--- title: Bedtime Procrastination Is the Newest Sleep Disorder description: Because there's never enough time during the day to get all your procrastinating done canonical: https://time.com/2863611/bedtime-procrastination/ author: Anita Hamilton article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2014-06-12T21:00:15.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-04-13T07:10:41.337Z og:title: Bedtime Procrastination: The New Sleep Disorder We All Suffer From og:description: Because there's never enough time during the day to get all your procrastinating done og:url: https://time.com/2863611/bedtime-procrastination/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt50b8339134c57ff4/6986974613c79f56ff1929da/woman-in-bed-with-notebook-at-night.jpg?branch=production&width=3840&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 675 og:image:alt: 153405991 og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: Bedtime Procrastination: The New Sleep Disorder We All Suffer From twitter:description: Because there's never enough time during the day to get all your procrastinating done twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt50b8339134c57ff4/6986974613c79f56ff1929da/woman-in-bed-with-notebook-at-night.jpg?branch=production&width=3840&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # Face It, You're a Bedtime Procrastinator by [Anita Hamilton](https://time.com/author/anita-hamilton/) ## Anita Hamilton Jun 12, 2014 9:00 PM UTC  Woman working late on laptop in bed Woman working late on laptop in bedPeter Dazeley—Getty Images by [Anita Hamilton](https://time.com/author/anita-hamilton/) ## Anita Hamilton Jun 12, 2014 9:00 PM UTC It probably goes without saying that you’re super busy most days. So busy, in fact, that by the time you’re ready for bed, you feel like a zombie. But if you’re like a lot of people, it’ll be a while before your face actually hits the pillow and you drift off into dreamland. After all, you still need to Instagram, Snapchat, WhatsApp, call your Mom _and_ play with your cat before you hit the hay. Now researchers have a name for your conundrum: bedtime procrastination. A recent study from [_Frontiers in Psychology_](http://journal.frontiersin.org/Journal/10.3389/fpsyg.2014.00611/abstract) found that the phenomenon, which the authors define as “failing to go to bed at the intended time, while no external circumstances prevent a person from doing so,” was related to insufficient sleep. Using an online survey to study 177 people, researchers in the Netherlands found that bedtime procrastinators put off sleep not because they wanted to stay up later, but because they didn’t want to stop doing whatever it was that was keeping them up in the first place. No judgment here, folks, but the researchers also noted that those of us who suffer from this modern-day malady also have problems with self-regulation. “As bedtime procrastination seems to be a self-regulation problem, we speculate that dealing with distractions (a typical case of self-regulation) would be one of the factors that could be related,” the study’s lead author, Floor Kroese, says. In other words, the problem isn’t so much a symptom of insomnia as it is yet another form of procrastination. And while there’s evidence that your tendency to [procastinate](http://time.com/51883/procrastination-is-in-your-genes/) may be innate, there’s also tons of advice out there on [how to stop](http://time.com/109301/4-ways-to-stop-procrastinating/). ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/2863611/bedtime-procrastination/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/2863611/bedtime-procrastination/"},"headline":"Face It, You're a Bedtime Procrastinator","datePublished":"2014-06-12T21:00:15.000Z","dateModified":"2026-04-13T07:10:41.337Z","description":"Because there's never enough time during the day to get all your procrastinating done","url":"https://time.com/2863611/bedtime-procrastination/","keywords":["Newsfeed","Sleep","Science topic","insomnia","procrastination"],"thumbnailUrl":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt50b8339134c57ff4/6986974613c79f56ff1929da/woman-in-bed-with-notebook-at-night.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"Anita Hamilton","jobTitle":null,"url":"https://time.com/author/anita-hamilton/"}],"articleSection":"","image":[{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt50b8339134c57ff4/6986974613c79f56ff1929da/woman-in-bed-with-notebook-at-night.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","width":1200,"height":675,"headline":"153405991","caption":"153405991","creditText":"Peter Dazeley—Getty Images","representativeOfPage":true}],"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Time","url":"https://time.com/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://time.com/images/logo.png","width":528,"height":156},"foundingDate":"March 3, 1923","sameAs":["https://www.facebook.com/time","https://www.instagram.com/time/?hl=en","https://twitter.com/time","https://www.pinterest.com/timemagazine"]}},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"item":{"@id":"/tag/time-section-newsfeed/","name":"Newsfeed"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"item":{"@id":"https://time.com/2863611/bedtime-procrastination/","name":"Face It, You're a Bedtime Procrastinator"}}]}] ```