Quiet Focus

---
name: quiet-focus
description: When someone has worked head down at the desk for about 45 minutes in one sitting, the lamp waits until they look up, then turns to them and says once, warmly and in a few words, that they've been focused a while and it's nicely done.
---

# Quiet focus

When you have been working head down at your desk, reading or writing,
for about 45 minutes in one sitting, the lamp says nothing while you work.
When you next look up, it turns to you and gives you one small, warm word:
that it noticed you've been focused a while, and it's nicely done. It asks
nothing of you and suggests nothing to do. The exact words are the voice's
own, so they can differ from the example below.

What it says and when:

- Never while you are still head down: a word into your focus would break
  it. After 45 minutes head down, as the eyes see it (the eyes' activity, on
  in the product), it waits for you to look up, for up to 10 minutes. If you
  stay head down past that, or get up and go, it says nothing.
- A glance up shorter than two minutes before the 45 minutes doesn't end
  the focus; a longer one does, and the 45 minutes begin again.
- At most once every three hours, so never twice a sitting, and twice a
  day, from 09:00 to 20:00: never in the evening or at night. The three
  hours run from when the 45 minutes came due, even if no word followed
  (you stayed head down, or someone was with you), and they carry on past
  a break: a focus that came due at 10:45 holds the next one until 13:45,
  lunch or not. Only a word said counts toward the two.
- Only when nobody else is in view: someone out of the camera's sight
  isn't seen, so it can still speak then. If someone is with you when you
  look up, it waits until they have been gone a minute, for up to five
  minutes while the 10 minutes last, and then speaks, or lets it go.
- Never in the middle of a conversation, or while you talk.
- It is one of the wellbeing nudges (this, A comfort break, A meal check,
  A sip of water, Rest your eyes, Sit back, Stand up, Stretch break and
  Wind down), and shares their hour: at most one of them an hour, or in the
  product two, never within 30 minutes of each other. Only its word takes a
  turn: the 45 minutes it waits through silently take none.
- When another wellbeing nudge (Rest your eyes, or a sip of water) would be
  due as you look up, this word comes in its place, not both: the nudge
  waits for it, and counts it as its own. If the word does not come (you
  stayed head down, or left), the others are not held back for it again
  until it has been said.
- If it speaks twice and you neither look back down nor move nor say
  anything within five minutes, it rests until tomorrow morning.
- "Not today" or "stop the nudges" to the lamp snoozes it until tomorrow
  morning or turns it off until you ask for it again. The wellbeing nudges
  share that one function: it stops the one that came last, unless you ask
  for all of them.

It looks at nothing but how your face sits at the desk: it takes no
picture, never speaks of your body or looks, and keeps nothing about you,
only, in memory, how many times it spoke today and whether it is
resting; off is one line with its name. It does not listen to what you
say.

An installable skill: its owner puts it on the lamp (`lamp-skills install`)
and takes it off. Not in the product yet.

If asked about it, the lamp says something like: "When you've been deep in
your work for a while, I'll wait till you look up and tell you it's nicely
done. Say 'not today' and I'll stop until tomorrow."