The Reciprocal Relations Between Sleep and Procrastination

Abstract

From the within-person and between-person perspectives, we investigate the reciprocal relations between sleep quality/duration/regularity and procrastination. Based on the self-regulation and recovery perspectives, we examine the different mediating role of self-regulatory resources and affective rumination. Using a time-lagged diary study, our hypotheses were tested in a sample of 149 participants who completed three times-daily surveys over a two-week period. Study results confirm our hypotheses that poor and insufficient sleep reduces individuals’ next morning’s self-regulatory resources, which in turn enhances procrastination behaviors. Moreover, procrastination induces negative affective rumination before going to bed, which in turn undermines the sleep quality and sleep duration at that night. As expected, we found that the effect of sleep quality was stronger than the effect of sleep duration. Finally, concerning individual differences, sleep regularity has a negative indirect effect on procrastination through the mediating role of self-regulatory resources. This result highlights the unique contribution of sleep regularity after controlling the effects of sleep quality and sleep duration. We discuss the theoretical and practical implications of our findings.