I have it. And I’m officially calling Sleepytime Limbo a disease, a serial killer of all real productivity.

Urbandictionary.com defines Sleepytime Limbo as, “When you feel like you’ve got too much work to go to bed, but you are too tired to get anything done. So you just surf the net and procrastinate until you can’t stay awake anymore.” Yup. Perfect description. Here’s an image to go with it.

http://http://iwastesomuchtime.com/on/?i=33786

Now, you can’t lump in Sleepytime Limbo and late nights as the same thing. For some odd reason, I can be extremely productive from 11pm to 1am, which gets a lot of work done but leaves me exhausted the next day. But there is a difference when I end up trapped in Sleepytime Limbo. Instead of wrapping up my work at say, midnight and getting little ol’ me off to bed, I’m up till 2 am just reading and watching pointless crap on the internet. Meme’s rule the night.

That’s pretty much it’s only benefit. Because if you aren’t addicted to porn you can get a lot of laughs at 2 or 3 in the morning, solely by watching fluffy cat videos on youtube. And laughter is the best medicine, right? Ha, I wish. In this instance it is not. *But if porn is the reason for your Sleepytime Limbo, here is a resource to help you break the cycle. And here is why porn ruins your sex life (so seriously, click on the links).*

A lot of of people claim that Sleepytime Limbo is insomnia or vice versa. But it’s not. insomnia is literally the inability to fall asleep, no matter what you do. I know. I can clearly tell the difference between my insomnia and sleepytime. Here’s a link to Tim Feriss‘ Huffington Post article, “11 Tricks for Perfect Sleep.” These tips do not work when you are caught in limbo, but will definitely make a difference in your overall sleep habits.

Who wants to show their eyes after falling victim to the Sleepytime Limbo?

I spent some time this morning thinking about how much more prevalent this incapability to go to bed when needed has become today. We know people have had insomnia problems in the past. And most likely under severe stress people have succumbed to Sleepytime Limbo in other ways. But in less modern times, when it was time to go to bed, it simply wasn’t possible to keep the fire, or candle, going or to stay outside in the cold for nearly as long as we get caught in the trap of the online light. From what I can figure based on my knowledge of history, any chance that people would gotten caught in the Sleepytime Limbo definition, would have been limited. Think about it. If a man was up writing away on a document to change the world, but his family all goes to bed and his candle is about to go out and his brain is shutting off… what are his options? Go make tea? Take a night walk? Crawl into bed and lay there thinking about his chance to meet destiny? While probably annoying, none of them really seem to be unproductive responses to late night work. But then again, maybe that’s just my personal opinion.

How to avoid the trap of Sleepytime Limbo:

1. Set a time to get off of the computer so you have at least an hour to ready yourself for bed. Ban late nights!

2. Practice your self-discipline throughout the day so you can say no to late night tomfoolery.

3. Acknowledge that you have no discipline.  Go cry away your shame.

Of course even though I have put all of this together, in-between one of those productive late nights, I may once again succumb to the call of the interwebs and be paying the price for the entirety of the next day. 
This is myself, what about your thoughts? What have your run-ins with Sleepytime Limbo been like and how did you combat that oh-so-persuading draw?