Need a study break to refresh? Maybe not, say Stanford researchers
news.stanford.edu
news.stanford.edu
It doesn't even really sound like they are addressing the theory itself but some particular implication. For instance, the belief that you need to take frequent breaks while studying does not follow directly from the belief that self-regulation is a limited resource.
Personally, as a "believer" of the latter I find the former contradictory: it is exactly what I would not do. In my view, since self-regulation is limited, taking frequent breaks is foolish because means more occasions at which you're forced to self-regulate.
I don't think I'm alone in finding that it requires significantly less willpower to continue a task already in progress than it does to re-initiate an interrupted task. Starting (and re-starting) is always the hard part. I only break when it is patently obvious that the task has already been interrupted. Purposefully taking additional breaks seems like an absurdly premature optimization extremely likely to backfire. And yet, from the sound of it, that's what they advised one group to do. Does this mean I secretly believe in unlimited willpower?
Agreed. This is just another priming study-- NOT a willpower study. Here's another:
"But the priming effect does not just affect our behavior. It can also, incredibly, have significant effects on our actual performance. In another study cited by Gladwell, two groups of students were asked to answer forty-two questions from the game Trivial Pursuit. But first, one group was first asked to sit and think about professors, the other to think about soccer hooligans. And the difference was dramatic: an average of 55.6% of the questions were answered correctly by the first group, while only 42.6% were answered correctly by the second. How can these results be explained? Can priming somehow temporarily infuse the brain with an expanded store of facts? Obviously not. Instead, what seems to be happening is that encouraging people to "think smart" briefly increases mental qualities like their ability to focus, their sense of recall, and their ability to quickly and correctly integrate diverse pieces of information. In other words, priming does not make us more intelligent, but it does briefly make us better at using the intelligence we already have." [1]
The scarier one is about race:
"The psychologists Claude Steele and Joshua Aronson created an even more extreme version of this test, using black college students and twenty questions taken from the Graduate Record Examination, the standardized test used for entry into graduate school. When the students were asked to identify their race on a pretest questionnaire, that simple act was sufficient to prime them with all the negative stereotypes associated with African Americans and academic achievement - and the number of items they got right was cut in half..."
1: grabbed from http://www.daylightatheism.org/2007/01/priming-the-mind.html
Perhaps it's not realy sleep, but more often than not I wake up with the solution, or at least more ready to tackle the solution.
I've also found almost ubiquitously that whatever had me completely confounded the night before is a hell of a lot easier to work out in the morning.
Perhaps it's just me but I find that sleep for me is a natural reaction to mental stress, and I always feel better afterwards.
Our brains can go on working on the problem even if we take a rest. If we rest with a the problem in our head, we are actually still focused. Probably, relaxing and letting the brain do its job without forcing it into one direction, often results in a good solution. Same with me, btw.
The study, as I have understood it, is more about giving up with a problem. You give up faster, if you think your resources are limited. It is more the contrast between either you relax in order to solve a problem, or have some beers with your friends talking about soccer and thus escape.
Sleep seems to reset my mind. If I approach the same problem after waking up, I come up with a fresh perspective.
On the other hand, if I'm "in the zone" before I go to sleep, I wake up and it's gone.
I think that also explains my tendency to stay up till 7AM... need to take advantage of the productivity boost while it lasts.
That's the problem. Going on and on and on. Usually when it comes to any complex task, going on and on and on is a BAD thing. Forcing yourself to take breaks at a set interval makes you realize and optimize what it is you have actually been spending time on. And assess the next direction to take.
Working without taking breaks is like jamming down the accelerator without steering! You need to do both if you hope to do anything more complex than travelling in a straight line.
"Willpower" is a bit fuzzy and may not be a limited resource, but attentional capacity and working memory most certainly are.
Work smarter, not harder, right?
There's a disturbing tendency for the eureka moment to be, "Aha! I don't even need to write this program in the first place."
Now this is such common knowledge, it's hard to find the original research with a Google search. This makes me suspicious. Anyone have a reference?
There's also writer's block-ish occasions where you keep staring at one problem and it's like beating your head on a brick wall, but if you step away and have a cup of tea and come back, that tough problem unravels itself in front of you.
I've also used the "I need a break" when I know that I'm simply out of juice for the day, and not going to make any more progress (particularly when I have something else heavy on my mind). It's not a break, I don't come back to it for at least a day, but it lets me walk away without feeling like a failure.
I wonder, though, if these epiphanies could have happened without the hour long struggle preceding it. Leaving a problem, it feels as if my mind is untangling itself and organizing this mess of thoughts.
What I would really like to see some research on is the mental barrier between myself and starting the work in the first place. I'm looking at it right now... :|
I know I have that problem, I'll loose focus easily. I can work out 5-6 lines of code and start drifting off. But when things are working out good, I can focus on it for hours just spurting out code. I love those moments. The point is, you still need sleep but procrastinating on HN every 20 minutes is a bad thing (Talking to myself here ;p)
This really bothered me. Maybe if you think that willpower is not easy depleted, it is because you have more of it than the people who think it is.
This being said, I personnaly believe that if willpower is limited, it can at least be trained to seem like it isn't.
Another quotation from the article:
"They also found that leading up to final exam week, students who bought into the limited resource theory ate junk food 24 percent more often than those who believed they had more control in resisting temptation. The limited resource believers also procrastinated 35 percent more than the other group."
Perhaps people with poor self-control, who would eat junk food and procrastinate anyway, are more prone to believe that willpower is biologically limited. This saves them from having to take responsibility for their negative behaviour.
If that were the case, the causality would run in the opposite direction.
In study #2, they manipulated people's beliefs about willpower by administering a "push poll", and then tested willpower depletion.
How did they determine how well the push poll influenced that belief? How did they ensure it didn't work better on those who already had less willpower?
They just randomly assign people to group A or B. Group A is told about the actual theory that willpower is a finite resource (“Working on a strenuous mental task can make you feel tired such that you need a break before accomplishing a new task”). Group B is told a competing theory that willpower compounds (“Sometimes, working on a strenuous mental task can make you feel energized for further challenging activities”). They administered surveys to confirm that they had successfully influence each groups opinions.
Then, the experimenters tested the degree to which using willpower became harder or easier throughout a task. On average, group A exhibited willpower fatigue but group B did not.