Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Need a study break to refresh? Maybe not, say Stanford researchers

news.stanford.edu

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

11–20 of 30 posts

Re: Need a study break to refresh? Maybe not, say Stanford researchers

#11

Post by lmx »

dools wrote: post #6

Funnily enough, I actually take a nap sometimes when I can't figure out the solution to a problem or I'm going around in circles. 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…

I find that after throwing myself at a problem too long, I have a hard time approaching it differently from how I've been approaching it.

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.

Re: Need a study break to refresh? Maybe not, say Stanford researchers

#13

Post by noglorp »

gjm11 wrote: post #5

It looks to me as if what the study shows is not that willpower is not, after all, a limited resource but thinking of your willpower as a limited resource makes you have less of it . That's quite interesting (though not, I'd have thought, a big surprise) but not nearly as interesting as it would be if they'd actually shown that it's only thinking of willpower as limited that limits it.

Practice makes perfect.

Re: Need a study break to refresh? Maybe not, say Stanford researchers

#14

Post by norswap »

>

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.

Re: Need a study break to refresh? Maybe not, say Stanford researchers

#16

Post by godawful »

norswap wrote: post #14

> 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.

I agree.

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.

Re: Need a study break to refresh? Maybe not, say Stanford researchers

#17

Post by GHFigs »

The article sort of pits this study and theory of ego depletion as mutually incompatible, but I think that's probably an exaggeration, either by the author of the article or the authors of the paper. That beliefs can influence ego depletion is not a new finding, nor is it inconsistent with there being a physiological basis.

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?

Re: Need a study break to refresh? Maybe not, say Stanford researchers

#18

Post by nkassis »

sliverstorm wrote: post #3

What can I say, sometimes by 6AM my edge is considerably dulled, and a bit of a break can help fight off total exhaustion. 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 s…

Well I don't think the article is speaking about infinite energy here. If you are truly tired, you will need sleep but some people claim needing a break every 10-15 minutes of studying. That's the kind of stuff the article seems to talk about.

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)

Re: Need a study break to refresh? Maybe not, say Stanford researchers

#19

Post by ZeroGravitas »

dools wrote: post #6

Funnily enough, I actually take a nap sometimes when I can't figure out the solution to a problem or I'm going around in circles. 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…

I thought I'd read that you need sleep to learn. So practising your musical instrument for hours doesn't actually make you better until after you've slept and the brain has had a chance to process the input in some manner.

Re: Need a study break to refresh? Maybe not, say Stanford researchers

#20

Post by metamemetics »

> "But if you think of willpower as something that is not easily depleted, you can go on and on."

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.

Post reply on HN