time really distressing depression and anxiety and lack of self worth. I tend to get bored of things after a little bit. I played chess for a while, and then found that the endgames weren't terribly interesting. Same via programming, history, social studies/social justice. Idk, I don't have super singular "special interests", I just like to learn and know a lot about a lot.
I am pretty aware of any tone problems. I think it used to happen that I was somewhat blunt, especially in teen years but its hard to differentiate between that as an ASD thing of "not getting" or simply ignoring how words effect other's emotional states, being raised in an incredibly strict and regimented way, and being undersocialized generally. Its funny because I'm aware I'm sort of replying in writing in a sort of matter of fact tone. If you don't mind, I'd not mind some feedback on my writing style and how it strikes you.
The answers you give are not inconsistent with ASD to my knowledge. However, I'm not even sure what's there to treat.
It seems like a lot of "treatment" of ASD traits in children was just making them conform to expectations of an "average" person, which may contribute to trauma and make quality of life worse.
People who mask better look like they're "improving" to outside observers, but might be just behaving in a way more pleasant to others, but also more draining and leading to other issues.
"Attaching to objects more than to people" is, I feel, some nonsense that's made up by people without a clue. I can talk at length about the things that I have, and why I have them; but that would be another long comment :)
Your style strikes me as: direct, precise, detailed, easy to understand, answering the question asked, including information on why you think the way you do (i.e. basis for claims), not taking things personally, having capacity to elaborate on thoughts and ideas in more than one paragraph, and a pleasure to read overall.
From my personal experience, this style seems to be more common with neurodivergent people (ASD specifically). The length of your (...and mine) comments alone seems to be a good enough indicator :)
The "tone problems", I feel, are what other people have because they communicate indirectly, and try looking for signal where there is none. I sometimes have to ask to just listen to the words that I say, and take them at face value, rather than trying to impart another meaning to them based on my tone (which is usually affected by the things that are on my mind to a larger extent than the things I am talking about).
Also, again, sorry to hear that you were receiving treatment that was not helping you. The traits that you describe that may be ASD traits don't look like something that needs to be "treated".
Also, on this:
>I'm of the opinion that, like ADHD, the diagnostic criteria is very open to interpretation and relatively wide. I would prefer if there were specific neurological, gene, or behavioral markers that were more "NT's don't do this, ASD people do do this".
The DSM criteria are little more than guidelines.
The following book does exactly what you described:
I Think I Might Be Autistic: A Guide to Autism Spectrum Disorder Diagnosis and Self-Discovery for Adults[1]
It starts with a categorized "NT's don't do this, ASD people do do this" checklist.
In addition, self-assessments like RAADS-R - over 100 questions[2] and AQ - 50 questions[3] are, essentially, that: yes/no questions where NTs would more likely choose one of the answers, and ASD people the other.
(Do read the information on the page if you decide to take them: these tests have been revised because the researchers were flat out wrong about some of those!)
>Ultimately they were not effective at giving me much better quality of life, whereas trauma-informed methodologies have been
Well, trauma is both very common in non-NT people, and also it's something that can affect people the most and exacerbate other traits that aren't helpful in that situation.
I feel like ASD is not really something to be treated in adults who already live their lives somehow, just something to be aware of because it's useful to know how others differ from you, and what expectations to have about the way your mind works (because we build them on understanding that only applies to some NT people).
The helpful part of learning about ASD for me was learning about masking, and doing less of that. This is not specific to ASD (though there are some who'd want to restrict the usage of that word, but that's a whole another can of worms); and catching myself acting a certain way because that's the expectation of others, and not because I want to do this (or not doing something) helps me spend less energy on things that aren't worth it.
In any case, it seems like trauma is something that should have been helped with first based on my understanding of what you said, and it's very sad to hear that the docs didn't arrive at the same conclusion.
Sorry that you didn't get help right away, glad you eventually did! Thank you so much for writing all of this, and I hope there is something of value in this wall of text too.
romwell, I'd just like to say your comments here on this topic are stellar, relatable, and 100% true for me.
>* Paradoxical reaction to stimulants (in particular, amphetamines, anesthesia, caffeine). In practical terms: coffee can make me sleepy if it's very strong, so does Adderall.
:nods: My psychiatrist was waffling between cPTSD and ADHD as a cause of my concentration issues until I told her that one time I tried cocaine and promptly took a nap.
>* Feeling calm in emergencies: that's the situations where ADHD people thrive in. Particularly, jobs like EMT seem to be a great fit.
Oh hey, I've worked in tech support for the past 20 years where high profile clients are freaking out when their servers go down, everything is an emergency, and every day is different. :)
There's one thing that's been left out of this discussion thus far, relating to this comment:
>> I can roll down the entire list you posted and pick out one thing after another that might be related to CPTSD ... it can get really hard to differentiate, even with experienced professionals diagnosing people.
ADHD is caused by a dysfunctioning pre-frontal cortex. [1] cPTSD is caused by ongoing chronic trauma.
I had a QEEG done and it was clearly apparent my pre-frontal cortex was low-activity.
I also agree with the theory that cPTSD and ADHD/ASD can go hand in hand, because the ADHD or ASD can cause mal-treatment. I was severely abused as a child precisely because of my (un-diagnosed at the time, because girl) ASD and ADHD.
One point I’d make is CPTSD is not necessarily ongoing trauma, but unresolved trauma esp in childhood since that’s an inescapable position. It’s a little bit of a chicken or egg problem as trauma can also cause symptomologies similar to ADHD, just as ADHD can exacerbate traumas.
For me I’ve just found it’s helped when finding treatment methodologies for pure ADHD to be able to do a differential diagnosis - ADHD is at least much more commonly diagnosed or thought of as a possibility while CPTSD is a relatively unknown.
What I meant by ongoing is that it is not one specific event like being hit by a car that you can point to...but something that happens over a long period of time. It's why I never pursued EMDR as a therapy. I cannot put one traumatic thing in my mind's eye, rather my entire childhood was trauma.
One of the traits of CPTSD is specifically memory loss/suppression around the traumatic memories. EMDR for me is specifically helpful for surfacing those memories - its not exclusively used for single traumatic events! Also, IFS therapy is another methodology that has helped me make sense of sometimes contradictory emotional needs due to unmet needs in childhood.
I read the first paragraph and I can't imagine that's what people's lives could be like in a civilized country. I would never accept mixing job responsibilities with private life in this totally overwhelming way. What is described there is a hellish existence and a quick path towards a suicide, not a life worth living.
Software development, making around 750% of average salary in my country. This kind of life would be absolutely unacceptable in all companies I have ever worked in. Maybe that's normal in USA and China, definitely not in Europe.
> making around 750% of average salary in my country.
While I agree that Europe is generally better than US and China in this respect, your salary excludes your anecdote from supporting this notion (by your own definition).
That is a very formidable salary compared to the average income, even for software engineers. I suspect you are either a wanted expert in a specific field, an engineering manager, or self-employed?
Doesn't getting into any of the above positions require immense dedication to your craft, to the point of intertwining private and professional live?
Software salaries are increasingly becoming globalised, so, in places with economy in a bad shape, such as for example Ukraine, the average salary may be $300, while a dev may be making $2500. Keep in mind that people making average salaries are really struggling (things aren’t neccessarily cheaper in Ukraine than in the US) and often have family members abroad who send money etc. Btw it’s not that the devs live like kings (although they are certainly very comfortable) - more like average people live lives that would be hard to swallow for Americans.
Most tech jobs outside the FAANGS and the startup bubble are 9-5, e.g. working as a developer for a regional bank or a local hospital. You don't get the enormous salaries, but it's a nice life overall. And re: where to live, generally anywhere outside the trendy metros. There are tons of boring jobs in boring suburbs that allow you to live your life.
Good point, I can see how I may have implied that it was an either/or. I wasn't arguing that that was the only path. Just one that's there if you want it.
And you can make $300k TC in a FAANG and work 35-40 hours a week. Plenty of people do it - the minority, sure, but only because FAANG jobs by definition are the minority. Google and Microsoft in particular are notorious for decent WLB, and MS's comp has come way up in the last few years to be nearly the same level as similar tech companies.
> developer for a regional bank or a local hospital.
funny enough you somewhat hit the nail on the head of the majority of my career so far. work life balance varies though. definitely not as bad as amazon or netflix, but not as chill as making crud apps all day (if those jobs even still exist, please let me know where)
Long work hours
-which might or might not be bullshit
Addicting novelty seeking
-small dopamine hits
-and it's enablement
-phones
-never ending scrolling
-being rich to have access
Procrastination
-mix of fear, uncertainty, belief it will be better at a
later time
I believe all of these should be tackled individually.
I'd never heard of this before. I absolutely stay up late on a regular basis after a long day of CEO-ing, parenting, etc. So, I can understand the dynamic to a degree. Though, my whole life I've had a complicated relationship with sleep and have always stayed up late.
That said, given the origins of this curated concept, I can't really shake the feeling that it's a subtle attempt to stigmatize the things people are doing to still feel human in an otherwise dehumanizing context (e.g. "996 culture"). With the end result intended to be getting people to sleep more, so that they're more productive/predictable "996" workers, not so that they can do less "996"-ing. However, I expect the narrative frame of it being an act of "rebellion" to be interpreted and internalized differently based on different regional cultural factors, so the stigmatizing effect may not be universal.
I think the definition is backwards. It's not revenge against anything. It's just normal procrastination.
Most procrastination happens in the form of you have to do A, but you put it off to do B instead. Thus increasing the amount of time before A because you don't want to deal with it.
Sleep doesn't count as time in many people's perceptions because you're not conscious for it. By doing B late into the night, A still arrives at the same time, but it expands the amount of experienced time before A.
In some people (e.g. me) it takes the form of wanting to accomplish X before sleep, but being too tired/lazy/... to start, and so procrastinating a little bit, while still intending to do X. Then, as time progresses, I probably become less likely to start on X but I keep doing random stuff (sometimes useful, sometimes not) because some part of me thinks I cannot go to sleep because I haven't accomplished anything... sometimes it even feels like bargaining after the fact, e.g. I decided to do a much less important Y instead of X, to feel like at least something had been done.
I've learned that if X isn't working out the best thing to do is to just force yourself to go to bed :)
I would've worded it as "petulantly delaying sleep".
One is being immature and frustrated at the lack of planning and control in one's life, so one retaliatorally "plays" when one actually has the power to decide.
There was an article not too long ago about overly-controlled/time-regimented children doing this same thing. When they have no power over how to spend their day, they decide to control their night, to their own detriment, health-wise.
I think that it's also a depression thing. Certainly, when my mood is down, it's more likely that I'll do low-emotional-calorie activities in bed instead of sleep.
This strikes me as an issue that's widespread across groups but addressable almost entirely by individuals, which makes it perfect for abstract debate. ;)
My partner does this. OTOH, I love sleep and feeling refreshed when I've had enough. She's open about being pretty driven and makes her choice based on what's important to her.
Seems to me workism is part of that calculus. Balance usually requires opportunity cost. One has to value sleep, time for hobbies, time to spend with family... more than the real or perceptual carrot offered by wrapping one's identity in work. Or not. It's a choice regardless of whether made consciously or not.
I'll finish by acknowledging there are structural inequalities that make this, for many, a choice from a set of equally unappealing options.
Since having older kids, this is completely trashing my wake/sleep rhythm and starting to impact my work. I want some time to do the things I care about in my own time, damnit. I don't want to be externally structured all the time.
I don't feel too bad about staying up late instead of being responsible, but I start to feel burn-out creeping up, and I don't know what to do.
One interpretation of this was also that we you're lacking the feeling control in your life you can retaliate by staying awake late and feel tired later. I've seen some cases that might well fit this but I don't think I want to jump into conclusions here.
Exactly. That was my experience. I snapped out of it by recognizing that giving into RBP was a loss of control in itself. I get a lot more “fuck you Ill do want I want” satisfaction by going to bed ASAP, waking up early, and using those early hours intentionally.
Or you can do what I do: go to bed early, tell yourself that you're going to get up early and do things, and then sleep until your normal time anyway. That way you don't have fun _and_ you feel bad about lying to yourself! But at least you get enough sleep.
Heh. That's one way. I actually started to get to bed after my kid so I'm usually asleep by nine and wake up without an alarm around four. It has been great few years to have few silent hours to think before heading to work and I don't think I'll ever want to go back from this.
interesting : I've often felt that this was the way to go.
But on the other end, when I stay up at night, get into the "flow", I really like that feeling that my time is not "bounded". ok, it's bounded because at some point I'll need to sleep, but you get the idea.
I have the feeling that working on a project in the morning before kids and wife get up in the morning would put additional stress (like "sh*t, I have only 30min left to solve this"). That would make the thing not nearly as enjoyable as in the evening.
How do you relate to this feeling ? Maybe those morning hours should be dedicated to tasks that have a highly predictable duration (working out / cleaning inbox / ...) and not to "discovery mode" (when you want to solve something but have no idea on how to do it).
I have some margin in the mornings so should I hit something flow-ish I'll skip my morning stuff or take a train to shorten the cycling commute. And my thoughtwork isn't time critical most of the times so my approach will not fit everyone.
I think I do the opposite: revenge bedtime productivity.
I end up wasting too much of the day doing something fun/interesting like gaming or sports, and I try to work late at night to compensate, even though I may as well go to sleep early and work early in the morning instead.
>most people procrastinate doing things that they don’t want to do. But people really do want to sleep. We procrastinate on bedtime, then, not because we’re “aversive” to it, but because we don’t want to stop doing the other, non-sleep thing that we’re doing.
That statement implies the opposite? This whole article keeps making nonsensical logical leaps.
Can I just note that it is not necessarily an effect of "too much work/responsibility", it is also a reaction to active stressors in your life. Social anxiety around roommates for example. Being unable to recharge yourself emotionally even if little is going on. One does not have to be time crunched to have this effect.
Sometimes it is "me time" as TFA suggests. Sometimes after a busy day, I need to unwind a bit before sleep, because I am still kind of amped up from the hustle and bustle.
This is a strange way to use the word revenge. You're lashing out against a society / culture that overworks by depriving yourself of the small opportunity for rest that you have?
It's sad but at least on days where I'm that busy I don't have time to feel down or demotivated. Literally the pace and busy-ness forces me to remain focussed. I end up feeling depressed and deflated if I have room to breath. I think that is just me though and for most people having lots of free time is obviously better.
For me, there’s a big difference between an intentional decision to stay up late doing something valuable (which could be recreational) and RBP. RBP is a black hole that captures my attention and wastes my time without rejuvenating me.
Knowing the RBP concept empowers me to be intentional with my evening hours. Sometimes I go to bed early, sometimes I stay up and play, but I never want to lose that time to unintentional mindlessness.