Frequently Asked Questions

AttentionGrid^™ is a web application designed to help you focus through a typing challenge. As you type continuously, you earn face panels on 3D geometric shapes, providing a visual representation of your focused time.

The app starts in Simple mode - a clean interface with Settings and Shapes at the top left, Pin and Stats at the top right, Help at the bottom left, and Release Notes at the bottom right. On desktop, Terms and Privacy links sit beneath Help. When you’re ready for more, use the three-notch Interface mode slider in Settings. See “What are Simple, Medium, and Expert modes?” below for details.

Start by choosing a Focus using the pin icon (top right). A Focus is a short piece of text - something you want to give your attention to - and it is displayed inside your shape. Tap the pencil icon in the Focuses panel to add your own or edit the examples. Think about what you want, and more importantly, why you want it.

Then simply start typing in the text box at the bottom. Type continuously for 68 seconds about your chosen topic. If you pause for more than 2 seconds, it means your attention has drifted, so your progress resets and the text is cleared. Don’t worry about typos, the goal is sustained attention, not perfection.

Once you reach 68 seconds, a panel of the shape’s grid gets filled in. Set yourself the target of filling in all the panels of your selected shape!

Choosing a shape: Pick a shape based on how much time you have. For example, the dodecahedron has 12 faces, so takes about 15 minutes to complete. Change shapes using the pentagon icon (top left).

Navigation:

• Tap / click the pentagon icon to open the Shapes panel where you can switch shapes
• On mobile you can swipe left or right over the challenge text box to change shapes
• On desktop you can use the [Ctrl][+] and [Ctrl][-] shortcuts to cycle between the shapes
• Click the settings cog icon to access settings and sign in
• You can click/touch and drag the shape to spin it

Mobile tips:

• You can tap the microphone button on the virtual keyboard to speak instead of typing

Be playful, be light, have fun. There's nothing that needs to be done here. The only intention is fun and enjoyment!

To earn a face panel, you need to type continuously for 68 seconds. A progress indicator fills as you go.

If you pause for too long (2 seconds), your progress resets. If you’re using an Apple Pencil on iPad, the pause window is more lenient - see “Can I use an Apple Pencil on iPad instead of typing?” below.

After completing 68 seconds of typing, you'll see three outcome buttons. These let you rate whether your focused typing moved you in the direction of your goal:

• + (Plus) - "I feel better" - fills in the panel permanently. Use this when your focused typing felt productive and moved you toward your goal.
• = (Equals) - "I feel the same" - the panel disappears and nothing changes. Use this when the typing didn't particularly help or hinder.
• − (Minus) - "I feel worse" - the panel disappears AND removes one existing panel. Use this rarely, when the typing session moved you away from your goal.

The idea is to only keep panels that represent genuinely useful focused attention, making your completed shape more meaningful.

AttentionGrid features three categories of shapes:

• Platonic Solids: Regular shapes with identical faces (Tetrahedron, Cube, Octahedron, Dodecahedron, Icosahedron)
• Archimedean Solids: Semi-regular shapes with multiple face types (Truncated Icosahedron, Cuboctahedron, and more)
• Multidimensional: 4D, 5D, and 6D shapes that rotate through higher dimensions (Tesseract, 120-Cell, Penteract, Hexeract). See the “What are multidimensional shapes?” question below for details.

The Focuses panel is opened with the pin icon at the top right. It holds your collection of Focuses - short pieces of text describing what you want to give your attention to, and why. Tap a Focus to pin it: it is displayed inside the 3D shape and becomes the subject of your typing challenge.

How to use it:

• Tap a Focus in the list to pin it to the shape
• Tap the pencil icon to enter Edit Focuses mode, where you can add your own Focuses, edit or archive existing ones, assign a Topic by tapping the coloured badge, and star your Favourites
• Tap a coloured Topic button to filter the list to just that topic - see “What are Topics?” below
• Switch between Day, Week, and Month using the buttons at the top to change the time period for the coloured stats bars shown behind each topic - see “What are the coloured bars behind each focus topic?” below
• In Expert mode, the filter row can be switched between Topics, Feelings, and an emotion dial that filters Focuses by their assigned emotion - see “What is Emotional Scale mode?” below

Completing the 68-second typing challenge fills in a face panel for whichever Focus is pinned, and those completions are what the coloured bars and the Stats panel count.

Topics are broad categories that group your focuses by subject area. Each topic has a name, a short name (shown as a coloured badge), and a colour. The app comes with default topics like Abundance, Growth, Creativity, Relationships, and more, but you can create your own.

Purpose: Topics help you organise your focuses so you can see at a glance which areas of your life you’re focusing on. The coloured buttons at the top of the Focus Text panel let you filter your focuses by topic, and the Stats panel groups your completions by topic colour so you can spot imbalances.

How to use them:

• Tap the palette icon (painter’s palette, top right) to open the Palette panel, where you can create, rename, recolour, or delete topics
• Tap the pin icon to open the Focuses panel, then tap the pencil icon to enter Edit Focuses mode - tap a focus’s coloured badge to assign it a topic
• In the Focuses panel, tap a topic button to filter your focuses to just that topic

The bars in the Focus Text panel (tap the pin icon) show how many panels / how much time you've spent on each topic relative to the others. The topic with the most completed panels has a full bar, and other topics show their proportion.

Use these bars to spot imbalances in your attention:

• Short bars or no bars indicate topics you might be neglecting - consider giving them more focus
• Long bars show topics you've spent a lot of time on - you might want to balance your attention across other areas

You can filter the stats by time period (Day, Week, or Month) using the buttons at the top of the Focus Text panel.

The Stats panel is opened with the bar chart icon at the top right. In Simple mode, it opens directly in Focuses view and hides the view selector. In Medium and Expert modes, you can switch between Focuses, Emotional Scale, and Appreciations.

How to use it:

• Switch between Day, Week, and Month views using the buttons at the top
• Focuses completed shows a stacked bar chart grouped by Topic colour; tap a bar to drill down
• Emotional Scale shows a heatmap of your climb sessions
• Appreciations charts moments captured and shows reviewed/pending totals plus Topic and Feeling breakdowns

Use the Stats panel to track your consistency, see where you are directing your focused attention, and notice patterns in what you appreciate.

You can mark any focus as a favourite by tapping the pencil icon in the Focuses panel (pin icon) to enter Edit Focuses mode, then tapping the star icon. Favourited focuses show a small gold star in normal mode.

A Favourites button appears at the end of both the Topics and Feelings filter bars. Tapping it filters the list to only your starred focuses, regardless of topic or feeling. This is useful when you have a large collection of focuses but want quick access to the ones that matter most to you right now.

If Random pick after panel filled (an Expert-mode setting) is enabled, the random selection stays within your favourites while the Favourites filter is active.

AttentionGrid has three interface modes, controlled by the three-notch Interface mode slider at the top of the settings menu:

• Simple mode (the default for first-time visitors) - Keeps only the essential buttons described in “How do I use AttentionGrid?” above. Panels and settings that belong to the higher modes are simply hidden.
• Medium mode - Adds the everyday tools: Palette, Emotional Dial, Meditation, Appreciations, the desktop full-screen button, and multidimensional shapes (via the “Multidimensional shapes” setting). The Focus panel offers Topics and Emotion, and Stats offers all three views.
• Expert mode - Unlocks the complete interface, including Chats, Feelings, Locations, Scene Builder, Event Sequencer, Spinning Plates, Mindmap, Cube Collection, archive management, and advanced settings such as Double fill and Random pick.

Changing mode never deletes your Focuses, Topics, Feelings, Appreciations, progress, or other data. Choices hidden by a lower mode remain saved and are available again when you return to the appropriate mode.

Your selection is saved and, when you sign in, synced to your other devices. Your mode never changes automatically - it only changes when you move the slider yourself.

No, you can use AttentionGrid without an account. Your progress and Appreciations are saved locally in your browser and continue to work offline. If you want to sync them across multiple devices, you can sign in with your Google account; changes made while offline are retried when a connection is available.

Yes! AttentionGrid is a Progressive Web App (PWA). On mobile devices, you can add it to your home screen for an app-like experience. On iPhone and iPad, see the "Turn a website into an app in Safari on iPhone" section on the Apple support page for instructions. On Android, open the app in Chrome and choose Add to Home screen from the browser menu.

I am also working on native iOS and Android versions of this app, but my focus at the moment is on the web version so it is accessible on as many devices as possible.

Emotional Scale mode is a guided practice for deliberately climbing up an emotional guidance scale (inspired by Abraham-Hicks). The default scale runs from 1 Joy at the top, through 8 Boredom in the middle, down to 22 Fear at the bottom - but the scale is fully customisable, so you can rename emotions, add or remove notches, and reposition the midpoint line to suit your own emotional vocabulary. The premise: you can't jump from Fear to Joy in one go, but you can reach for the next emotion up - and stack incremental wins until you're somewhere genuinely better.

Where to find it: Choose Medium or Expert interface mode, then tap the dial button in the top-right bar (between the Palette and Meditation buttons). The dial is hidden in Simple mode.

The dial: Turn the dial to choose the emotion you can authentically reach for right now - clockwise raises you toward Joy, counter-clockwise lowers you toward Fear. (If you prefer a straight swipe, switch off the “Rotary dial turning” toggle in Settings and the dial follows an up/down or left/right drag instead.) The current emotion's name is shown beneath the dial. The scale is divided into notches by a midpoint: notches on the Joy side of the midpoint are the “positive” half of the scale, notches on the Fear side are the “negative” half.

Entering the mode: Just opening the panel does not change anything. The first time you actually turn the dial, the emotion (e.g. Boredom) becomes your prompt for the next typing challenge - type for 68 seconds about that emotion, what it feels like, where you've felt it before, why it might be a stepping stone. Turning the dial keeps your filled panels, so you can keep building the same shape as you climb.

Climbing (and descending) the scale: Each time you complete a panel and tap a feedback button, the dial nudges itself in the direction your feedback indicates:

• + (I feel better) → up one notch toward Joy (e.g. Boredom → Contentment).
• = (I feel the same) → the dial stays put, so you can fill a panel without your emotional position shifting.
• − (I feel worse) → down one notch toward Fear (e.g. Boredom → Pessimism).

Customising the scale: In the panel's edit mode (pencil icon), you can add or remove notches, edit the synonym words on each notch (up to five), edit the displayed number on each notch, and drag the midpoint line up or down to a new position between any two adjacent rows. On touch devices, use the Add row form at the bottom of the panel. You can also export your scale to a CSV file or import a CSV to replace the whole scale.

Assigning emotions to Focuses: Each focus can carry an optional emotion from your scale. In the Focus panel's Edit mode, the add/edit form includes a collapsible Emotion section with its own small dial - turn it to assign an emotion to that focus, or tap × to clear the assignment.

Exiting the mode: The mode persists even after you close the dial panel. To exit, pick a new Focus from the Focus panel (pin icon). That clears the emotion override (and the Expert-mode overlay) and returns to your normal focus text.

Climb sessions and the heatmap: Each time you release the dial after a manual turn, a new climb session starts at that emotion, tracking where you started, the best emotion you reached, and where you ended; it closes when you pick a new Focus or start a new climb. The Stats panel's Emotional Scale heatmap visualises your climb history three ways: Full climb colours each session's whole start → peak → end span, while Starts only and Ends only highlight where climbs began and finished. Brighter cells mean more activity; the legend below the grid shows the colour scale.

Meditation mode turns the 3D shape into a gentle breathing guide: it slowly expands and contracts on a smooth, repeating loop so you can pace your breath to it and settle into focus. It follows a 3:5 rhythm at six breaths per minute - the inhale (the shape growing) takes three counts and the exhale (the shape shrinking) takes five - a longer out-breath that helps calm the nervous system.

Where to find it: In Medium or Expert mode, tap the lotus (seated figure) button in the top-right bar, between the Emotional Dial and Appreciations (heart) buttons.

Breath cues: A “Breathe in” / “Breathe out” prompt appears inside the shape, crossfading in time with the breath. It gently dims over the first few minutes so the cue recedes as you settle.

Breathe or Affirmations: An In-shape text selector in the panel chooses what the shape displays. Breathe (the default) shows the breath cue for the whole session. Affirmations cycles through a list of phrases in time with your breathing - after an opening minute of breath cues, the phrases fade in and out with each breath. Tap Edit at the top of the Meditation panel to customise the phrase list in a two-column Inhale/Exhale editor; your phrases sync to your other devices when you’re signed in.

Sessions & stats: A progress bar in the panel tracks the session, which lasts just under 15 minutes. When you reach the end, the shape glows in celebration and a Meditation complete message appears - tap Reset shape to save the session and clear the shape. Completed meditations count in your Focuses stats under the built-in Meditation focus. To leave the mode early, pick a Focus from the Focus panel (pin icon); entering Emotional Scale mode also ends the session. While you meditate, the app keeps your screen awake so the display doesn’t dim or lock mid-breath.

The breathing pattern is based on the Abraham-Hicks Getting into the Vortex guided meditations and the Meditation mode on this app is designed to be used in conjunction with those audio tracks.

Appreciations are a quick way to build the habit of appreciating things while you’re going about your day. When you appreciate something, capture it before the moment passes.

How to use them:

• Choose Medium or Expert interface mode, then tap the heart button in the top-right bar
• Type what you appreciated, or use the microphone on your phone or tablet keyboard to dictate it
• Press Return or tap Save; your appreciation is stored immediately and today’s count updates. Return keeps the field and keyboard ready so you can type the next one straight away.
• Open the Review tab later to edit an entry, delete it, or assign Topics and Feelings to it (Feelings can be tagged here even outside Expert mode)

The Appreciations view in the Stats panel shows how many moments you captured by day, week, or month, together with reviewed/pending totals and Topic and Feeling breakdowns.

Appreciations work offline. If you are signed in, pending changes sync across your devices when a connection is available; without an account, they remain in this browser. The feature is text-only: no photos or audio recordings are ever stored.

On desktop and tablet, you can resize the panel using the handle in its bottom-left corner.

Chats are a private, WhatsApp-style dialogue journal between you and your Parts

The concept is inspired by IFS (Internal Family Systems), which sees the mind as a family of distinct Parts, each with its own perspective and something to say. In Abraham’s terms, the equivalent is communicating with your Inner Being - writing both sides of the chat until the wiser voice comes through.

The Parts could be the inner critic, a younger self, Exiles, Managers, Fire-fighters, Protectors or your own Inner Being AKA Infinite Intelligence. You write both sides of the chat, giving a Part a place to be heard rather than just thought about.

How to use them:

• Choose the Expert interface mode, then tap the chat bubbles button in the top-right bar
• A ready-made Inner Being chat is waiting for you - open it and let the wiser voice answer, or delete it if you’d rather start from scratch
• Tap + New, then pick a Part or name a new one to start a chat
• The composer has two send buttons: the right one sends the message as you; the left one - shown in the Part’s colour - sends it as the Part. Their messages appear on the left of the thread, yours on the right.
• Use the small name chip above the composer to switch which Part the left button speaks as, add a new Part mid-chat, or archive one
• Sent to the wrong side? Tap the message and choose ⇄ to move it across, or delete it
• On desktop, ⌘/Ctrl + Return sends as you and ⇧⌘/⇧Ctrl + Return sends as the Part; Return on its own starts a new line

Privacy: Chats are never synced or uploaded, even when you are signed in. They exist only in this browser on this device, are not restored on a new device, and deleting a message or chat removes it permanently. However, on a shared computer, note that anyone using this browser profile can open them.

This feature requires Medium or Expert mode - select one with the Interface mode slider in the settings menu (cog icon), then turn on the “Multidimensional shapes” toggle.

AttentionGrid includes four multidimensional polytopes (4D, 5D, and 6D shapes) that can be toggled via the “Multidimensional shapes” setting in the settings menu:

• Tesseract (8-Cell): The 4D analog of a cube, with 16 vertices, 32 edges, and 24 square faces forming 8 cubic cells
• 120-Cell: The 4D analog of the dodecahedron, with 600 vertices, 1200 edges, and 720 pentagonal faces. I only included it because it looks awesome - I don’t expect anyone to fill this one in!
• Penteract (5-Cube): The 5D analog of a cube, with 32 vertices, 80 edges, and 80 square faces
• Hexeract (6-Cube): The 6D analog of a cube, with 64 vertices, 192 edges, and 240 square faces across 160 cells. The hypercube pushed two dimensions beyond!

These shapes continuously rotate through higher-dimensional space and project down to 3D, creating a mesmerizing "folding in on itself" effect where the shape appears to turn inside out. The face panels warp and distort along with the shape as it rotates.

Yes. If you’re on an iPad with an Apple Pencil, you can handwrite your focus text on a lined-paper canvas instead of tapping it out on the software keyboard. The keyboard takes up a lot of screen space on iPad, and for many people handwriting is a more natural way to stay in a focused flow.

Getting started: There is no setting to turn on. Just touch the tip of your Pencil to the notes panel at the bottom of the screen and start writing. The panel automatically switches into Pencil mode, hides the software keyboard, and shows a lined-paper surface under your strokes.

Everything you already know still works:

• The progress ring fills as you write, just as it does when typing
• Panels fill at the same points and the shape animates the same way
• The +, =, and − feedback buttons appear at the end exactly as they do for keyboard typing

More lenient pause window: Handwriting has natural pauses - dotting i’s, crossing t’s, lifting the pen to reposition. To account for this, Pencil mode gives you a longer inactivity window before a reset than keyboard typing does.

Your handwriting is never saved, never converted to text, and never leaves your device. The canvas is wiped clean each time the challenge resets or when you start a new session.

Moving and resizing the panel: While in Pencil mode, the notes panel has a drag handle at the top and a resize grip in the bottom-right corner, so you can position and size it wherever feels most comfortable for your hand. You can use the Pencil itself to drag and resize - you don’t have to swap to a finger.

Exiting Pencil mode: Tap the Exit pencil-only mode button in the corner of the canvas to switch back to the software keyboard at any time.

Click the fullscreen button in the top-left (just to the right of the Shapes button) to expand AttentionGrid to fill your screen. Click it again to exit. Your browser’s own fullscreen shortcut also works (F11 on Windows, ⌃⌘F on Mac).

Going fullscreen reduces clutter and ensures maximum focus and attention on the task in hand - no tabs, no bookmarks, no other windows peeking through.

For the full effect in Chrome, make sure View → Always Show Toolbar in Full Screen is off, otherwise Chrome keeps its toolbar visible and defeats the purpose.

The settings menu (cog icon, top left) starts with a three-notch Interface mode slider:

• Simple - Essential navigation and the core typing challenge.
• Medium - Everyday tools, including Emotional Scale, Meditation, Palette, and Appreciations.
• Expert - The complete interface and every advanced setting.

Light mode, Extended time-out mode, Small text, and Sounds are available in every mode. Medium and Expert also show Climb emotional scale, Rotary dial turning, and Multidimensional shapes. Expert adds the remaining advanced settings:

• Light mode (all modes) - Switches the app to a light theme.
• Small text (all modes) - Shrinks the text inside the 3D shape and in the typing area. Useful as a privacy mode if someone nearby might read your screen.
• Extended time-out mode (all modes) - Allows longer pauses before the inactivity timer resets your progress and clears your typed text.
• Climb emotional scale (Medium and Expert) - Controls whether feedback nudges the Emotional Scale dial to the next emotion.
• Rotary dial turning (Medium and Expert) - Switches the Emotional Scale dial between a turning gesture and a directional drag gesture.
• Double fill - Doubles the length of the typing challenge. If you successfully complete it, two panels get filled in instead of one, and the pause window is slightly more forgiving. A bigger commitment for a bigger reward!
• Show archived - Controls whether archived focuses appear in your focus lists. When off, archived focuses are hidden from all lists and excluded from random selection, but they still count in your stats and badge totals.
• Random pick after panel filled - After each feedback action (+, =, or −), the app automatically pins a different focus chosen at random. The pick respects the active topic, feeling, or Favourites filter.
• Random uses Scene Builder - When enabled, random pick also selects a Location, Character, and Item from the Scene Builder.
• Show orbiting Feelings - Displays feeling labels orbiting around the 3D shape.
• Show mindmap - Shows the 3D mindmap button in the top bar.
• Multidimensional shapes - Shows or hides the 4D, 5D, and 6D shapes (Tesseract, 120-Cell, Penteract, Hexeract) in the shape selector. Available in Medium and Expert modes; always hidden in Simple mode.
• Sounds - Plays a subtle sound effect when a face panel is filled.

This feature requires Expert mode - enable it in the settings menu (cog icon).

Feelings are emotional tags you can attach to your focuses. Unlike topics, a focus can have multiple feelings. The app comes with defaults like Worthy, Free, Proud, Loved, and Peaceful, but you can create your own.

Purpose: While topics organise focuses by subject (what you’re focusing on), feelings organise them by emotion (how you want to feel). This lets you approach your focus sessions from an emotional angle - for example, filtering to all focuses tagged “Peaceful” regardless of which topic they belong to.

How they differ from Topics:

• Topics are one-per-focus (a focus belongs to one topic). Feelings are many-per-focus (a focus can evoke multiple feelings).
• Topics answer “What area of life is this about?”. Feelings answer “How do I want to feel?”
• Use the Topics / Feelings segmented control at the top of the panel to switch between the two filter views

How to use them:

• Tap the palette icon (painter’s palette, top right) and switch to the Feelings tab to create, rename, recolour, or delete feelings
• In the Focuses panel (pin icon), tap the pencil icon to enter Edit Focuses mode - tap the feeling badges on each row to tag focuses with feelings
• In the Focuses panel, switch to the Feelings tab and tap a feeling button to filter your focuses by that emotion
• Enable “Show orbiting Feelings” in settings to display feeling labels orbiting around the 3D shape

This feature requires Expert mode - enable it in the settings menu (cog icon).

Each feeling has an optional Familiarity rating from 1 to 10. The idea is simple: familiarity with a feeling is everything. If a feeling is novel to you, it’s less likely to show up naturally in your day-to-day experience. Rating your familiarity helps you honestly assess where you stand with each feeling and track how that changes over time.

How to rate familiarity:

• Tap the palette icon to open the Palette panel
• Switch to the Feelings tab
• Tap the Edit toggle (top right of the panel)
• Click or tap and slide on the background of any feeling row to set a rating - 1 on the left (not at all familiar) to 10 on the right (very familiar)

In read-only mode, a gradient fill on each feeling row shows your current rating at a glance.

This feature requires Expert mode - enable it in the settings menu (cog icon).

The Scene Builder lets you compose a scene from Locations, Characters, Items, and a Focus. The idea is to give your imagination a rich foundation - instead of just thinking about a focus in the abstract, you picture where you are, who is there, and what is around you.

How it works:

• Tap the scenes icon (film camera, top right) to open the Scenes panel
• Use the Locations, Characters, and Items tabs to make selections
• As you select things, the Scene Builder summary appears pinned at the bottom of the panel, showing your current scene at a glance (location, characters, items, and pinned focus)
• Selected character and item names are displayed inside the 3D shape below your focus text
• Use Reset Scene (bottom of the panel) to clear all selections and start fresh

Scene selections (characters, items) aren’t saved - compose a fresh scene each time you sit down to focus.

This feature requires Expert mode - enable it in the settings menu (cog icon).

Locations let you associate your focuses with physical places. They use a parent-child hierarchy - for example, a parent location “Home” can contain child locations like “Living Room”, “Bedroom”, and “Kitchen”. Focuses are associated with child locations (not parent locations).

Purpose: Locations add a spatial dimension to your focus practice. You might find that certain focuses feel more natural in certain places, or you might want to see which focuses you’ve associated with a particular room or workspace.

How to use them:

• Tap the scenes icon (film camera, top right) to open the Scenes panel - the Locations tab is selected by default
• In read-only mode, tap a child location to expand it and see its associated focuses. Tap a focus to pin it. Double-tap a focus to pin it and close the panel in one go.
• Tap the Edit toggle to create, rename, recolour, or delete locations. Each location has a name, short name, colour, and an optional description.
• In the Focuses panel (pin icon), enter Edit Focuses mode to assign child locations to your focuses

Locations can be favourited and archived, just like topics and feelings. Archiving a parent location hides its children when “Show archived” is off. The app comes with 3 default parent locations (Home, Office, Travel) each with a few child locations to get you started.

This feature requires Expert mode - enable it in the settings menu (cog icon).

Characters represent people, pets, or anyone you want in your scene. Create characters to help make your scene vivid.

Remember this should never be used to attempt to manipulate people - that will only backfire on you. Only ever use it to help generate feelings and frequencies within yourself.

How to use them:

• Tap the scenes icon (film camera, top right) and switch to the Characters tab
• Tap the Edit toggle to create, rename, recolour, or delete characters.
• Characters can be grouped to help you keep things organised.
• In read-only mode, tap a character to select them for your scene. Tap again to deselect. Selected characters appear in the Scene Builder summary at the bottom.

This feature requires Expert mode - enable it in the settings menu (cog icon).

Items are objects you can add to your scene - anything from a favourite armchair to a cup of coffee, a car, a book, or a beautiful view. They add tangible detail that helps your imagination.

How to use them:

• Tap the scenes icon (film camera, top right) and switch to the Items tab
• Tap the Edit toggle to create, rename, recolour, or delete items. Each item has a name, short name, and colour.
• Items can be grouped to help you keep things organised.
• In read-only mode, tap an item to select it for your scene. Tap again to deselect. Selected items appear in the Scene Builder summary at the bottom.

Items can be favourited and archived, just like topics and feelings.

This feature requires Expert mode - enable it in the settings menu (cog icon).

The Event Sequencer is a timeline view where you arrange scenes as event nodes (circles) on a left-to-right time axis, connected by links to form a story, sequence, or plan.

Each event node displays the same information as the 3D shape: location, focus text, characters, and items - all arranged inside the circle.

How to open it:

• Tap the timeline icon near the left-hand end of the top-right button group
• On desktop, press the backtick (`) key to toggle it open and closed

Creating events:

• Double-click empty space to open a focus search - pick a focus to create a new event at that position
• Use the green + button in the bottom toolbar to capture whatever is currently on your shape (focus, location, characters, items) as a new event

Editing events:

• Click a node to select it - the 3D shape behind the overlay updates to show that event’s scene
• Open the Focus, Palette, or Scenes panels to change the event’s focus, location, characters, or items - changes sync back to the event node in real-time
• Select a node or a link, then tap the bin icon in the bottom toolbar to delete it

Working with events on the shape:

• Double-click a node to close the sequencer and work with that event on the shape. The event stays linked, so any changes you make via the panels continue syncing back.
• Press backtick (`) to toggle back to the sequencer - the event will still be selected (white border)
• Click empty space in the sequencer to deselect - the shape reverts to a clean state

Links and time ordering:

• Drag from a node’s link handle (small blue circle on the right edge) to another node to create a directed link
• On mobile, tap the link handle, then tap the target node
• Nodes are constrained so children can’t be dragged left of their parents, and parents can’t be dragged right of their children - this preserves the left-to-right time flow

Managing sequences: Use the upward arrow button in the bottom toolbar to switch between sequences, create new ones, or delete existing ones.

This feature requires Expert mode - enable it in the settings menu (cog icon).

You can archive any focus by tapping the pencil icon in the Focuses panel (pin icon) to enter Edit Focuses mode, then tapping the box icon (next to the star). Archived focuses show a small blue box icon in normal mode.

Archiving is a way to hide focuses you don’t need right now without deleting them. The Show archived toggle in the settings menu controls whether archived focuses are visible:

• Show archived ON - All focuses are visible, and you can archive or unarchive focuses in Edit Focuses mode
• Show archived OFF (default) - Archived focuses are hidden from all lists and excluded from random selection. The archive/unarchive button is also hidden in Edit Focuses mode

Importantly, archived focuses still count toward your stats and badge counts regardless of the toggle - archiving only affects visibility, not your history.

This feature requires Expert mode - enable it in the settings menu (cog icon).

Every time you complete a cube (fill all 6 faces), your completed cube is added to a growing Cube Collection - a fractal “cube of cubes” visualization.

Completed cubes build into a larger cube of cubes; fill that and it becomes a building block in an even larger one, and so on - cubes within cubes within cubes!

What you’ll see:

• Your newest cube glows gold
• Previously completed cubes appear as chrome/silver cubes with rainbow rods
• Empty slots show as ghost wireframes, so you can see how much of the current tier you’ve filled

How to view it: The collection is shown automatically when you complete a cube. You can also view it at any time by tapping the cube icon in the top bar. This button is only visible when you have the cube shape selected and have completed at least one cube.

This feature requires Expert mode - enable it in the settings menu (cog icon).

Spinning Plates is a visualization that shows one spinning plate on a stick for each of your topics, arranged in a grid. The spin speed of each plate reflects how many panels you’ve completed for that topic today.

How it works:

• Each completion adds speed to that topic’s plate
• More completions = faster spinning, up to a cap
• The spin gradually decays over time, so a plate only keeps spinning if you keep completing panels for its topic
• The goal is to “keep all your plates spinning” by engaging with each topic regularly

Interaction: Tap a plate to select that topic in your filter bar. Tap the same plate again to close the view and jump straight into a random focus for that topic.

How to view it: Tap the plate icon in the top bar.

This feature requires Expert mode - enable it in the settings menu (cog icon).

The 3D Mindmap is an experimental visualization that shows your focuses, topics, and feelings as a force-directed 3D graph. It reveals connections between your data in a spatial, interactive way.

What you’ll see:

• Topics appear as large coloured spheres - the more completions across their focuses, the larger they are
• Feelings appear as crystal icosahedra (gem-like shapes)
• Focuses appear as smaller chrome spheres, sized by their individual completion count
• Connected nodes cluster together, so you can see which topics and feelings are associated with which focuses

Interaction: Hover over or click a node to highlight its connections and dim everything else. You can orbit, zoom, and pan to explore the graph from any angle.

How to enable it: The 3D Mindmap is disabled by default. To enable it, open the settings menu (cog icon) and turn on “Show mindmap”. This makes the network icon appear at the left-hand end of the top-right button group. Tap it to enter the mindmap, and tap it again to return to the normal shape view. The Mindmap is mutually exclusive with Spinning Plates and the Cube Collection.

AttentionGrid does not use cookies for tracking or advertising. However, if you sign in with Google, the authentication provider (Supabase) sets a session cookie to keep you logged in. This is a "strictly necessary" cookie that:

• Only exists when you're signed in
• Is required for the sign-in feature to work
• Does not track you or share data with advertisers
• Does not require a consent banner under GDPR (it's essential for the service you requested)

The app collects anonymous usage analytics to improve the app, including:

• Page views
• Panel fills and shape completions
• Typing challenge success and failure counts and feedback choices
• Country and region (derived from your IP address via Cloudflare - no precise GPS or Wi-Fi location)

The app never stores the free-writing text you type during challenges. If you deliberately save an Appreciation, its text, timestamp, and any Topic or Feeling tags are stored so the feature can work and sync. Appreciations do not include photos or audio recordings. For full details, see the Privacy Policy.

AttentionGrid is a focus and attention training tool. It provides a structured way to practice sustained, deliberate thought on topics you choose. Any outcomes beyond improved focus are entirely your own experience and responsibility. The best outcome and measure of success is that you have fun with it!

The 3D shapes are rendered using Three.js, an open-source JavaScript library for creating 3D graphics in the browser. Three.js is released under the MIT license.

The idea of using 68 seconds as the time limit comes from an Abraham-Hicks concept. Abraham says 68 seconds is the time it takes for focused thought to combust into something in physical reality.

The idea of of using Platonic and Archimedean solids and multidimensional polytopes as the grid structure, as well as the 68 second rule as a timed interactive challenge with inactivity resets - is unique to AttentionGrid.

No. AttentionGrid is a personal hobby project, provided as-is with no warranties or guarantees. It is not a substitute for professional advice of any kind. Use it at your own discretion.