The science

The reasons behind the rules.

Every constraint in Conberate exists because a piece of published attention research says it should. This page lists them — and is honest about which findings are strong, which are heuristics, and which numbers are design choices. If a number appears anywhere on this site, its source is here.

The findingThe sourceWhat it became in the app
Getting into real concentration takes 10–25 minutes of unbroken focus.Csikszentmihalyi, Flow (1990); practitioner literatureThe 45-minute floor on deep blocks, and the ramp-up the score subtracts from every one.
One interruption costs ~23 minutes to fully recover from.Mark, Gudith & Klocke, CHI 2008Real blocking during a block, with a clear notification for every enforced close.
Screen time before switching has fallen to ~47 seconds; ~44% of interruptions are self-inflicted.Mark, Attention Span (2023)Why blocking alone isn't the product — the structure of the day is.
Unfinished tasks leave “attention residue” that impairs the next task.Leroy, OBHDP 2009The transition ritual; minimum block sizes; the break that scales with open loops, not minutes.
A one-minute “ready-to-resume” note measurably reduces that residue.Leroy & Glomb, Organization Science 2018The one line you write before a deep block — including when you push a task to later, the moment it matters most.
Sustained deliberate practice runs 1h/day for novices to ~4h for experts, in sessions ≤ 90 minutes.Ericsson, Krampe & Tesch-Römer, Psychological Review 1993Capacity that starts at a conservative 1 hour and is earned upward; the warning past 90 minutes; nothing counted past two hours in one sitting.
Attention and energy cycle in ~90–120 minute waves.Kleitman's basic rest–activity cycleThe size of the enforced break after deep work.
People mis-estimate their own tasks, systematically.Buehler, Griffin & Ross, JPSP 1994Estimate calibration against your own median — a hint, never an edit.
Losses weigh roughly twice what gains do.Kahneman & Tversky, Econometrica 1979Why the Day Score climbs from zero instead of decaying from 100.
What this page doesn't claim.

Conberate hasn't been clinically tested; it's an application of this research, not a study of its own. Some of the numbers above rest on small samples — the famous four-hour ceiling among them — which is why the app treats them as ranges and starting points, and then learns your numbers from your days instead of holding you to the literature's averages. Where the app itself can test a rule — like whether the enforced break actually improves your ratings — it does, on your own data, and tells you the answer.

References

  1. Buehler, R., Griffin, D., & Ross, M. (1994). Exploring the "planning fallacy": Why people underestimate their task completion times. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 67(3), 366–381.
  2. Csikszentmihalyi, M. (1990). Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience. Harper & Row.
  3. Ericsson, K. A., Krampe, R. T., & Tesch-Römer, C. (1993). The role of deliberate practice in the acquisition of expert performance. Psychological Review, 100(3), 363–406.
  4. Kahneman, D., & Tversky, A. (1979). Prospect theory: An analysis of decision under risk. Econometrica, 47(2), 263–291.
  5. Kleitman, N. (1982). Basic rest–activity cycle — 22 years later. Sleep, 5(4), 311–317.
  6. Leroy, S. (2009). Why is it so hard to do my work? The challenge of attention residue when switching between work tasks. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 109(2), 168–181.
  7. Leroy, S., & Glomb, T. M. (2018). Tasks interrupted: How anticipating time pressure on resuming an interrupted task causes attention residue and low performance. Organization Science, 29(3), 380–397.
  8. Mark, G., Gudith, D., & Klocke, U. (2008). The cost of interrupted work: More speed and stress. Proceedings of CHI 2008, 107–110.
  9. Mark, G. (2023). Attention Span: A Groundbreaking Way to Restore Balance, Happiness and Productivity. Hanover Square Press.

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The science · Conberate