40% of your brain is still stuck on yesterday.
I thought I needed more discipline. I didn't. I'm a crypto trader — I learned this during a 3-month losing streak where my brain was still running yesterday's trades while I placed today's. Every system I tried assumed I started clean. I didn't.
Get the free Residue Heat Map + launch notificationBook out September 22nd · Jim Kunns · 6 months, 100+ papers, no guru stuff
You're not distracted. You're carrying residue.
Yesterday's meeting that ended with no decision. That vague email. The task you left mid-thought. Your brain keeps the file open and checks it every few minutes.
That's up to 40% already taken while you're 'working.'
This isn't a metaphor. Sophie Leroy measured it in 2009. Gloria Mark tracked it for 20 years — average time on one screen is now 47 seconds. Almost every timer, app, and Deep Work block you tried was built for a brain that starts at zero. Yours doesn't.
Start here. See where your 40% lives.
Download the Heat Map worksheet from Chapter 2. Same one I used. Most people find 30-50 open loops the first time they do it.
Takes about 4 minutes. You'll get a number, not a pep talk.
You'll also get launch notification and occasional high-signal notes. Unsubscribe anytime. I don't do spam.
This isn't another habit list.
It names the mechanism the $80B industry makes money by ignoring — attention residue. A permanent fix isn't in their business model.
It gives you Clear-Cut-Bridge. Close the loop, reset your body, point at the next task on purpose. 12 seconds, 90 seconds, or 9 minutes — depending on what life allows. Not another calendar template.
It has a full section for real life: ADHD, ER / support / teaching, anxiety, shift work, caregiving. If your job doesn't allow monk mode, this part is for you.
Built from the papers, not the summaries.
I didn't invent residue in a lab. I felt it while trading — couldn't make clean calls. Then I took six months off and read the actual papers. The protocol in the book is what I built when the usual advice fell apart.
When I'm not trading, I do pro bono criminal defense work. Same thing there: when attention is fractured, people make worse calls about their future.
One question.
If you got 40% back — about 3.2 hours of real presence in an 8-hour day — what's the one problem you'd finally have space to solve?
Not a work problem.
Get your 40% back.
Get the free Heat Map + launch notificationBook out September 22nd. Early list gets Chapter 1.