Motivational goal bracketing with non-rational goals

•We provide a tractable model of motivational goal bracketing.•With a broad goal, high output in one task compensates for low output in another.•Narrow goals have a stronger motivational force than broad goals.•We show conditions for the optimality of narrow bracketing.•We explore robustness of the findings to diminishing sensitivity or continuous effort and output.•Our results extend previous findings to a setting with non-rational goals.