Investigating Goal Difficulty and Motivational Quality as Moderators of the Association Between Sleep Quality and Goal Progress

People often struggle to make progress on their personal goals following a night of poor sleep. But does this association depend on certain characteristics of the goals themselves? This paper examines whether the association between poor sleep quality and lower next day goal progress depends on the difficulty of the goal or the motivation quality (want-to, have-to). These objectives were carried out in two longitudinal studies. The first study (N = 361) examined whether community adults’ morning reports of sleep quality were related to the progress they made on several of their goals over the course of a single day. The second study instead tracked university students’ (N = 156) sleep quality and goal pursuit over a seven-day period. The findings from both studies suggested that participants in the community adult (but not university student) sample who slept poorly the night before tended to make less progress on their goals the following day. The relation between sleep quality and goal progress also did not depend on goal difficulty or motivation quality, as confirmed by Bayesian analyses showing moderate to strong evidence for the null. Overall, these findings highlight that a night of poor sleep quality may only be detrimental to goal progress in certain situations, and this association does not depend on the difficulty of the goals that people are pursuing or their motivation for achieving them.