The Regulation Index (RI-1): a weekly self-reflection, and what it cannot tell you
Five questions about the past seven days, for people with ADHD who want a simple, repeatable way to look back on their week. This page shows the exact questions, how the answers are added up, and the limits of what the number means. It is a self-reflection. It is not a validated measurement, a diagnostic test or a clinical tool.
What this is
The Regulation Index (RI-1) is a weekly self-reflection about the past seven days. It asks five short questions — how much of the week ran you, how long it took to come back down after something wound you up, how many nights you woke restored, whether you caught tension early, and what was left at the end of an ordinary day — and adds your answers into a total from 0 to 20. It takes about a minute at /measure and needs no account.
Its job is modest: to give you the same five questions each week, so you can look back on the week in a consistent way and, if you save your answers, set this week beside your own earlier weeks. What the answers mean is for you to decide. The number is a summary of what you chose, not a reading taken from your body.
PKJ Coaching is holistic ADHD coaching for people with ADHD. The Regulation Index is one free tool that sits alongside the guided resets and Ask PKJ. It was written for this site, and its wording is original.
What it is not
- Not a diagnosis or a screen. It cannot detect, rule out or diagnose ADHD, anxiety, depression, burnout or any other condition.
- No clinical cutoff. No total is a threshold for anything, and a low total is not a verdict on you.
- Not a ranking. Your total is not compared against a population. There are no norms for it, and the site shows you no percentile or ranking.
- Not a before-and-after test. The questions ask about the whole past week, so they cannot show the effect of one practice, one session or one day.
- Not evidence that anything worked. A higher total later on is not proof that coaching, a reset or anything else changed your health.
PKJ Coaching is coaching support. It is not therapy, diagnosis or medical care, it does not give medication advice, and it does not guarantee any health outcome. If something in your answers worries you, talk to a qualified clinician. If you are in crisis in the US, call or text 988.
RI-1: the five questions, verbatim
Each question asks about one area of the past week. The research named under each one is where the topic comes from; it is not evidence that this question measures that topic, because none of that research tested these questions. Answers are scored 0–4 in the order shown.
“How much of the last 7 days felt like the week was running you?”
- 0 Almost all of it
- 1 Most of it
- 2 About half
- 3 A bit of it
- 4 Hardly any of it
“When something wound you up this week, how long did your body take to come back down?”
- 0 Hours, or it never really did
- 1 About an hour
- 2 Twenty or thirty minutes
- 3 A few minutes
- 4 Almost straight away
“How many of the last 7 nights did you wake up actually restored?”
- 0 None, or one
- 1 Two
- 2 Three or four
- 3 Five or six
- 4 Every one
“Did you catch your body tightening up before it turned into a problem?”
- 0 Never — only afterwards
- 1 Once or twice
- 2 Sometimes
- 3 Most times
- 4 Nearly every time
“By the end of an ordinary day this week, what was left in the tank?”
- 0 Nothing at all
- 1 Almost nothing
- 2 Enough to get by
- 3 A decent amount
- 4 Plenty
How the answers are added up
Each answer is worth 0 to 4, in the order listed above, and the five are added together for a total out of 20. There is no weighting and no adjustment. On every question the 4 is the easier end, so a higher total simply means you picked answers nearer the easier end this week. That is all a higher total means.
Next to a total, /measure shows a short label and a sentence, so the number does not arrive on its own, and suggests one of the free resets based on your lowest answer. Those labels, sentences and suggestions are wording choices made by PKJ Coaching. They are not score bands with research behind them, they are not cut-points, and they say nothing about your health, how severe anything is or what you need.
Once a week, and comparing weeks
The questions ask about the past seven days, so they are designed to be answered once a week. Inside a free account, the site asks at most once every seven days, only after you have finished a reset you chose, and never by push notification. “Not now” is always a real answer. An email reminder exists only if you switch it on yourself, and it stops in one click.
If you save your answers, the site puts this week’s total beside your last one. A difference of fewer than 3 points is shown as “about the same”. That is a display rule, chosen so that small differences are not presented as trends. It is not a measured noise floor or a meaningful-change threshold — no such threshold has been worked out for these questions — and a larger difference is not proof that anything changed. How the week actually felt to you matters more than the number.
RP-1: the longer reflection
With a free account you can also take the Regulation Profile (RP-1), a longer self-reflection of twenty-four questions, about once a quarter. There are four questions in each of six areas. Each answer is worth 0–4, so each area adds up to a number out of 16 and the whole to a number out of 96.
| Area | What the questions ask about |
|---|---|
| Load | How much of the week felt set by things you did not choose, and how much you felt able to steer. |
| Recovery | How long it took to come back down once something wound you up. |
| Sleep | Getting to sleep, staying asleep, and waking with something in the tank. |
| Noticing | Whether you noticed changes in your body early, or only afterwards. |
| Capacity | What was left at the end of an ordinary day. |
| Bracing | Background holding — jaw, shoulders, breath, scanning — that you notice staying on when nothing in particular is wrong. |
The Regulation Profile is a structured set of questions, not a validated profile of your nervous system. The six area scores show which of your own answers were lower or higher; they do not show which body system is affected. The site names your lowest area as one place you might start reflecting, and that is a suggestion, not a finding. When you compare with a previous profile, a difference of fewer than 12 points on the total is shown as “about the same” — again a display rule, not a validated threshold.
Your reflection and published research
Two different things are on this page, and they should not be confused.
Published research is the work named under each question: studies of stress appraisal, sleep, recovery after stress and noticing body signals. That work exists independently of this site. None of it studied these questions, these totals or PKJ Coaching.
Your reflection is your own answers about your own week. It can be useful to you, and it is yours. It is not clinical evidence, it is not research data about ADHD, and it should not be read — by you or by anyone else — as evidence that a practice, coaching or anything else improved your health.
If you need a validated measure — for research, for a clinical decision, or for anything that goes in a medical record — ask a qualified clinician about validated tools. The page for clinicians explains how coaching fits alongside care.
Your answers and privacy
On /measure without an account, your answers are sent to the site to show your result and a short written read, and are not saved to any account. With a free account, your saved check-ins are kept with your account so you can see them over time; individual answers are never published. The privacy policy sets out how data is handled.
Once a day the site also counts how many account holders’ latest answers landed on each score. Those counts hold no names, email addresses or identifiers. They come from a self-selected group of people who chose to sign up and answer, so they are not population norms, they are not a reference for anyone else’s score, and this page does not display them. They remain available as JSON at /api/norms only so that the existing address keeps working.
Licence
The question wording and scoring mechanics on this page are released under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0, with attribution to PKJ Coaching and a link to this page. If you adapt the questions, please give your version a different name, so that two sets of wording never share one identifier. Reuse does not make them validated: they are reflection questions, not an outcome measure for research or clinical decisions.
Try the weekly reflection yourself at /measure. It is free, needs no account and takes about a minute.
Questions people ask
Is the Regulation Index validated?
No. The Regulation Index is a weekly self-reflection written by PKJ Coaching. It has not been validated, no reliability or validity studies have been done on it, and it has no clinical cutoff. It cannot screen for or diagnose anything. It is five questions about the past seven days that you can answer the same way each week.
Does the Regulation Index compare me with other people?
No. Your total is not ranked against a population, there are no norms for it, and the site shows you no percentile. The only comparison it offers is between your own saved weeks.
What does a change in my total mean?
Only that your answers were different. A difference of fewer than 3 points is shown as “about the same”, which is a display rule rather than a measured threshold, and a bigger difference is not proof that anything changed. The questions cover a whole week, so they cannot work as a before-and-after test of one practice.
Can I use the questions in my own work?
The wording is released under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0, with credit to PKJ Coaching and a link to this page. Please give any adapted version a different name. They are reflection questions, not a validated outcome measure, so they are not suitable for research outcomes or clinical decisions.