Jay is one of many Aussies who feel like they are stuck in an endless cycle of working and sleeping with very little time for themselves. (Source: TikTok/Instagram)
A young Aussie worker bored by the monotony of full-time work is taking a different kind of "revenge". Jay Cull told Yahoo Finance his life started to feel like "Groundhog Day" after landing his first job since university.
It's not that he doesn't enjoy his job as a content and social media coordinator at the Brisbane Powerhouse; far from it, he's super passionate about it. But he lives about 40 minutes away and by the time he gets home, cooks and eats, the young Aussie said there's very little time for socialising, self-improvement, exercise, or downtime before he has to go to bed at a sensible hour.
To tip the scales on his work-life balancing beam, Cull started engaging in what he called "revenge hours".
It goes by different names but the most prominent is "revenge bedtime procrastination", where people will give up sleep to reclaim some personal time hours.
"I'll probably stay up till 1am or 2am because I just want to spend time watching TikTok or a TV show to entertain myself and then you do it all again the next day," he told Yahoo Finance.
"So I will sacrifice my sleep so I can have more leisure time to myself."
The lack of shuteye is remedied by a few coffees during the day and Cull said it's a trade-off he's willing to make to avoid feeling like he's on a never-ending treadmill of work, eat, and sleep.
While he said he'd love to explore more hobbies so that his revenge hours aren't entirely spent scrolling social media or watching television, he's happy with how he uses his time because it helps "numb" his brain after a stimulating day at work.
Dangers of sacrificing sleep: 'It's a harmful cycle'
There have been countless studies on how sleep, or a lack thereof, can make a massive difference in the way a person feels.
"Without the recommended seven to nine hours of sleep a night, people fall into a harmful cycle that makes it difficult to get the most out of ourselves during the day," Rachel Beard, sleep wellness manager at A.H. Beard's Sleep Wellness Centre, explained to Yahoo Finance.
"You wake up tired, feel like you’re on the back foot and you’re not able to live the day at your best. Therefore you’re tired throughout the day and at the end, you’re craving that doom scrolling.
"Not only is sleep deprivation harmful on its own, but blue light from devices comes with its own list of side effects."
She added that scrolling through social media just before bed can keep your brain so stimulated that it can be difficult to wind down and go to sleep.
A Harvard study found that a person who stays awake between 17 to 19 hours a day (equivalent to seven to five hours of sleep) will have their performance impacted more than a person with a blood-alcohol level of 0.05 per cent (which is the legal alcohol driving limit in Australia).
So if you're only getting a few hours of sleep a night, you're technically worse than a drunk driver.
The Sleep Foundation noted that insufficient sleep can impact your memory and decision-making, harm productivity, increase the risk of sub-par driving, lead to difficulties regulating emotions, and can be connected to depression and anxiety.
That latter part can be even heightened by spending time on social media as you're only seeing someone's highlight reel, which can make your 9-5 routine seem pretty dull.
Beard revealed to Yahoo Finance that revenge hours could be a canary in the coal mine.
"It’s important to pay attention to our relationship with sleep, as it can be a strong indicator of what’s happening in our life," she said.
"Revenge bedtime procrastination can be a sign of burnout — if you were feeling balanced and in control of your day, you probably wouldn’t need to sacrifice your sleeping hours to achieve a sense of 'me' time.
Warning for those who feel like they can't control their revenge bedtime procrastination
Some Aussies might be happy with their revenge-hours behaviour and wouldn't change it for anything, but there are ways to potentially reduce the need for it.
Indeed's workplace psychologist, Amanda Gordon, told Yahoo Finance that Aussies who spend their week working from home could improve their outlook by going into the office every now and then.
"Sometimes people give themselves a narrative that, 'All I'm doing is working', where actually they're doing all these other things [like] engaging with someone at lunchtime and making plans for the weekend," she said.
She encouraged workers to see if they can find the time to exercise or catch up with a friend on their lunch break so that there's not so much pressure to do that before or after work.
But Gordon had a stern warning for Aussies who choose to spend their revenge hours scrolling on social media.
"They can go to bed whenever they like and choose to be tired the next day, or they can go to bed [at a sensible hour] so they can enjoy the next day ... they're sacrificing joy for non-joy, which is scrolling," she said.
"It's time for a bit of self-evaluation, whether by yourself or with a professional. This is one of those things that, if you're feeling that sort of way about life and that it's just boring, and I don't have a life, talk about it with someone who can help you get on a track that's going to give you a life of meaning while you work."
How revenge hours can work for night owls
Society seems to be split between early morning risers and those who call themselves night owls.
The latter, depending on how intense their predilection is to staying up during night hours, can be affected by the corporate world's typical 9am start time.
The Sleep Foundation explained that sacrificing sleep for leisure time may "be seen not as a failure of self-control but rather an attempt to find recovery time in response to stress".
But the Foundation also noted that for early starters, revenge hours could tip more into the lack of self-control field.
"Our capacity for self-control is already at its lowest at the end of the day, which may facilitate sleep procrastination," it wrote. "Some people may be naturally inclined to procrastination in general, including around bedtime."
