Low Quality Sleep Can Lead To Procrastination According To Various Studies
A research was recently published on Frontiers in Psychology. This research gives fascinating insight when it comes to the connection between the quality of your sleep and the tendency to procrastinate. The research studied if low quality sleep can lead to procrastination.
In previous studies, it was stated that procrastination is increased in people who found it difficult to self-regulate. What this means is that a majority of people would procrastinate because they find it difficult to control their behavior. This lack of self-regulation causes them to engage in activities that are unwanted, and does not align with their goals
Previous studies have also shown that some people are better at self-regulation. The ability to regulate your behavior is conceptualized through self-control. This self-control allows you to regulate your habits and stay away from unwanted behavior. Hence, people with low self-control are more likely to procrastinate than people with high self-control.
The ability to self-regulate can be taxing on the brain/cognitive perspective, so sleep plays a very important part in it. You need to sleep properly to replenish the mental juices to help you self-regulate more efficiently. You have to understand though that the kind of sleep is important. For sleep to have proper beneficial and restorative effect, it has to be high quality sleep. The quality of your sleep would depend on a lot of factors like how long you slept and how many times you woke up in the night.
The goal of the research in Frontiers in Psychology was to determine the following:
- How low quality sleep can lead to procrastination.
- When the relationship between self-control and procrastination can be moderated by a person’s self-control.
The researchers looked at a diverse sample of adults (N = 71), who work in a wide range of industries, such as finance, education, construction, healthcare, and sales.
The results from the experiment was gathered using a dairy method. The participants in the study were asked to record their sleep patterns, sleep quality and their tendency to procrastinate in the workplace for a period of 10 days. Assessment of their procrastination was done using a series of question and answer method. Participants were asked questions and they would rate the degree to which they agree with each statements.
The result from the study showed that low quality of sleep caused increased procrastination the next day and the effects of sleep quality is magnified in people with low self-control. What this means is that people with low self-control are more affected by the quality of their sleep than people with high self-control.
The findings on people’s ability to procrastinate was further explained using different variables. The study showed that a person’s procrastination ability is more affected by within-person variables such as the quality of sleep that between-person variables like the ability to exhibit self-control.
The evidence for this variables shows the significant difference in procrastination levels between people with high self-control and low self-control when both groups suffer from low sleep quality. When the two sets of people have a good quality of sleep, the difference between the two of them was small.
What the results showed that most people are more likely to procrastinate not because of some personality traits, but because they have traits that make them more susceptible to external influences that would cause them to procrastinate. The result showed that treatments which attack these external influences had a better chance of treating procrastination, even if there are more prone to it.
The result of these study has several practical uses. The result showed that increasing the quality of your sleep would reduce the probability of your procrastinating the next day even if you have low self-control or very prone to procrastination.
For the result of the study to be effective, a particular factor most be taken care of: bedtime procrastination. This occurs when people delay the time they go to bed because dilatory behaviors such as playing games at night or engaging in social media right before bed. The effect of this behavior causes you to be tired before going to bed and then tired the next day hence causing you to procrastinate.
To solve this problem, you have to identify the things that make you go to bed later than normal. You should have a plan of action in place. These sets of action would allow you to deal with the various reasons which cause you to procrastinate.
Let’s say you spend a lot of time on social media before you go to sleep, you can set an internet lock on your devices that stops you from going online from around 9pm to 6am the next day. This lock would increase the chances of you going to bed early.
Using this approach is important if you find yourself repeating procrastinatory patterns over time, even after trying to stop them with only willpower. If you take time to assess these problem, you would find solutions. They are a lot of cognitive and behavioural techniques you can take to deal with the issue.
