← All interactive guides Methods & assumptions

Useful prompts, not false precision.

These guides turn a small set of transparent inputs into a practical reflection. They are not clinical assessments, financial advice, diagnoses, or predictions.

Design principles

  • Private by default. Answers are processed in the browser and are not sent to Timelessly Mindful when someone completes a guide.
  • Immediate and ungated. Every guide provides its core result without an email address.
  • Transparent inputs. A result only reflects the numbers or responses a visitor chooses; it does not infer hidden traits or diagnose a condition.
  • One small next step. Action suggestions are prompts for experimentation, not rules or treatment plans.

Scores and survey responses

Reflection guides use a 0–10 self-rating and display the average as a 0–100 orientation score. For questions about friction, interruption, or overload, the rating is reversed so a lower-friction answer contributes more positively. This is a simple reflection convention—not a validated psychometric scale.

The Modern Attention Index is a ten-item self-report survey about the past seven ordinary days. Its five domains are presence, intention, interruptions, recovery, and environment. Responses run from “Never” to “Nearly always.” Positively framed items rise with frequency; interruption and pressure items are reversed. Domain scores are simple averages, shown so a visitor can choose one area to observe rather than treating the total as a verdict.

Calculator assumptions

Attention Leakage Calculator
Estimated daily leakage = notifications × minutes to refocus + unplanned checks × minutes per check. Weekly and yearly figures multiply that estimate by seven and 52. The model intentionally does not claim every interruption is harmful or that all recovered time becomes productive.
Screen-Time Opportunity Cost
Weekly hours = recreational minutes per day × days per week ÷ 60. The annual figure uses 52 weeks. Necessary work, accessibility, navigation, and communication use are excluded when a visitor chooses to exclude them.
Mindful Spending Calculator
Potential redirect = recurring monthly spending × the selected redirect percentage. Work-time figures divide recurring spending by the visitor’s stated effective hourly pay. Currency values are illustrative and use USD formatting only.
Time–Money–Freedom Calculator
Work hours = recurring monthly cost ÷ effective hourly pay. Potential yearly redirect = monthly redirect × 12. “Runway” = yearly redirect ÷ stated monthly essential costs. It excludes investment returns, taxes, debt interest, inflation, benefits, and emergency changes; it is not retirement or financial-planning guidance.
Layoff Risk Compensation Calculator
Expected annual earnings = salary × (1 − annual layoff probability × unemployment months ÷ 12). Its break-even probability solves that equation for the higher-pay role. It assumes unpaid unemployment and excludes severance, unemployment benefits, taxes, bonuses, benefits, job-search cost, and longer-term career effects.
Retirement Opportunity Cost Calculator
Future value = purchase price × (1 + annual return)years. Contribution delay uses the monthly rate and the entered monthly contribution to estimate the time required to rebuild the initial outlay and its missed growth. Returns, taxes, fees, inflation, and sequence risk are not modeled.
Compounding & Time Calculator
Annual contributions grow by the future-value-of-an-annuity formula: contribution × ((1 + return)years − 1) ÷ return. The late-starter scenario solves the annual contribution required to reach the early starter’s ending value. The coast scenario compares contributing for the first entered years with beginning after that point. Both use annual compounding and end-of-year contributions.

Sharing and printing

Choosing Share result creates a link that includes the answer values needed to recreate that result. It is only created when someone explicitly shares it. Anyone with the link can see those answers, so avoid sharing a result that contains information you would prefer to keep private.

Print / save PDF opens a clean, styled result sheet in a separate window. From there, use your browser’s print command and choose its PDF destination when you want to save it.

Sources that inform the guides

These sources inform the questions and editorial framing; they do not validate an individual score or turn the guides into medical or financial instruments.

Revision policy

We will revise a guide when its arithmetic, framing, source base, or visitor feedback shows that it could be clearer or more honest. Material changes to a formula or question set will be documented here before being presented as a comparable trend.