My son seems much worse off than you. He is still “working” at 10 pm. He’s probably younger. He’s lying on the couch (last night), clearly exhausted and incapable of thinking and yet he still doesn’t want to go to bed before he finishes his homework. Both his parents are ordering him to. I think he’s afraid of his teachers.
You’d think that this would teach him to be more efficient. He’s been at it since he got home from school. Sort of.
Somehow, he finds all kinds of ways to distract himself. His sister was videoing a cooking demo for Spanish class. She made mole, which was good, but she didn’t like it. Anyway, he wanted to be the videographer. I just wanted dinner. Then after dinner, he kept on bouncing back and forth between things. Practicing. Doing his LA (which seemed to be the real problem—he needed ideas and couldn’t come up with any without parental help). He’d hop on the computer to see friends or his aunt or whatever. Maybe to do his Photoshop project.
Why? Why does he bounce around and around? Why can’t he focus? Why does he feel it necessary to stay up so late if he’s not going to use the time productively?
I’ll bet some of it has to do with the way his particular brain is made up. He clearly needs support to work. If I or his mother work with him, he seems to stay on task, but can’t do it on his own. He wants to be involved in whatever else is around. So maybe he needs a place of his own where there are no distractions.
If I were you, I would ask myself where I get my best work done? Under what circumstances? Then I’d try to replicate those circumstances as much as possible. I might ask for parental help, but really, you want to be able to do this on your own. I hope.
Anyway, if you come up with something that works, let me know. I need ideas for my son, too.