Procrastinate at work, sleep badly at night: How job autonomy matters

Abstract Despite the well‐documented deleterious effects of poor sleep quality on procrastination, limited efforts have been devoted to examining whether procrastination can hurt sleep quality. To address this theoretical gap, this study aims to reveal how and when individuals' procrastination at work influences their subsequent sleep quality. Building upon cognitive appraisal theory, the current research employs experience‐sampling methodology to investigate mediators of rumination (as a cognitive pathway) and negative affect (as an affective pathway), explaining within‐person fluctuations in sleep quality resulting from daily procrastination. Furthermore, job autonomy is proposed to be a cross‐level moderator in the relationship between daily procrastination and rumination/negative affect. The results of 2026 daily data records from 213 employees across 10 consecutive workdays supported the mediation effect of rumination and moderation effects of job autonomy but did not support the mediation effect of negative affect. Specifically, daily procrastination was negatively related to subsequent sleep quality through the cognitive pathway of rumination. Our results also reveal that the positive relationships between daily procrastination and rumination/negative affect were stronger for employees with higher levels of job autonomy. Finally, we discuss the implications and limitations of this paper as well as future directions.