Is Sleep Procrastination Messing With Your Health & Mindset? | with Vanessa Hill, PhD

0:00Jonathan Fields: So have you ever found yourself on the couch at 10, 11, 12, 1 a.m. watching videos on how the pyramids were built, even though you know you have to be up in three or four or five hours? Or maybe scrolling on your phone, it's that strange moment where your brain says you, quote, should go to bed, but some other part of you just isn't ready to let the day go. We call this bedtime procrastination, and most of us carry a lot of guilt about it. We feel like we kind of should be falling asleep or that we just lack the willpower to put the phone down or stop watching TV. But what if the late night scrolling or watching is actually a search for something deeper, like a sense of agency or me time or meaning or identity that you just didn't get during your busy workday?

0:45Jonathan Fields: Today, we're looking at sleep through a very different lens. We're moving away from the quote sleep hacking performance sport and towards something much more human. And joining me is Vanessa Hill. She is a sleep scientist and research fellow at CQ University, who's dedicated her career to studying why we delay sleep, what it actually does to us when we do it, and how we can actually bridge the gap between our intentions and our behaviors. We drop into why, quote, revenge bedtime procrastination is often a cry for help and autonomy. We explore the intention behavior gap and why it's hardest to close at night.

1:22Jonathan Fields: We really think about a simple pattern interrupt to help you move towards bed without struggle and why being consistent might actually be more important than being perfect with your devices. And we bust a really huge myth about blue light and screens at bedtime. So excited to share this conversation with you. I'm Jonathan Fields, and this is Good Life Project.

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2:46Jonathan Fields: We'll see you next time. Subject to change.

3:18Jonathan Fields: termsandmoreatapplecard.com. I've been somebody who is fascinated with sleep for a number of years. I've gone through seasons of my life where sleep was great and seasons of my life where sleep was not so great. And as I grow older, also I'm 60, I'm getting curious how age affects sleep. And also, I think you can't be online for more than a hot minute without seeing something about sleep often being blasted at you. And there's a lot of heads spinning around it. I'm really interested in where your focus has been, though, especially on the research side. So you study sleep and more specifically bedtime procrastination.

4:01Jonathan Fields: For people hearing that phrase for the first time, which I'm guessing is a lot of people, what is it really and why do we care? I think for a lot of people hearing that phrase, they will feel guilt around bedtime procrastination. They will feel cautious of their bedtime behaviors. They may feel like they're doing something wrong. And this is something that my research has found. And I would love to dive into that. Bedtime procrastination is when you intentionally delay your bedtime. And an important caveat is without any external circumstances. So not because your kid has been sick, because your dog is up in the middle of the night, because you're a shift worker and you can't go to bed until 2am.

4:48You delay your bedtime because you want to. There's something intrinsic and internal that makes you say, you know, I know I'm not going to feel as good tomorrow, but my night brain just wants some me time and wants to do something now. And that's what I'm optimizing for. So you really optimize for the moment rather than your future self. Now, bedtime procrastination really started doing the rounds online during the pandemic, actually, in early 2020. And it was called revenge bedtime procrastination. And in the public media, there was this concept that we were getting revenge on our employers or our kids or whatever the thing was that was taking our time and attention during the day.

5:34Jonathan Fields: I mean, that's such an interesting point, though, because it implies that there's a lack of agency in other parts of life. So maybe the revenge part of it is, oh, this is something where nobody can stop me from doing this. right and at night time when the house is silent when everyone has gone to bed when you're finished with work and your after dinner work emails and whatever else it is you're doing that time is one where you have complete autonomy and you can really dictate your schedule in a way that many people can't in the afternoon or other parts of the evening yeah and again um you're very intentional about carving out the fact that you know this is not about shift work or having to cover or having a sick kid or having something where it's just a circumstance where you really do have to respond to it.

6:22Jonathan Fields: And you may end up being up half the night because you got to take care of something. This is you hitting a certain moment where you're kind of, your brain is like, I probably should be going to bed now. And we'll talk about that word should also. What does this look like in real life? What are just real life examples of this? So what we found is that most of the time that people are using screens. So you're watching TV or Netflix or whatever it may be. You're using your phone. You might be playing a game. You might be doing a crossword. You might be reading a book, but mostly you're going to be using the screen.

6:56And you just want some me time. So people will think that they should go to bed at a certain time because maybe they have a scheduled bedtime. Maybe they need to get up for a certain alarm time in the morning, whatever it may be. and people are just pushing their bedtime beyond that time.

7:17Jonathan Fields: So before we get into this in a lot more detail, I guess the big question in my head is, why does this matter? I mean, what is the harm being done in just like, okay, so I want instead of going to bed 11, I'm going to end up going to bed at two. Like what's the harm that's being done or why is this not an okay thing? To be a scientist is to not give you a definitive answer on this and to say, well, there could be harm and there could not be harm. And if there is harm, it is in affecting your sleep schedule, not getting the duration or quality of sleep that your body needs and having an inconsistent sleep schedule, which actually matters quite a lot.

8:00So when I started researching this topic, there was a lot of information in the media. There were some studies that were suggesting that, hey, bedtime procrastination is bad because it affects our sleep. And if we aren't getting enough sleep, whatever that looks like for people, that is bad for their health. So we're kind of coming in with a lot of assumptions and we said, okay, we're going to do a big review and just have a look at all of the results that exist in the literature, in the scientific literature. So we did a big analysis of all the studies out there and we did find that there was an association between higher bedtime procrastination, lower sleep quality, lower sleep duration and increased daytime fatigue.

8:40Okay, so if you are procrastinating your bedtime, there's a link with these different sleep outcomes being bad, right? So that could be the case except there is just so much individual difference in our lives, right? Like in how much sleep we need, in are we going to work the next morning? Is it a weekend? Those types of things where it's really hard to have these blanket statements where you say, hey, bedtime procrastination is bad because maybe it's not all of the time, but perhaps it's not bad for everyone and perhaps there's something else going on there. And I think that as a scientist, you can get this high level data, you can say bedtime procrastination is bad, But along the way, what we discovered was that no one had actually spoken to people and sat down and said, hey, what are you doing and why are you doing this?

9:33And so we did that for a study. We did an interview-based study where we just asked people, hey, what's going on? Tell me about your sleep routine to actually figure out what people were doing. And this is one of my favorite studies that I have led in my academic career, because what we discovered was that people had this psychological need for me time. And up until that point, a lot of the literature had kind of dismissed that there was any need or driver behind this behavior and that it was just something that should be stopped. But when people say, I have no autonomy, I need me time, I like to pursue interests.

10:13And this is the only time that I have in the day to explore that part of my identity. Or I want to socialize with my friends. And so every Wednesday night, every Friday night, every Saturday night, I stay up, have my bedtime to do that. There's this meaning and need that comes out of those conversations that to that point had really been missed.

10:35Jonathan Fields: I mean, that's so interesting, right? Because I think the normal association is to say, well, you just keep blowing past your bedtime. You know you should be going to bed early, but it's a couple hours later. And we start to moralize this decision. We start to sort of judge. And we start to self-shame also. But what you're saying here, if I'm getting this right, is that bedtime procrastination can, for some, really be about trying to meet a need that the rest of the day just isn't meeting. And then it becomes really complicated as a scientist and someone who cares about sleep health and wants people to have the best possible sleep health for them.

11:13Because you're like, okay, this behavior isn't great for some people, but they also need it to fulfill different psychological needs that they have. So how can we meet them in the middle in a way? How can we ensure that they are getting the sleep that they need, that they're not tired during the day? Because that can have all kinds of flow-on effects for your mood and your relationships and not showing up to work and not being productive and calling in sick. And all of these consequences in everything from the workplace and the economy to your personal life. So how can we help people have good sleep health but also be fulfilled humans?

11:54Jonathan Fields: Yeah. Yeah. Did you see patterns when you were doing this research in terms of like, okay, so like maybe there are needs that are just not being met or desires not being met during the day. And here's this little window right before I go to bed where I get to control it. Were there common patterns or common unmet needs that you saw? One of the interesting ones that came up was niche interest. I thought this was really interesting because a lot of people were watching YouTube videos before they went to bed. I have a YouTube channel as well. And so I thought that was really funny because I had never before considered that the time of day when people were watching my YouTube videos and it might actually be when they're up in the middle of the night or just before they're going to bed.

12:34So a lot of people would say things like, you know, it was 10 o 'clock and I just started wondering, how are the pyramids made? And then I started watching videos on ancient Egypt and then all of a sudden it was 2 a.m. So people were talking about that. Some people were talking about how they, for example, exist in a society where they can't express all parts of their identity. And then they can watch videos, join online communities in the late hours of the night to be part of those communities. I thought that was really interesting. This behavior of procrastinating your bedtime, we think, may be more common in people who are new parents, in people who have ADHD, in people who are new workers, so who started new careers where they may not have as much autonomy as people who may be middle-aged career.

13:28So it's really interesting to consider the populations and the people who may be more likely to procrastinate going to bed.

13:37Jonathan Fields: Yeah. I mean, so interesting, right? Because those populations you just identified, there are a lot of them where if you ask them some version of the question, like, do you have enough me time in your life? Probably a lot of them would answer no. So then it would make sense that at that time before they go to bed, it's like, I've got to sneak this in because I'm losing myself and my sense of identity. The way that they spend that time though, I mean, so you just shared watching YouTube videos is one particular way. So maybe it's you have a fascination or an interest or a curiosity and you're like, okay, so this is a time I get to go and play with it, explore.

14:11Jonathan Fields: The community thing is really interesting to me also. Take me more into that. In the study we did, which was the interview-based study, when we spoke to people, there was one person who we spoke to who I identified as queer. And they said that in my job every day, I can't really tell people about this. I feel like I can't talk to people about this, but I just need a space where I can be part of my community. And whatever the need or community or interest is, often our days are so busy, are so packed with work and caregiving and appointments and all of the other things that we need to do, this time before bed or when perhaps we should be in bed, whatever should means, is the time that people have to actually explore that.

15:00And something that I grapple with as a sleep researcher is that the guidelines say, don't use technology 60 minutes before you go to bed, right? That's what's put out from the American Academy of Sleep Medicine. There are reasons that these guidelines exist, but people don't follow them because this time, 60 minutes before we go to sleep, is often the only time we have to be a part of those communities, to explore those interests. And these other things are also important for our well-being, right? Like socialization is important for well-being. Having a strong sense of self is important for well-being.

15:41So how do we balance all of these things like sleep health and mental health and socializing and self-identity? How do they all fit together in the puzzle of our overall health?

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18:59Jonathan Fields: Like this is the sleep ritual that you have to have. This is a morning ritual. This is an evening ritual. Like these are the five things that will ensure you do it. And it's almost like sleep hacking has become a performance sport. I mean, there's a whole industry that supports it, right? So how do you feel about all that? I think we know. From my perspective, stress and anxiety are the top reasons why people have trouble falling asleep. So I think that wind down routines are super important. If there is technology that supports you winding down, whether that is some fancy EEG headband that you can meditate with, whether that is a white noise machine, whether that is some kind of weighted blanket that can help you feel more secure, I am all for that.

19:47I do think that technology and these different innovations are tools that we can use in our very chaotic, busy lives to help us de-stress and to help us wind down and to help us just feel at peace in the evening, which can help us fall asleep, right? So I'm definitely not opposed to the greater sleep industry in that sense. Something that does bug me, if we want to talk about that, is how a lot of these innovations fall into the marketing and advertising cycle where they promise better sleep. And I think that that's really hard to prove. That can look different for everyone. and what it can do is lead people to, when they can't sleep, buy products rather than talk to their physician.

20:39The amount of people who come to me and say, Vanessa, I'm just having trouble sleeping. What do you think I should buy to help? And the answer to that is therapy is actually the gold standard recommended treatment by the American Academy of Sleep Medicine to help with sleep issues and uh there's a lot to unpack there like a lot of people don't want to go to sleep therapy they just want to like buy some robotic pillow that might help them fall asleep a few minutes faster right except it's just interesting how we assume that we need to do more to help us sleep rather than less hmm deconstruct that a little bit more so when people have trouble sleeping there's almost this consumerist mindset that if we just buy one more thing it will help solve the problem so if i'm having trouble falling asleep or if i wake up overnight should i buy a four thousand dollar pod that cools my bed that i can put on my mattress and gives me all of these statistics in the morning?

21:49Or should I take more time off work, take time to de-stress, like actually do less in our lives in a way that could help with personal stress or anxiety? That's what I mean.

22:04Jonathan Fields: So if I'm getting it right, it's less that you're not saying, look, all of these different things may not help a particular person in a particular moment. But for a lot of people, there's a bigger, more central thing to really dive into, to explore, to unpack that may well have a much more substantial impact on your sleep. So rather than sort of like trying to buy the things that may work on the fringes, what if we go into the core and really deal with what that might be? Does that make sense? Yeah, it does. And I will just give a little plug for a type of therapy called CBTI, which is cognitive behavioral therapy for insomnia.

22:45Many people won't have heard it, but it is the number one recommended treatment for people who have trouble falling asleep, who wake up during the night. It's covered by health insurance and it is really effective. It has very high long-term effects, but a lot of people don't know about it because it's a six-week program that you have to do and not a pill that you can take or a blanket that you can buy. and I think that for some of the other things that can help people fall asleep I don't want to discount those you know if people are drinking a certain type of tea or using a certain type of blanket or doing these things and they feel like it's helping them fall asleep and they're not waking up overnight great but I think it is always worthwhile in a conversation about sleep to actually let people know what the number one recommended treatment is.

23:38Jonathan Fields: Yeah. I mean, that makes so much sense to me also, because, you know, when I, I know when I've gone through windows where I'm struggling and granted, everyone has a different pattern and a different life. Often for me, you know, it'll be, I'm spinning about something, you know, so it's what's happening with me psychologically. It's like, what's like, and for me, so for me, things like a long-time practice in mindfulness, meditation, and things like that have been incredibly effective at helping me, okay, say, oh, wait, wait, wait, wait, thinking, I'm spinning about something, just let it go, come back to my breath.

24:13Jonathan Fields: More behavioral interventions have been super helpful to me to get back to it. And I also do, in full disclosure, I listen to things, I have the apps, I have the devices, but it's not a yes and for thing for me, or it's not an either-or thing for me. It's more like a really trying to deal with the core and then a yes-end. I want to drop into your earlier comments about screens, and I want to impact that a little bit more also because one of the things that we always hear and that we have been told over and over and over is, you know, whether it's one hour or two hours or three hours before you get it, you must be away from screens.

24:53Jonathan Fields: And oftentimes the, you know, I've heard, Well, it's the blue light in the screen that somehow reacts with your brain and doesn't allow you to dial down to produce melatonin. Take me into what the truth is here. I'm so happy that you asked me this question because there are a lot of misconceptions out there about blue light. And what you just hit on is kind of true. And that is part of the problem. So you mentioned blue light and melatonin. Now, blue light can suppress our production of melatonin, and that is a real biological mechanism. What is nuanced is the effect that that actually has on our sleep.

25:29Okay. So there's a very famous Harvard study that was done about 10 years ago that I see cited really often in a way that's kind of designed to scare us and make blue light the villain of our sleep. And in the study, people read e-books or a regular paper book. And the people who read e-books, their melatonin was delayed by 90 minutes. The melatonin production was delayed by 90 minutes. So that's substantial. It is substantial, and I see that statistic thrown around a lot. But if you go and you unpack the methods of this study, they read an e-book on maximum brightness 30 centimeters away from their face for four hours before a set bedtime.

26:12And I just like to think about how that translates to real life. Wait, who actually does that? If it does that, who has four hours to read an e-book before they go to bed? I'd love to do that. Who is reading it on maximum brightness, right? So I think it helps to unpack the methods of a lot of these studies. But what was really interesting about this one study was even though melatonin production was delayed by 90 minutes, sleep onset, so the time that people fall asleep, was only delayed by just under 10 minutes. So I think it's pretty remarkable that you can even use a device on maximum brightness for four hours before you try to fall asleep.

26:50It can suppress your melatonin production, but then you still only fall asleep 10 minutes later, right? Now, keep in mind that this is just one study. There have been so many studies in this area. And a big review paper came out at the end of 2024 that collated all of the research on blue light and actually found that in adults, it has a negligible effect on sleep onset latency, which is how fast you fall asleep, right? Some studies like this one found, okay, there was a 10-minute delay. Other studies found a three-minute delay. Other studies found that people fell asleep faster, right? So there's just evidence kind of across the spectrum of quicker or slower or whatever.

27:31And it just kind of all pans out around zero where you're like, yeah, it's just there's maybe there's something happening here, but in our real lives, it's not really having much of an effect. Now, all of this happened. And also at the end of 2024, the National Sleep Foundation compiled a panel of experts on sleep health to really answer this question, like, does screen use at bedtime impact sleep health? And what they all concluded based on all of this evidence was that, and I think this is an important caveat, it does in children and teenagers, but in adults, there isn't clear evidence that there is an impact of screen use on our sleep health.

28:11And I really love telling people about the results of this expert panel, right? Because you have the leading experts in this from all across different fields, right? From circadian biology to sleep medicine to sleep psychology and research. And people came together and they just couldn't reach a consensus on if it was harmful.

28:32Jonathan Fields: Is there a sense for why the difference between kids and adults? Kids are a lot more sensitive to the effects of blue light than adults are. So it's not recommended. And kids screen time, I will say, is a whole other conversation that we could talk about for another hour. So that is the thinking behind that. Yeah. So then for adults, across a lot of different research, okay, yes, mechanistically, it may actually be impacting the onset of melatonin. But from a practical standpoint, behaviorally, it's not doing much for most people. Like maybe it pushes back sleep a couple of minutes, it sounds like, but for most people, it's kind of like a net zero impact or somewhat close to it.

29:24Exactly. From a real life practical perspective, there isn't much impact. Researchers have even wondered, okay, does the type of content matter. There have been studies where they have shown people suspenseful shows that end on a cliffhanger compared to boring environmental documentaries. And there hasn't really been an impact of that either. So really, it just comes back to you. And a lot about sleep is personalized. What are your preferences? What do you find relaxing? For some people, what they find relaxing are watching YouTube videos of pressure cleaning and drain cleaning and people scrubbing rust off metal parts in their garage, right?

30:10Jonathan Fields: And by the way, if you're joining us and that's you, no judgments whatsoever. That's fine. No, I mean, that's what some people like. Some people like listening to true crime podcasts that have so much gory detail and they actually find that relaxing and can listen to that two minutes before they go to sleep, right? It is so personalized about what we need in order to honestly just distract our mind a little bit from its own thoughts and help us wind down and blip into sleep. Yeah. When you're looking at that research also, I wonder if there's, was there a distinction made between, you know, watching a TV six to 12 feet away versus having, you know, a screen like much closer to you, whether it's a cell phone inches away or a notebook computer or something like that on your lap?

31:04In the research, TV is often called passive media because it's not interactive in the way where we scroll through it. We can swipe out of one thing and into another. We can accidentally end up in our work email and we have no idea how we got there because our thumbs just kind of took us there when we weren't really thinking. So there is some research that indicate passive media may benefit our sleep or may not have an impact as much as active media, which are things like scrolling through social media, texting with your friends, gaming, things that really require you to honestly be swiping or using a controller or whatever it may be and be really engaged in what you're doing.

31:49What I like to recommend is that people find a TV show or some kind of content that is longer form that they find relaxing and watch that before they go to bed. I think it's a really good way to wind down where we are downshifting in a way. We are thinking of how we can relax and how we can just mark the end of our day in a way. And I really like TV for that compared to phones.

32:15Jonathan Fields: You know, it's interesting, though, because even if we're talking about TV, what we're talking about here would be considered somewhat heresy amongst a certain corner of the sleep advice. In some ways, yes. And I mean, to anyone listening to this who thinks that this is bad advice, I would encourage them to read the latest research because there is so much that has come out in the last two years that has really captured the nuance of what is going on in our relationship with screens that didn't exist five years ago. And I think as scientists, it's really important to look at the new evidence and to consider that in terms of forming our opinions.

33:04And as a researcher, I do think that a lot of the guidelines should be updated to reflect using screens as sleep aids.

33:14Jonathan Fields: I mean, I'm reflecting back. I haven't done it in a long time. Like, we've had a rule sort of like for a long time, like no TV in the bedroom. Like, I think a lot of people heard that at one point. Like, all right, I'm going to do that. Yeah. And still, if I reflect back to an earlier time in my life where I had a TV in the bedroom, there were years where I would turn it on, put on a show, put the sleep timer on, and literally it would knock me out consistently. It was actually very effective at helping me fall asleep. Yeah, there's a sleep timer on TVs for a reason. Yeah, exactly. They have a button on the remote.

33:48Jonathan Fields: It's so interesting. Are there other things that are happening with electronic devices that are not necessarily related to the light or the screens themselves that are actually causing, contributing to sleep procrastination or sleep quality? Something that's really interesting about bedtime procrastination or sleep procrastination is that habit comes into it. So the way that we use habit or the term habit in science is kind of different to how we use it in everyday life. In everyday life, we just kind of use it to describe anything that we do. But in research, it's this invisible force that controls our behavior in a way that we don't think about.

34:28So if you say you're doing something on autopilot or you did something without thinking, that is habit coming into play. So for example, if you just pick up your phone and all of a sudden you're in Instagram and you don't remember unlocking your phone, you don't remember hitting the app icon, suddenly you're just there, that is habit at work because you have just kind of non-consciously got into this app. The really interesting thing with bedtime procrastination is a lot of people do it for an extended period of time. So we're not talking about 20 or 30 minutes before they go to bed. I mean like two hours or two and a half hours past when they wanted to go to bed to get up for work in the morning and they haven't even thought about it.

35:14This kind of came up in our research when people would say, I lost track of time, I was on autopilot, all of a sudden it was 2am. So you have this habit at play where it's really just shaping your behavior in a way that you don't realize. The reason I have started talking about habit in response to your question is because sometimes we need these environmental cues to come out of it, right? So if you're on autopilot and you're kind of not paying attention and your brain is just going on doing whatever it wanted to do. Sometimes a notification can help you come out of that. Sometimes you could get an alert on your watch being like, hey, you wanted to go to bed at 11 o 'clock, sign up for work at 6.30 in the morning.

36:00Do you want to do that? We have smart speakers. We have smart lights. We have all of these things in our home ecosystem that can actually help us come back to our intentions in a way that can be helpful that we can use to try to nudge our behavior more in line with where we wanted it to be. Yeah.

36:21Jonathan Fields: I mean, so it's almost like you're taking something where people might point to it and say, well, yeah, I just got caught in this loop of DMs or notifications or texts or like whatever, you know, like there's a new thing on my social media app. And you're saying, let's subvert that a little bit and use that as a trigger to let us know, oh, like to ask the question, am I spending my time in this moment? And like, am I honoring decision that's actually important to me? Maybe values-based decision or something. And can I use this as a pattern interrupt to say like, oh, like, I think actually it's important for me to maybe close the devices and head towards bed.

36:59Right. There's this thing in research called the intention behavior gap, and it exists across many areas of health, including sleep, where we have intentions to do things, whether it's to go to bed at a certain time, to go to the gym regularly, whatever that may look like. But our behavior is often quite different from what our intentions are. And this exists with bedtime and bedtime procrastination, where a lot of people have an intended bedtime or a scheduled bedtime, which is often driven by the time you need to get up for work or school or when your kids get up. And then we have the time that we actually go to bed and there's this discrepancy, right, between our intention and our behavior.

37:39And for a lot of people, they want to act more in line with their intentions, but they feel like they just can't, right? And what the research suggests is that forming these habits, so kind of closing that intention behavior gap is particularly hard in the evening. It is harder to form habits in the evening than it is in the morning. In the morning, we are kind of creatures of habit. It's easier to kind of get up and do things and have a set routine. By the time it gets to the end of the day, we have used our self-control all throughout the day. We have different hormonal changes than what we have in the morning.

38:19There's this kind of messy chaos that exists in our day that at the end of the day, we don't want to make decisions anymore. We don't really want to do what we know is probably good for us and what we intended to do in the morning. And in a really interesting way, this has come through in different studies. And some of my studies on bedtime procrastination, we sent people a text message as soon as they wake up and we've asked them like, hey, what time are you planning on going to bed tonight? They'll tell us a time and then there's always a discrepancy. They're always going to bed later than their intended time.

38:52In other studies on habit, researchers have asked people to form a new habit, in the case a stretching habit in this one study. And they've split people into two groups, morning people and evening people. And the morning people in this one study were able to form the habit much sooner than the evening people. It is just hard to form habits in the evening and to act in line with our intentions.

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43:03Jonathan Fields: Capital One N.A. Member FDIC.

43:10Jonathan Fields: So if one of the habits that we're looking to form is, quote, better sleep habits, that's going to fall under that. Like we're still going to be challenged by that as well. I think it's important that we don't communicate shame and guilt around using screens because using screens in the evening can be a way to wind down. People use them as a sleep aid. But at the same time, many people want to minimize their screen use at night. They want to reduce that. They want to get to bed at a different time. but much of the sleep advice emphasizes self-control right so oh you need more discipline you just need to do this you need to do that you need to turn your phone off you need to put it in another room you need to just stop using it at 11 p.m but this sleep advice asks people to be at their best at the exact moment when we're least resourced when we're exhausted and when we're exhausted at the end of a long day self-control is one of the first things to go so that's why it can be really hard to close that intention behavior gap, to act more in line with our intentions and to change our behavior in the evening.

44:16Jonathan Fields: Yeah. And unlike, you know, exercise, like I'm going to go off for 20 minutes. You could do that in the morning. You could do in the middle of the day. Like if it's a habit based on nighttime sleep, there's only one time to do it. Like you can't move it. It's like, oh, I'm going to go to bed earlier at 11am or something like that. It's like, it just, no, it has to happen at night, you know, assuming you're not a shift worker, you have other things going on. Yeah. I mean, it's really interesting the way that we're wired that way. So when you think about this and let's say somebody has been joining us and they're like, this all makes sense to me.

44:52Jonathan Fields: I would love, and I'm the person who is up. There's a huge gap between my intention, my behavior. I say every night I'm going to go to bed at 11 and one or two or three in the morning rolls around and have to get up at six or seven. And I feel like I feel that I am paying a price. Like this is a habit where there's, you know, bedtime procrastination. I wish I was behaving differently and I can feel it in my body. I can feel it in my bones. I can feel it in my state of mind. I am paying a price for this. I don't want to pay that price anymore. It's affecting me. And again, like you said earlier, some people actually may be fine with that.

45:28Jonathan Fields: But if you're joining, you're like, no, actually, I feel like I really am paying a price for this. And you want to change it. Take me into some of the ways that we might think about changing this behavior. So I ran a clinical trial where we tried a behavior change technique called behavioral substitution to help people reduce their bedtime procrastination for people who wanted to reduce their bedtime procrastination where this was their goal. And what we did was We took people through a habits coaching program. We helped them understand why they were delaying their bedtime and to find basically an alternate activity that they could do that would still give them some kind of reward that was similar to their screen time.

46:17Now, when you do studies, it's sometimes more black and white. We were trying to get people to do something that wasn't on their phone. But I think for the people listening here, if you change to a different phone-based activity, I think that's fine. But when we think about habits and forming habits, there's a habit loop that people may have heard of. There's a cue, so the trigger and the reason why you do that behavior. And then there's a reward after that. It's like, what are you getting out of that? And that can really reinforce different behaviors. So the first thing that we did with people was we had them monitor their behavior for a few weeks and kind of track why they were procrastinating their bedtime, like what was the cue or the trigger that led them to do that.

47:02And it's really interesting because it could just be a time of day. It could just be 11 o 'clock at night, every day at 11, I just start watching YouTube videos or scrolling TikTok or whatever it may be. It could be an emotion that you've had. Some people dread going to bed. They don't want the day to end or they don't want to have to get up to go to work in the morning. There's this concept called tomorrow aversion where people are like, oh, gosh, I don't want tomorrow to start. That's my work time and now is my fun time. So it could just be this emotion or it could be a room, a place in your house.

47:37You could walk into your bedroom and just flop down on your bed on a chair and just open up Instagram and just start scrolling or whatever it may be. So we really got people to monitor what the trigger was for their behavior and then what was the reward. So what were you getting out of it? Was it fun for you? Was it entertaining? Was it filling your need for me time? Were you finding community or identity? As we mentioned before, what are you getting out of it? And then we had one-on-one coaching sessions with people where we would ideate and brainstorm. What is something else you could do that could give you that reward?

48:16And can we come up with a plan to implement that into your evenings? Now, something that was fascinating about this study was we had two different experimental groups. We had one group that was an evening group. So they did this other activity before they went to bed. And the other group was a daytime group. But we thought, okay, if we could create a moment for me time in the middle of the day, would that prevent you from needing all of this me time and losing track of time when you went to bed? So we identified moments in people's day, like on your commute, can you listen to a podcast or watch a YouTube video?

48:53when you're in your lunch break at work, can you join these online communities? Can you spend some time on Instagram? Whatever you need. And what was fascinating was that the daytime group, it just didn't work. They still wanted something to do before they went to bed, right? And so, it's just something special and unique about this time before you go to bed where people are just looking specifically for something to do at that time to wind down. So that was fascinating.

49:25Jonathan Fields: Yeah, that's wild. What was the effect with the people who were doing the evening sort of substitution? Was it helpful? It was. Overall, there was a 29-minute reduction in their evening screen time, which I was surprised about because even though we had designed this study in line with health theories and using behavioral science and such. I just wondered if it would work because our screen habits are so strong. So yeah, so I mean, that was great. So I think just thinking about it from a habits perspective can be really helpful where you think, okay, self-control is just irrelevant at the end of the day because my night brain has no self-control left.

50:08So if I just want to think about my habits, this behavior that is normally automatic, what are my triggers and what's my reward and is there another thing that i can do at that time to essentially get the same reward so people people would do things like read a book listen to music one participant that we had said she was going to crochet because she just actually still wanted something to do with her hands instead of scrolling so it was very personalized in that People would think about why they were doing something, what they were doing, what they got out of it and choose an activity to replace it.

50:47So that is one thing that you can do. It's not easy, right? And it really, again, depends on you and what your cues are and what your rewards are. Some people have more success setting all of those external alarms, right? So setting a bedtime alarm on your phone or your watch, having your screen go to grayscale, muting notifications, putting your phone outside of your bedroom and things like that. There are all of these apps and devices that you can use to try to limit your screen time, which people have varying success with as well. And I will emphasize that these behaviors often have seasons.

51:34You use that language at the beginning of the podcast. And even for myself, with someone who is an expert in this, there are seasons where I'm great at going to bed consistently and getting great sleep. And there are seasons where I'm stressed and I am using Instagram in bed on my phone and looking at my work emails in the middle of the night. And it takes time to reset and an effort to reset. and there will be good seasons and bad seasons.

52:07Jonathan Fields: And I think probably going in knowing that also helps speak to the sense of judgment, potentially even rise into a level of shame and just kind of like give yourself self-forgiveness to a certain extent. It's like, you know what? Sometimes there are going to be things going on in my life or maybe physiologically or biologically where it's going to be more challenging. Sometimes it's going to be more easy for me. Um, when, so if somebody is joining us and they're kind of like, all right, I would like to do one thing tonight to try. Um, is there sort of like a more, and I know like a lot of what you're about is it really depends on the person.

52:45Jonathan Fields: It's very individualized. You have to run the experiments. Is there something that you've seen, um, be interesting or effective more broadly as sort of like a first step or experiment for somebody to try? the first step that i would recommend for anyone is set a bedtime i mean i know this is so basic and we've spent this whole time talking about bedtime procrastination and going to bed but when i have done research studies when i've spoken to people and i've done public talks i often ask people to give a show of hands for who actually has a bedtime and it's often less than half of the people who I'm talking to.

53:25For adults, it's common to just go to bed when you're tired, to not really have a set bedtime. And one of the best things for our sleep health is consistency, going to bed and getting up at roughly the same time every day. Some really interesting new research on screens and sleep has indicated that just being consistent with screens is one of the most important things. So there was a, and I'm such a research nerd where you've asked me such a simple question. I'm like, wait, Jonathan, let me tell you about another study. This study just came out of Canada and they looked at 1 ,300 people and they split them up into three groups based on their screen use.

54:09So there were occasional users that were just using their phone before bed once a week, moderate users who were using their phone maybe three or five times a week, and then regular users who were using their phone pretty much every day before they went to bed. And what they found was sleep health was actually best in the occasional and regular users. So people who are using their phone every night before they go to bed, but in the moderate users, they reported the worst sleep health of the three groups. So if you're just using your phone like three nights a week before you go to bed or watching TV or using technology or whatever it may be, and you're procrastinating your bedtime only those nights, that can actually have some of the worst impacts on your sleep health, right?

54:58If you use tech before bed, whether that is your phone or TV or a tablet or whatever it may be, but you're consistent about it and you have a bedtime, where you can log off and be like, okay, it's time for me just to lie down now and listen to an audio book or a sleep story or meditation and put on that sleep timer and actually fall asleep, you can be golden, right? And I think one of the most important things is just thinking about consistency and thinking about having a bedtime and stop obsessing over the minutes that we're spending on our phones and the blue light and all the rest of it. Have a bedtime and think about something you can do before that that is enjoyable that you look forward to so you can just create this nice time this nice wind down routine for yourself love that and i love the sort of like repeated

55:56Jonathan Fields: reminder to say um we are all unique snowflakes um there's research there are generalities at the end of the day we just have to run our own experiments and see what works for us You know, these are things that like consistency is important. Yes, across a wide number of people and certain amount of people can do different types of screen time. So, you know, like rather than just accept some sort of dogma that's being given, identify a few things that you might explore experimenting with, do the experiments and see what's actually true for you at the end of the day. yeah and i would say start small as well start with your bedtime or start with one thing a lot of people when they think about changing behavior have grand plans to change a lot of things and it's hard to follow through on so many changes at once yeah i think we've all felt that it's like i'm gonna change these three things nope um excited to uh um i actually am not somebody who sets a bedtime and I'm excited to actually run that experiment myself starting tonight.

57:01Jonathan Fields: We'll see what happens. It feels like a place for us to come full circle. I always wrap up the same question in this container of Good Life Project if I offer up the phrase to live a good life. What comes up? To live a good life is to feel well rested. Thank you. Yeah, thank you. Hey, before you leave, be sure to tune in next week for our conversation with Elena Brower about the wisdom of emptiness and the art of showing up to your life completely. Be sure to follow Good Life Project wherever you get your podcasts so you never miss an episode. This episode of Good Life Project was produced by executive producers, Lindsay Fox and me, Jonathan Fields.

57:38Jonathan Fields: Editing help by Alejandro Ramirez and Troy Young. Chris Carter crafted our theme music. And of course, if you haven't already done so, please go ahead and follow Good Life Project wherever you get your podcasts. If you found this conversation interesting or valuable and inspiring, chances are you did because you're still here. Do me a personal favor, a seven second favor and share it with just one person. If you want to share it with more, hey, that's awesome. But just one person, even then invite them to talk with you about what you both discovered to reconnect and explore ideas that really matter, because that's how we all come alive together.

58:14Jonathan Fields: Until next time, I'm Jonathan Fields, signing off for Good Life Project.

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