Focus & Mental Energy
Four simple meters for what your day really costs in attention.
Four transparent calculators for the attention behind your day: how much of your intake is useful signal, what juggling projects really costs, how decision fatigue drains willpower, and how long your focus lasts before quality drops.
Start here
- Task Switching Tax — The biggest hidden overhead in a knowledge-work day.
- Focus Horizon — How long you have left before quality collapses.
Featured tools
Signal-to-Noise · Content Throughput
Measure how much of your daily information intake converts into actionable decisions. Throughput-pipe visual with clogged / flowing state.
Task Switching Tax · Context Overhead
Calculate the hours per day you lose to juggling concurrent projects. Each additional context costs 20% of remaining capacity — CPU-usage view.
Decision Fatigue · Willpower Battery
Model remaining willpower across the day. Every decision draws from the same finite reserve — trivial × 1, moderate × 5, heavy × 10.
Deep Work Capacity · Focus Horizon
Exponential decay model of focus quality. e^(−0.01×min) half-life ≈ 69 minutes — the horizon shows how long until quality drops below usable.
Guides & explainers
- Focus & Mental Energy GuideA practical way to look at signal, switching, decisions, and focus before the workday collapses.
- Task Switching and Focus HorizonHow to estimate context overhead, choose a focus block, and stop before quality collapses.
- Decision Fatigue GuideModel choice load, protect heavy decisions, and stop pretending every choice costs the same.
Related clusters
Frequently asked questions
› Are these scientifically validated?
They are deterministic models of well-documented heuristics. The shapes (geometric decay for switching, exponential for focus, linear drain for willpower) match research patterns; the exact coefficients are rules of thumb. Use as signal, not measurement.
› Why an industrial aesthetic? Troubleshooting
These tools model the machine layer of cognition — compute, overhead, bandwidth, throughput. A CPU-monitor visual is the right metaphor. Pastel wellness UIs hide the tradeoffs.