Quick answer: The Regulation Profile is a 24-question self-reflection, taken about once a quarter, that returns six separate area scores instead of one summary number — Load, Recovery, Sleep, Noticing, Capacity and Bracing. Two people can arrive at the same total for very different reasons, and the six areas show which of your own answers were lower or higher. It has not been validated, and it is not a profile of your nervous system.
The free Regulation Index is five questions and takes under a minute, on purpose. Anything longer does not get answered every week, and it is meant as a quick weekly look back at the past seven days.
But a five-item instrument has a real ceiling, and it is worth being honest about where it is. It can show you that your answers added up to 11 out of 20 this week and 14 a month ago. It cannot tell you why. That is the gap the Regulation Profile was built to close.
Where one number runs out of road
Imagine two people who both score in the middle of the range.
The first sleeps badly — genuinely badly, four or five broken hours — and is otherwise carrying a manageable week with a workload they mostly chose. The second sleeps fine and is being run at by a job that sets their calendar for them, with nothing left by six in the evening and a jaw that has been clenched since March.
Same total. Almost nothing in common. The first person needs their sleep addressed and would waste three months doing breathwork around a problem that breathwork does not touch. The second person could sleep nine hours a night and still be at the same number by Friday, because the load and the bracing are doing the work.
A summary score averages that difference away. It can still be useful to look back on. It just cannot say which part of the week was hard. Six numbers say a little more about your own answers — and neither is a diagnosis of what to change.
What the six areas ask about
Each domain is four questions, scored 0–4, for a subtotal out of 16. Each area takes its topic from published research, but none of that research tested these questions, so the areas describe what you were asked about, not what was measured.
Load — how much of your week is being set by things you did not choose, and how much of it you feel able to steer. This is perceived demand and controllability, and controllability is the half people forget. A heavy week you are driving is a different physiological event from a lighter week that is driving you.
Recovery — how fast your body comes back down once something has wound it up. If one domain is worth watching more than the others, it is this one. Activation is not the problem; almost everyone gets activated. The problem is a system that takes four hours to come down from a two-minute event, because at that rate the day runs out before the recovery does.
Sleep — not hours. Whether you get to sleep, stay asleep, and wake with something in the tank. Hours are the number people report and the least informative thing about it; you can lie in bed for eight of them and get very little back. There is more on sleep in sleep problems in people with ADHD.
Noticing — whether you register what your body is doing early enough to act on it, rather than finding out afterwards. The research topic behind it is interoceptive awareness. A practice you only reach for after you have already snapped is a practice arriving late. There is more on this in interoception and ADHD.
Capacity — what is actually left of you at the end of an ordinary day, and how much of the week you spend running on empty. It is not a burnout test.
Bracing — the background holding that stays switched on when nothing is wrong. Jaw, shoulders, breath, scanning. Bracing can be easy to miss, because it is the kind of thing people stop noticing. It is the pattern behind why people with ADHD feel constantly tense.
Looking at the six side by side
When the six subtotals come back, it can help to look at them side by side rather than only at the total.
If all six are close together, no single area stood out in your answers, and a broader conversation — about load, sleep or the size of the job — may be more useful than focusing on one.
If one area is well below the rest, that gives you something specific to reflect on: my answers about recovery were lower than my answers about sleep. That is a starting point for a conversation or a practice, not a finding about what is wrong.
Why about once a quarter
Because it is long. Twenty-four questions is about eight minutes of careful answers, and asked every week it would quickly turn into clicking through. About once a quarter is a design choice to keep it worth answering properly. It is not based on research showing how fast these areas change, and no interval has been shown to reveal “real” change.
So the two do different jobs and neither replaces the other. The weekly Index is a quick look back at the past seven days; the quarterly Profile asks about the same areas in more detail, plus bracing.
What you actually do with the result
Three things, in order.
Read the weakest domain and only the weakest domain. Six scores is enough information to be paralysing, and a plan that addresses all six addresses none of them. The lowest one is a reasonable place to start reflecting; nothing shows it is the right thing to work on.
Pick one practice that targets it and repeat it long enough to matter. Trying a different practice every week makes it hard to tell what you like. The free reset library has twelve of them and no signup, and you can choose whichever feels useful to you.
Leave the total alone until the next one. Watching a quarterly number weekly is an easy way to make yourself anxious about it. The weekly Index is there for that. The Profile you take, act on, and put down.
Members can see their own six domains and their change since the last one on the dashboard, alongside the weekly trend. Small differences from last time are shown as “about the same”. That is a display rule, not a validated threshold, and a bigger difference is not proof that anything changed.
What the Regulation Profile is not
This part is not a disclaimer at the bottom; it matters as much as the questions.
RP-1 is original and has not been validated. It has no population norms, so you are not being compared against anyone and there is no percentile to read into. There is no cutoff, no pass, and no threshold that means anything clinically. It cannot screen for ADHD, anxiety, depression, sleep apnoea or trauma, and a low score is not evidence of any of them.
What it is, precisely: a structured way of asking yourself twenty-four specific questions you would not otherwise ask in that order, and a way of comparing today's answers to the ones you gave three months ago. That can be useful, and it is also all it is. It is not clinical evidence, and it is not evidence that coaching or a practice changed your health. PKJ Coaching is coaching, not therapy or medical care. If something in your answers worries you, the next step is a clinician, not a longer practice streak.
Common questions
What is the Regulation Profile?
The Regulation Profile (id RP-1) is a 24-question self-reflection, taken about once a quarter at PKJ Coaching. It is free with an account, because it is your own answers rather than anything a model wrote. It takes about eight minutes and returns a 0-96 total, a band, and six separate domain scores: Load, Recovery, Sleep, Noticing, Capacity and Bracing. The six area scores are the point of it — they show which of your own answers were lower or higher, not just whether the overall number moved. It is not a validated profile of the nervous system.
How is the Regulation Profile different from the Regulation Index?
The Regulation Index (RI-1) is five questions about the past seven days, free to everyone, and meant to be answered once a week. The Regulation Profile is 24 questions, for account holders, and meant to be answered about every three months. The Index is a quick weekly look back; the Profile asks about the same areas in more detail, plus bracing. Neither is a validated measure, and neither replaces the other.
Why is the Regulation Profile only taken once a quarter?
Two reasons. A 24-item questionnaire asked weekly gets abandoned, and an abandoned instrument produces worse data than a short one answered honestly. It is also long: about eight minutes of careful answers. A quarterly rhythm is a design choice that keeps it worth taking seriously. It is not based on research showing how fast these areas change, and no particular interval has been shown to reveal real change.
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