Attention Focus Meter
Enter three measurable factors to receive a deterministic Attention Focus Score with causal breakdown.
The Formula & How to Read Your Score
Longer focused sessions raise the score, distractions cut into it sharply, and motivation partly offsets distraction. The result is classified against three fixed bands, matching the tool's source code:
- Low Focus (below 10): the environment is fragmenting attention faster than it can recover.
- Moderate Focus (10–29.9): workable, but interruptions are taxing depth.
- High Focus (30 or above): conditions support sustained deep work.
What this is — and isn't. This is a transparent educational heuristic, not a clinical attention test. The weights are our own design choices. It evaluates the environment and schedule, not a person's attention span or any medical condition.
The research this is grounded in
Interruptions are expensive in a way that raw "time lost" understates. Sophie Leroy's work on attention residue shows that part of your attention stays stuck on a prior task after you switch, degrading performance on the next one. Rubinstein, Meyer and Evans quantified the "switch cost" of moving between tasks, and Gloria Mark's field studies on interrupted work found that resuming a task after an interruption takes substantial time and is accompanied by higher stress and effort. The heavy negative weight we place on distraction reflects these findings: scattered interruptions don't just pause work, they leave a recurring tax on every following block.
What the research does not claim is a universal "recovery time" that applies to everyone — individual differences, task type, and motivation all modulate it. Treat your score as a prompt to redesign your schedule, not as a stopwatch.
References
- Leroy, S. (2009). Why is it so hard to do my work? Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 109(2), 168–181. doi:10.1016/j.obhdp.2009.04.002
- Rubinstein, J. S., Meyer, D. E., & Evans, J. E. (2001). Executive control of cognitive processes in task switching. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 27(4), 763–797. doi:10.1037/0096-1523.27.4.763
- Mark, G., Gudith, D., & Klocke, U. (2008). The cost of interrupted work: More speed and stress. Proceedings of CHI 2008, 107–110. doi:10.1145/1357054.1357072
To understand the structural cost of fragmented schedules, read Measuring the Cognitive Cost of Meeting Interruption Chains.