What’s the cure to languishing besides revenge bedtime procrastination?

You may have heard about languishing, recently written about by the amazing organizational psychologist, Adam Grant — the ‘meh’ feeling between depression and flourishing (“I’m not doing great, but I’m not doing horribly”) that everyone is talking about now.

“It wasn’t burnout — we still had energy. It wasn’t depression — we didn’t feel hopeless. We just felt somewhat joyless and aimless…. Languishing is a sense of stagnation and emptiness. It feels as if you’re muddling through your days, looking at your life through a foggy windshield.”

Related to this, another term coined by the Chinese, 報復性熬夜 or “revenge bedtime procrastination” is when you know you should go to sleep but refuse to in order to spend it on “me time” (but is usually something closer to scrolling on your social media poison of choice). Revenge bedtime procrastination is said to occur when you don’t feel like you have a lot of freedom or control in your everyday life and are often overworked and overwhelmed. Thus you steal time away from your sleeping life to regain time just for your personal life.

Sound familiar?

SO WHAT DO WE KNOW?

What might be causing languishing?

Heightened and chronic levels of uncertainty/learned helplessness. Often events occur outside of one’s control that cannot be anticipated or prevented (i.e., some people are switching jobs, reevaluating/redefining their priorities/lifestyle/routines).

• Learned helplessness studies have shown that if people (or animals) believe they are helpless, even when they are in situations where they are no longer helpless, they’ve developed a mindset that it is futile to try. This occurs when they perceive their helplessness to be permanent (“this will never go away”) and pervasive (“a lot of these problems will never be solved”).
• Uncertainty is not the same but if over a long enough period of time, and with little predictability, it can make people mentally exhausted or lead to burnout (or learned helplessness). Studies have shown that uncertainty is mentally taxing on brain systems and linked to mental distress and physical illness.

Reduced anticipation of positive future events. Brain scans have shown a connection between well-being and anticipating future positive events. In addition to uncertainty, things that we would often look forward to (vacation somewhere else?), seeing friends/family, etc. may be replaced by something more cyclical (a similar cadence of days).

Increased boredom. Variation and diversity can shake us out of monotony. Hedonic adaptation means that whatever was stimulating, we easily adapt to which some say creates a hedonic treadmill of constantly re-energizing a feeling that you’ve grown accustomed to. In a weird world where things are in flux yet everything stays the same, people are looking for immediate and short reductions in boredom. Few studies on boredom have been done but there seem to be 3 boredom profiles, reasons why they get bored, and actions and consequences in coping with boredom

• Reappraisers — probably the most adaptive profile with the best success outcomes (performance and well-being), their boredom stemmed from the work being overwhelming/difficult, monotonous, or purposeless. However, they coped by changing their views of the situation and actively seeking value and meaning into their work.
• Criticizers — often find their work overwhelming/difficult, found the work meaningless, and (this was done with university students) didn’t like their teacher. They often coped by trying to change the situation by suggesting changes or giving critical feedback to their teacher.
• Evaders — This group cognitively avoided the problem (i.e., tried not to think about it/ignored it), and/or behaviorally avoided the problem (i.e., tried to distract themselves with something completely different). These coping behaviors are okay for short term fixes but for chronic elements of boredom, they are maladaptive. Their triggers are least understood because often if there are too many factors causing boredom, no matter your profile, you will tend to become an evader which is associated with more negative consequences to performance and well-being. This may be because there are too many factors that they may be aware of and/or can address adequately, so escaping provides temporary relief to a perceived futile situation (see learned helplessness above).

Inability to focus. With WFH and 24/7 connection to the internet (and notifications), breaking news, our inability to focus is probably worse. A study showed that multitasking with media was a unique predictor of depression and social anxiety symptoms. They found that media usage on its own wasn’t a unique predictor for these symptoms, but the multitasking component was.

Reduced social connection. If anything, the pandemic has redefined how we connect with others. Trepidation towards physical touch or large groups of people, people have been resorting to social bubbles, copious amounts of video calls/celebrations/dates. A study on social media usage and face to face interaction showed that social media is good for helping people feel connected to others socially, but only face to face communication was associated with both feeling connected to others and not feeling socially isolated — meaning we can connect to others online but still feel lonely.

What might be causing Revenge Bedtime Procrastination (RBP)?

Reduced control over restorative time. With our time being pulled in multiple directions (see Inability to focus), there is little time for us to feel mentally nourished. Emergency medical residents experienced burnout and one of the factors the authors suggested was not having enough time outside of work to nurture personal aspects of their lives.

Reduced will-power. We get mentally fatigued from making too many choices, from tackling hard problems, from dealing with too much stress or conflict (oh hello chronic levels of uncertainty!). We often make worse decisions at the end of the day due to cognitive fatigue. If we are doing a mindless task (like scrolling endlessly?), it may be because we’re mentally too drained for other things, but we seek shots of dopamine (see the next point).

Maladaptive emotional coping strategies (Very related to Evaders in the Boredom profiles above) — not all emotional approaches are bad, but there is research to show that some like distraction or escapism can sidestep rather than manage problems. RBP seems to be talked about as especially regrettable when people use this time to do something mindless that they would prefer not to do. There are other more adaptive emotional coping strategies that you can try (see below).

SO WHAT…

…about me?

Create certain, positive future events (increase anticipation of positive future events). Where can we create celebration or fanfare that might not be easily derailed by outside events? Just remember, the goal isn’t that it will go perfectly as planned, but that it is there to help you anticipate something great. Note: Don’t make this an excuse to turn this into a shopping addiction — try to focus on experiences for a longer lasting effect.

Find your locus of control (reduce feelings of helplessness). What small, enjoyable tasks can you do right now? For example, are there any simple routines that you can set (some suggestions — learning a new skill, even a simple routine like making your bed)? Or you could combine the first one — can you plan a positive future event?

Simplify (increase will-power/focus). Reduce cognitive load by reducing the amount of decisions you have to make so that you can focus your attention on more important things. Does this mean having a style uniform? Does this mean having a set menu? Does this mean listing out exactly what you need to do the next day so you don’t have to decide when you wake up? Identify times where you need to make decisions that aren’t important that are draining energy from more important decisions you want to make. On a related point…

Decide early (increase will-power/control over personal time). Decide early (when we have mental strength) on how we will intentionally meet the end of the day. What activities actually make us feel restored — remind us of who we are? Can we set up automatic reminders to help us stay the course?

Emotionally cope in a healthier way (and reduce boredom/find meaning). Journaling, meditation, and reframing (changing your perspective on specific events) can help you be more resilient to uncertain events and find important lessons in your everyday life. Another interesting way I’ve read from Storyworthy is to take 5 minutes to capture (write down) moments in the day — he says that these moments help punctuate our days so they don’t seem to bleed together (have you ever asked “how are we already at the end of May?”). I think this exercise is actually a practice in mindfulness, but it reminds us that important and meaningful things may have happened in our day and we might go through missing/forgetting them.

…about work?

Create clear boundaries for work and for personal life. We used to have a commute, maybe we had a vacation where internet was shoddy to force us to detox from work. What new ways can we cut ties? Digital well-being is on the rise, there are apps that can help you disconnect. Are there ways in which you can rearrange your work schedule to reduce death by meetings and set aside time that matters? (I’m taking Wednesdays and Fridays as no-meeting days, I know this is not a luxury that everyone has, but if you have it, consider it).

Block chunks of time to create flow. Find a state of flow by limiting distractions — Adam Grant mentioned the idea of flow, a state where there is intense concentration and focus, that could stop us from languishing. However, flow is probably what we DON’T want if we want to banish RBP — at least at night. During the day however, this is where our best work can be done. Similar to setting boundaries between work and personal life, can we set boundaries between intense individual work and collaboration?

Remind yourself/others of the value of your work (and reduce bordeom/find meaning).

• Yourself — seek feedback: how has your work impacted your stakeholders? What things are you learning that have long-term impact on your career? What connections have you made that influence your life for the better at work?
• Others — Help remind your colleagues of how they have made an impact in your work/life. Also a shout to managers — oftentimes, it’s hard for those so focused on the mundane, nitty gritty parts of their task, to see how their work fits into a grander vision. Draw the link between their effort and a greater impact to the business.

WANT TO LEARN MORE?

Ahn, D., & Shin, D. H. (2013). Is the social use of media for seeking connectedness or for avoiding social isolation? Mechanisms underlying media use and subjective well-being. Computers in Human Behavior, 29(6), 2453–2462.

Becker, M. W., Alzahabi, R., & Hopwood, C. J. (2013). Media multitasking is associated with symptoms of depression and social anxiety. Cyberpsychology, behavior and social networking, 16(2), 132–135.

Csikszentmihalyi, M. (1997). The masterminds series.Finding flow: The psychology of engagement with everyday life. Basic Books.

Daniels, L. M., Tze, V. M., & Goetz, T. (2015). Examining boredom: Different causes for different coping profiles. Learning and Individual Differences, 37, 255–261.

Diener, E., Lucas, R. E., & Scollon, C. N. (2009). Beyond the hedonic treadmill: Revising the adaptation theory of well-being. In The science of well-being (pp. 103–118). Springer, Dordrecht.

Grant, A. There’s a Name for the Blah You’re Feeling: It’s Called Languishing, The New York Times, May 5, 2021.

Liang, L.H. The psychology behind ‘revenge bedtime procrastination’, BBC, November 26, 2020.

Maier, S.F. & Seligman, M.E. (2016). Learned helplessness at fifty: Insights from neuroscience. Psychol Rev. 123(4), 349–367. Pennebaker, J. W. (1997). Opening up: The healing power of expressing emotions (Rev. ed.). Guilford Press.

Peters, A., McEwen, B. S., & Friston, K. (2017). Uncertainty and stress: Why it causes diseases and how it is mastered by the brain. Progress in neurobiology, 156, 164–188.

MORE ABOUT THE AUTHOR

I’m the doctor that can’t give you meds or tell you why you hate your boss. But I can talk forever about cultural and digital psychology. This blog helps me stay on top of a field I love so much, share what I’ve found, and constantly push psychology’s application to life and work in meaningful ways.