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Tired? Need a break from that project you've been slaving away on? Just a few minutes on the couch to recharge your batteries?
It's all in your head, according to new research from psychologists at Stanford University and published this week in the journal Psychological Science.
While science has long maintained that willpower (defined for the research as the ability to resist temptation and stay focused on a demanding task) is a limited resource that can only be restored by rest or some other physical distraction, that notion does not bear scrutiny, researchers say.
Instead, it all comes down to how a person thinks about willpower.
"If you think of willpower as something that's biologically limited, you're more likely to be tired when you perform a difficult task," Veronika Job, the paper's lead author, said in a release. "But if you think of willpower as something that is not easily depleted, you can go on and on."
In a series of experiments involving Stanford students, the researchers found that after a tiring task those who believed, or were led to believe, that willpower is a limited resource did worse on standard concentration tests than those who thought of willpower as something they had more control over.
As well, the group that believed willpower is a limited resource also ate junk food more often leading up to final exam week and procrastinated 35 per cent more than students who felt willpower was under their control.
"Willpower isn't driven by a biologically based process as much as we used to think. The belief in it is what influences your behaviour," Stanford assistant professor Greg Walton said in the release.