MNEURIX
← Mind Unmasking Tool · Self-understanding

Interest & Flow Map

Your interests aren't quirks to manage down — they're how your attention economy actually works. Map the tunnels, and get a reading worth defending to your calendar.

Interest names stay on this device — they are never sent. Only the structural answers travel, once, for the reading, and nothing is stored server-side.

Not a diagnostic tool. An educational mapper grounded in monotropism — interest-based attention as a cognitive theory (Murray, Lesser & Lawson, 2005) — and flow as regulation (McDonnell & Milton, 2014).

1 — Name 2–4 interests that reliably pull you in

The ones that eat an afternoon without you noticing. Names stay on this device.

2 — How much protected interest time does a normal week hold?

3 — What reliably breaks the tunnel?

Pick everything that applies — the reading uses it to suggest protections.

Notes

The theory under this tool: monotropism — attention as a scarce resource, minds as interest-systems, and deep tunnels as where autistic flow actually lives (Murray, Lesser & Lawson, 2005; the site's essay on context-switching costs covers it in depth). Flow is treated as regulation, not a symptom (McDonnell & Milton, 2014) — and the honesty question "what does it cost afterwards?" rides along, because absorption can be recovery or escape under sustained load. Companions: Energy Ledger (budget the recharge), Signal Decoder (read the crashes).

How this tool works

You map your interest tunnels: the topics that pull you in and hold you — and for each one, roughly how many hours a week it actually gets, what flow feels like inside it, and what breaks the flow when it breaks. The capture happens in your browser; when you submit, the answers travel once to this site's scoring endpoint and a reading comes back — your flow profile, an interpretation of how your tunnels work as an attention economy, and a recharge menu built from them. Nothing is stored server-side; no accounts, no tracking.

The premise is the map itself: deep interests are not quirks to manage or embarrassments to hide. In the monotropism account, they are how your attention economy actually works — a scarce, deep resource channeled into tunnels (Murray, Lesser & Lawson, 2005). The recharge menu is the practical output: when you need to recover, it lists what has actually worked — the tunnels that reliably return more than they cost.

The research behind it

Monotropism is the core idea: attention as a narrow, deep resource — minds that channel heavily into a few tunnels at a time, rather than spreading shallowly across everything (Murray, Lesser & Lawson, 2005). Follow-up work reframes absorbed interest time as legitimate self-regulation, not avoidance: flow inside an interest tunnel is a real recovery state, with the absorption and the ease that flow research describes (McDonnell & Milton, 2014).

Why that matters practically: in the burnout-recovery research, interest-led time is among the most consistently reported recharges (Raymaker et al., 2020). Not rest-as-in-nothing, not obligations-as-in-chores — the actual interests. That is the finding this tool operationalizes: it treats your tunnels as infrastructure, because the research says they are.

How to use it well

  • List the real interests, including the “embarrassing” ones. The map is for you; the tunnel that reliably restores you does not care whether it sounds impressive.
  • Be honest about the hours. Zero is a real answer — a dormant tunnel is useful data about what your life currently starves.
  • Notice the breakers. Interruptions inside a tunnel cost more than interruptions outside it — the monotropism account predicts that, and your own data will confirm it.
  • Use the recharge menu when planning recovery. After a heavy week, pick from the tunnels the reading shows actually return the charge — not from what “should” be restful.

What this tool is not

  • Not a productivity tool. It does not optimize your interests toward output; it maps them toward recovery and self-knowledge.
  • Not advice to abandon responsibilities. Tunnels are infrastructure, not a permission slip — the reading speaks to balance, not indulgence.
  • Not a diagnosis of anything. Deep interests are a working hypothesis about how autistic attention tends to organize — not a test you pass.

Questions people ask

Isn't this just indulging special interests?

Look at where the hours go and what they return: if a tunnel reliably leaves you recharged rather than depleted, the flow research and the burnout-recovery accounts both count that as self-regulation (McDonnell & Milton, 2014; Raymaker et al., 2020). Indulgence that pays the energy bills has a plainer name — recovery.

My interests change every month. Does the map still work?

Tunnels move — monotropism describes deep channels, not permanent ones. Remap when the landscape shifts; the reading is a snapshot, not a personality assignment.

Why does deep interest time restore me more than rest does?

The monotropism framing says the tunnel is where your attention naturally wants to go — flow inside it is the low-friction state (Murray, Lesser & Lawson, 2005; McDonnell & Milton, 2014). The full mechanism question stays open in the research; the pattern, though, is one of the most consistently reported things autistic people say.

What if I only have one tunnel?

Then your attention economy runs on one deep channel — which monotropism predicts for some people, and treats as a legitimate shape rather than a deficit (Murray, Lesser & Lawson, 2005). The recharge menu just concentrates accordingly, and diversity of tunnels is not something this tool grades you on.

Do work tunnels count, if the interest is real?

Yes — a tunnel is a tunnel. The question the map asks is what the time returns, not what pays for it. A work interest that reliably returns charge is still a recharge source; the hours and flow markers will say whether it is.

How is this different from the Energy Ledger?

The Energy Ledger tracks what spends and returns charge day to day; this tool is the supply-side map — where the reliable recharges actually live, so the menu exists before the deficit does.

Where to go next