“Bedtime Procrastination” is the phenomenon of staying up past your bedtime when there are no external reasons for doing so. In a discussion on Twitter early during the pandemic, it evolved into “Revenge Bedtime Procrastination,” but nobody really had a good idea who the revenge was directed at. Aristotle knew.
The Eight-Hour Day was a 19th century movement, advocated all over the world by various unions and other labor organizations, that pushed for the idea that our human lives are deserving of more than being treated like chattel. Their slogan was “Eight Hours for Work, Eight Hours for Rest, Eight Hours to do What We Will.” Two thousand years ago, Aristotle described a similar three forces at work within a man: his need to live, his need to rest, and his need to strive for greatness.
Man, he said, is in a chariot pulled by two horses: a glorious horse that wants to pull man toward greatness, and a weak horse that wants to drag man down with vices. Aristotle said that you can’t get anywhere without both horses, but the trick is to use one’s reason as a man to convince the horses to work together: you may indulge in your vices, but only insofar as they don’t threaten your goals. Have a drink with friends, but don’t become a drunkard; have a feast for your family, but eat sensibly most of the time.
In the COVID-19 era, a lot of us have worked from home and discovered that we don’t miss the commute. We don’t miss the overtime. On the other hand, we’ve also discovered that the private, intimate space called “our home” has been invaded by work, that we’re on call all the hours of the day, or that, lacking the cues of coworkers and commute, we work far longer than we might have otherwise. What we’ve discovered is that the “eight hours for what we will” has been colonized by others. The commute isn’t on work’s clock, it’s on ours. Emails and notifications interrupt us constantly. We don’t even trust the devices we have to work in our own interests: Alexa and Siri are listening because they’re designed to serve their masters, Amazon and Apple (and Google, and Microsoft, and so on), and they only serve us as a side-effect. Our “eight hours” is starting to looking pitifully small.
So of course we stay up late, and deprive ourselves of sleep. We’re getting “revenge” on our very existence, because it’s no longer ours. And if we show up to work sleepy and sub-par, well, that’s just too damned bad, isn’t it?
The Eight-Hour Day was a 19th century movement, advocated all over the world by various unions and other labor organizations, that pushed for the idea that our human lives are deserving of more than being treated like chattel. Their slogan was “Eight Hours for Work, Eight Hours for Rest, Eight Hours to do What We Will.” Two thousand years ago, Aristotle described a similar three forces at work within a man: his need to live, his need to rest, and his need to strive for greatness.
Man, he said, is in a chariot pulled by two horses: a glorious horse that wants to pull man toward greatness, and a weak horse that wants to drag man down with vices. Aristotle said that you can’t get anywhere without both horses, but the trick is to use one’s reason as a man to convince the horses to work together: you may indulge in your vices, but only insofar as they don’t threaten your goals. Have a drink with friends, but don’t become a drunkard; have a feast for your family, but eat sensibly most of the time.
In the COVID-19 era, a lot of us have worked from home and discovered that we don’t miss the commute. We don’t miss the overtime. On the other hand, we’ve also discovered that the private, intimate space called “our home” has been invaded by work, that we’re on call all the hours of the day, or that, lacking the cues of coworkers and commute, we work far longer than we might have otherwise. What we’ve discovered is that the “eight hours for what we will” has been colonized by others. The commute isn’t on work’s clock, it’s on ours. Emails and notifications interrupt us constantly. We don’t even trust the devices we have to work in our own interests: Alexa and Siri are listening because they’re designed to serve their masters, Amazon and Apple (and Google, and Microsoft, and so on), and they only serve us as a side-effect. Our “eight hours” is starting to looking pitifully small.
So of course we stay up late, and deprive ourselves of sleep. We’re getting “revenge” on our very existence, because it’s no longer ours. And if we show up to work sleepy and sub-par, well, that’s just too damned bad, isn’t it?
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