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.

Start by choosing a focus topic using the pin icon (top right). This is the text displayed inside your shape. You can manage your topics and feelings using the palette icon (painter’s palette, next to the pin). 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. The progress fills at milestones:

• 25% at 17 seconds
• 50% at 34 seconds
• 75% at 51 seconds
• 100% at 68 seconds

If you pause for too long (2 seconds), your progress resets.

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.

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, Month, or All time) using the buttons at the top of the Focus Text panel.

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

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 inside the 3D shape around your focus text

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) are session-only and are not saved or synced - they’re designed to be composed fresh each time you sit down to focus.

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 (up to 512 characters).
• 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.

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

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.

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. Each rating is timestamped, so in a future update you’ll be able to chart how your familiarity with each feeling changes over time.

The Stats panel (tap the bar chart icon, top right) shows a stacked bar chart of your completion activity over time, grouped by topic colour.

How to use it:

• Switch between Day, Week, and Month views using the buttons at the top
• Each bar represents a time period (a single day, a week, or a month) and is divided into coloured segments — one colour per topic
• Tap any bar to drill down into it and see a more detailed breakdown

Use the Stats panel to track your consistency, spot which topics you’re giving the most attention to, and identify areas that might need more focus.

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 Text and Random Within Filter are both enabled, the random selection will stay within your favourites when the Favourites filter is active.

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 (default) — All focuses are visible, and you can archive or unarchive focuses in Edit Focuses mode
• Show archived OFF — 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. Archived focuses are also never permanently deleted by the sync system’s cleanup process.

The settings menu (cog icon, top left) contains several toggles:

• Small text — Shrinks the text inside the 3D shape and in the typing area. Useful as a privacy mode if someone nearby might read your screen.
• Automatic sorting — Reorders your focuses so the ones with the most completions appear first. Turn this off if you prefer to keep your own custom order.
• Sounds — Plays a subtle sound effect when a face panel is filled.
• Random text — After each feedback action (+, =, or −), the app automatically pins a different focus chosen at random. This helps you cycle through your focuses without manually selecting each one. This setting is per-device and is not synced across devices.
• Random within filter — Only appears when Random Text is on. Constrains the random selection to focuses that match your current filter (topic, feeling, or favourites) instead of picking from all focuses. This setting is per-device and is not synced across devices.
• Grid descriptions — Shows or hides the shape name and face/vertex/edge counts beneath the shape selector.
• Multidimensional shapes — Shows or hides the 4D, 5D, and 6D shapes (Tesseract, 120-Cell, Penteract, Hexeract) in the shape selector.
• Double fill — Doubles the typing challenge to 136 seconds. If you successfully complete it, two panels get filled in instead of one. A bigger commitment for a bigger reward!
• Show archived — Controls whether archived focuses appear in your focus lists. Enabled by default. When off, archived focuses are hidden from all lists and excluded from random selection, but they still count in your stats and badge totals.

No, you can use AttentionGrid without an account. Your progress is saved locally in your browser. However, if you want to sync your progress across multiple devices, you can sign in with your Google account.

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.

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.

Multidimensional shapes are enabled by default. You can disable them from the settings menu if you prefer to focus on the classic 3D polyhedra.

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.

The collection builds in 3×3×3 grids: your first 27 completed cubes form a single 3×3×3 cube. After that, each 3×3×3 cube becomes a building block in an even larger 3×3×3 structure, 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 (to the left of the Stats button). This button is only visible when you have the cube shape selected and have completed at least one cube.

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 — a single completion slows to a stop within about a day, but six completions will keep the plate clearly spinning for 24 hours
• 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 (to the left of the Stats button).

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. It’s been released early so I can explore the best way to represent real-world data in 3D — expect it to evolve over time!

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 “3D Mindmap”. This makes the network icon appear in the top bar (between Stats and Palette). 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.

Yes! AttentionGrid is a Progressive Web App (PWA). On mobile devices, you can add it to your home screen for an app-like experience. See the "Turn a website into an app in Safari on iPhone" section on the Apple support page for instructions.

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.

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

The app never stores the text you type during challenges. 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 this app originated from three distinct Abraham-Hicks concepts - the Focus Wheel process, the Emotional Grid analogy and the 68 seconds principle.

The idea of combining these three principles together - and the addition 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.

The spinning plates are inspired by their 'spinning discs' analogy, but with the obligatory AttentionGrid twist (or should I say spin?)

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.