"It's the only time that's mine"

This is the belief at the centre of the habit, and the first thing to say about it is that it may be true. Look at the day in chapter 1. From half past six in the morning until a quarter past nine at night, every hour belonged to an employer, a child or the household. If that person's own time doesn't come after nine, it doesn't come.

You're also far from alone. A team of Dutch psychologists surveyed a representative sample of 2,431 adults about going to bed later than they intended. They defined it carefully, as going to bed later than you meant to when nothing outside you is stopping you. They reported that a large share of the population does this regularly, and that a large share feels short of sleep. The same group later interviewed seventeen people who did it often, to find out why. One of the three main patterns they found was deliberate. Those people knew they were delaying, and they did it because they felt they deserved some time for themselves after the day they'd had.

I think they're right that they deserve it. The word I'd question is "only".

Look at what that time is like. At midnight you're more tired than at any other point in the day. Your attention is poor and your mood is flat. The part of you that chooses well is worn down. You can't concentrate on a book, so you don't pick one up. You haven't the energy for the hobby in the spare room. There's nobody awake to talk to. It's a bit like saving your best bottle of wine for a night when you've got a heavy cold. You do get to drink it, and you can barely taste it.

Then look at who pays. The hour between midnight and one isn't free. It comes out of tomorrow, and tomorrow's you gets no say. That's the person who has to be patient with a toddler at seven and sharp in a meeting at ten. If anyone else treated them that way, you'd be angry on their behalf.

So this is how I'd restate the belief. You have too little time of your own. That's a real problem, and it deserves a real solution. The late stretch is what you've been using in place of a solution, and it gives you the appearance of your own time without much of the substance.

There's an objection that I take seriously. "There isn't any other time. I've looked." For some readers that's close to true, and chapter 11 doesn't pretend otherwise. For now I'd ask you to notice something. The day's timetable was drawn up on the assumption that you come last. Everything else was given its place first, and you got whatever was left. Your own time ended up at midnight because every other hour had already been handed out by the time you came to it.

The practical upshot for now is small. Stop calling the late stretch your own time, even in your head. Call it what it is, which is staying up. Keep the phrase "my own time" for something better, which we'll get to.