7 Tactics to Guarantee Yourself Less Sleep

Welcome to The Purpose Memo, a newsletter where I give you ideas for wrestling your life back from digital technology and living a principled life. 

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“Beware of the barrenness of a busy life.” - Seneca

For several years, I’ve been perfecting my craft in a very niche skillset: Revenge Bedtime Procrastination. 

Revenge Bedtime Procrastination (RBP) is the act of deliberately staying up late in order to reclaim personal time that was lost to the obligations of the day. If your day is spent working, fulfilling family obligations, doing household chores, and plodding through (or incessantly thinking about) your to-do list, it feels like the day would be lost if you went to sleep at a reasonable time. 

A Revenge-Bedtime-Procrastinator thinks: “I spent the entire day giving my time to other people, but these late night hours are mine.”

Chronic RBP leads to sleep deprivation, lower energy levels, a worsened overall mood, a short temper, and a general cynicism toward life.

If you’ve ever wondered how you might become an expert at RBP, you’re in luck.

In today’s newsletter, I want to share 7 strategies to help you execute Revenge Bedtime Procrastination to perfection.  

Bring your phone to bed with you

This might be the only recommendation you need. When you bring your phone to bed instead of plugging it in on the kitchen counter, you’ve created a portal to an infinite amount of mind-numbing entertainment that can keep you awake for hours. 

Keep a charger ready on your nightstand.

Use multiple screens at a time

If taking your phone to your room is a bridge too far, or if you share a room with someone that makes it tricky, just do the same thing in your living room. The living room provides a strategic advantage: screen stacking. The ideal setup incorporates one large screen (your TV), one medium screen (your laptop), and one small screen (your phone) simultaneously. You’ll get phenomenal results. 

TV in your bedroom? Even better.

Plus, all of the blue light will throw your circadian rhythm out of whack, making it even more unlikely that you’ll get sufficient sleep. 

Engage in activities that don’t have stopping cues

A stopping cue is a signal that indicates when it is time to stop a particular activity. Since anything with a natural endpoint can be a trigger for heading to bed, you need to find activities that will keep your attention indefinitely.

Social media is your best option. Most platforms have removed every kind of stopping cue, so you can scroll for hours without noticing how much time has passed.

TV shows are also a good option. Though there used to be stopping cues when an episode ended, most streaming platforms start playing the next episode in less than five seconds, making TV much more effective for assisting RBP.

Avoid books at all costs

Choosing to read a book instead of scrolling on your phone or watching TV is a death wish to your RBP aspirations. Books have a way of calming you down. They gently transition you from the busyness of the day into the quiet silence of the night. They are devoid of digital stimulants and have clear stopping cues like the end of a chapter, so I’d highly dissuade you from reading at the end of a day.

Eat food continuously

Snacking late into the night—particularly on foods like pizza, sugary cereals, potato chips, cheese, and chocolate—can kill two birds with one stone: activating the reward system in your brain (dopamine) to treat yourself for a hard day, and creating a craving for more food so you continue eating rather than going to bed. 

Eliminate all leisure and rest during the day

This applies for weekdays and weekends. A person who intentionally sets aside time to pause, relax, and do things they enjoy will be significantly less likely to feel the urge to stay up late. During the day, make sure you are perpetually doing something useful, or at least feeling like you should be doing something useful, so the drive for RBP is strong by nighttime. 

Most of us are very busy and overwhelmed, so this one is easy. But it’s worth noting: there are some people who go to great lengths to build margin into their lives, even if it means sacrificing money, status, and the feeling of being “in the loop.” These people are very bad at RBP.

Reject the idea that mornings are good

Mornings present many possibilities: 

If you start wondering whether going to bed at a decent time would open the door to all of these possibilities, your RBP will suffer. On the contrary, reminding yourself that you “aren’t a morning person”—especially if you think you might actually enjoy the morning if only you went to bed early enough—will make burning the midnight oil far more tempting. 

Revenge is a key part of Revenge Bedtime Procrastination. If your day begins on a positive note, you may not to feel the need for “revenge” come nightfall.

If you insisted on becoming decidedly bad at Revenge Bedtime Procrastination, I suppose I would give you the opposite advice: 

But you wouldn’t want to do that… would you?

Thanks for reading!

Two reminders:

See you next week.

PW