Wellbeing
How Long Is Your Attention Span?
How long you hold a single thread.
How this is scored
16 items across four facets that attention research treats separately: sustained focus, distractibility, recovery after an interruption, and tolerance for long-form material. Four items each, half of them reverse worded so agreeing with everything does not produce a high score. The wording is original and educational. It records how your attention feels to you, which is not the same as how it performs under measurement, and nothing here diagnoses anything.
Academic References & Background
- Posner, M. I., & Petersen, S. E. (1990). The attention system of the human brain. Annual Review of Neuroscience, 13(1), 25-42.
Your result
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Before you start
The 4 possible results
Every answer nudges you toward one of these. Here is what each one means.
A long thread
You hold one thing for a long time and the world has to work to get you off it. Worth knowing that this is not free: the same grip that keeps you on a good task keeps you on a bad one, and people who score here often notice they gave three hours to something that deserved twenty minutes.
Steady, with gaps
Your attention holds in the ordinary case and gives way in specific conditions rather than generally. The useful question is not whether you can focus, because you clearly can.
Short by default, long when caught
This is the most common shape by a distance. Attention arrives when the material is interesting enough and has to be forced the rest of the time, which people tend to read as a personal failing rather than as the ordinary way attention works.
Scattered at the moment
By your own account, focus is hard to start and easy to lose right now. Nothing here says anything about your capacity: this is a questionnaire about how the last while has felt, and a hard month reads exactly like a lasting pattern from the inside.
About this assessment
Frequently Asked Questions
What does the How Long Is Your Attention Span? measure?
How long you hold a single thread. 16 items across four facets that attention research treats separately: sustained focus, distractibility, recovery after an interruption, and tolerance for long-form material. Four items each, half of them reverse worded so agreeing with everything does not produce a high score. The wording is original and educational. It records how your attention feels to you, which is not the same as how it performs under measurement, and nothing here diagnoses anything.
How is this test scored and how long does it take?
This test contains 16 questions and takes about 3 minutes to complete. All scoring runs instantly in your browser with zero sign-up.
Are my responses and results kept private?
Yes, 100% private. All calculations happen entirely inside your web browser. Your answers never leave your device and are never stored on any server.
Is this a clinical or medical diagnosis?
No. MindType tests are created for self-reflection, personal insight, and education. They do not constitute clinical, psychiatric, or psychological diagnosis.
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