For the professional who works with them
The PDF they brought you
Vistempo is a focus timer for Mac and iPhone. On the person's own device it builds a report covering their last few weeks of timed sessions, and they decide whether to bring that report to you. This is the leaflet for that document: what is in it, what is not, and where each number comes from.
In one sentence
A stopwatch that keeps what it timed
The person picks a duration before starting. The app counts, warns in the final minutes, and records the moment the session was closed. The report adds those sessions up and lays them out by week, by time of day and by category. Nothing else is measured.
They already tell you how the last few weeks went. This is that same conversation, with the dates attached.
What it is
- A descriptive record of stopwatch use, kept by the person themselves.
- An A4 PDF page covering 2, 4, 8 or 12 weeks, with the same content also available as plain text.
- Raw numbers with units and dates: hours, minutes, session counts, days.
- A document that leaves their device and reaches you by their hand.
What it is not
- Not an exam, a chart note, a medical record or a diagnostic instrument, and it plays no part in diagnosis.
- It does not measure attention, productivity or use of other apps.
- No clinical scale is built in, and there is no 0-to-100 score. The only rating is the one the person gives their own session, from 1 to 5, answering "how was the focus?".
- It interprets nothing and recommends no course of action — not to them, not to you.
- It is not a medical device, and it does not need to be.
The contents
What goes into the document, and what stays out
Goes in
- Start, end, agreed duration and actual time for each session.
- Focus time (what stayed inside the agreed duration, pauses excluded) and extra time (what went past the end).
- The session's category — a name the person typed themselves.
- How many pauses there were and how long they added up to; how many extensions, and how many minutes they added.
- Whether a session started with a written intention: only whether it did, never what was written.
- How many distractions were noted with one tap during a session.
- The one-tap chip the person picks when a session ends early ("the task was vague", "an interruption came").
- The 1-to-5 rating given to a session's focus, when they answer.
- Days with focus, days in a row, and a before-and-after comparison around any date the person marked.
Stays out
- Whatever they wrote when closing a session. Those notes never reach the PDF.
- The text of the session's intention.
- The names of apps that were in the foreground. The Mac can record them for the person's own statistics, and they do not enter the report.
- Medication, dose, side effects, sleep, mood, symptoms. The app has no such fields anywhere.
- Any clinical scale. None is embedded, and that decision is firm.
- Location, contacts, screen content, keystrokes.
Every block of the page has a switch in the app's settings: the person can turn whole sections off before generating the document.
Sample
The page, section by section
Below is the full structure of the document, in the order it prints. The numbers are made up, so you can see the shape without looking at anyone's routine.
Example with fictional data.
Focus report
8/27 to 9/9/2026 · 2 weeks · generated on 9/9/2026 at 6:40 PM
A. Example
A record of focus sessions timed by the person themselves in the Vistempo app (Mac and iPhone). Each session has a duration agreed beforehand; the app warns in the final minutes and, once the end passes, keeps counting the extra time up to a limit.
Summary
| Focus time | 9 h 40 min in 21 sessions |
| Days with focus | 11 of 14 |
| Average per day with focus | 52 min |
| Longest session | 78 min |
| Average focus rating (1 to 5) | 3.4 across 16 sessions rated |
Focus per day (minutes)
8/27 · 45 · 0 · 60 · 30 · 75 · 40 · 0 · 55 · 90 · 40 · 0 · 65 · 50 · 30 · 9/9
In the PDF this line is a band of bars, one per day of the period, with the dates at either end. Every value is also totaled under “Week by week”, so nothing depends on bar height alone.
Week by week
| 8/27 to 9/2 | 4 h 10 min · 9 sessions · 5 days |
| 9/3 to 9/9 | 5 h 30 min · 12 sessions · 6 days |
When focus happens
| Small hours (0–5) | 0 min · 0 sessions |
| Morning (5–12) | 5 h 05 min · 11 sessions |
| Afternoon (12–18) | 3 h 20 min · 7 sessions |
| Night (18–24) | 1 h 15 min · 3 sessions |
| Sessions started between 11pm and 4am | 1 |
Your focus works best at 9 AM and on Tuesdays.
By category
| Work | 5 h 40 min · 12 sessions |
| Study | 3 h 10 min · 7 sessions |
| Personal | 50 min · 2 sessions |
Planned time and actual time
In the last 21 sessions: 9 on target, 4 ended early and 8 went beyond. Typically, 1.2× the planned time. This week, 1.1×; before that, 1.3×: closer to planned.
| Ended early (less than 90% of planned) | 4 sessions |
| On target (90% to 110%) | 9 sessions |
| Went beyond (more than 110%) | 8 sessions |
Distractions noted
14 distractions in 8 of 21 sessions · 0.7 per session · mostly in the afternoon. Noted with one tap during the session; they count only the times the person remembered to tap.
How the sessions ended
| To the planned end | 13 sessions |
| Ended before the end | 6 sessions |
| Closed by the time limit | 2 sessions |
| With extra time | 5 of 21 sessions · on average 9.0 min extra |
Consistency
| Days in a row with focus | 3 (record 9) |
What usually gets in the way
Chosen with one tap when a session ended before the planned end. 5 of 21 sessions
| The task was vague | 2 sessions |
| Write the question down before starting. | |
| An interruption came | 2 sessions |
| Silence what can wait. | |
| The energy ran out | 1 session |
| A shorter session also counts. | |
Intention, pauses and extensions
What the sessions looked like from the inside. These lines describe; there is nothing to hit here.
| Sessions that started with a stated intention | 15 of 21 sessions |
| Sessions with at least one pause | 7 of 21 sessions |
| Time paused | 41 min · 11 pauses |
| Sessions extended with more minutes | 4 of 21 sessions |
| Time added by extending | 35 min |
Before and after: started waking up earlier
This shows what changed in the weeks around this date. It does not show why — many things happen at once, and a difference here is not proof that one caused the other.
| Marked date | 8/26/2026 |
| Days observed | 28 days before · 14 days after |
Each line reads: the weeks before this date, then the weeks from it on.
| Focus per day | 34 min → 41 min |
| Planned against actual | 1.3× → 1.2× |
| Typical starting time | 2:20 PM → 10:05 AM |
| Distractions per hour of focus | 1.8 → 1.4 |
| Sessions to the planned end | 55% → 62% |
Why these things are in the app
What each piece leans on, and where the ground is thin.
| Saying what the session is for | a review of several studies |
| Deciding beforehand what you will do, and when, had a medium to large effect on reaching the goal: d = 0.65 across 94 independent tests. | |
| Gollwitzer and Sheeran, 2006 · Toli and colleagues, 2016 · Tested in children with ADHD and in adults with mental health problems in general, not yet in adults with ADHD. | |
| A duration taken from your own history | a review of several studies, and a study comparing groups |
| Time perception in ADHD carries a systematic error: g = 0.688 across 824 effect sizes; and in a head-to-head comparison of three break techniques, none of the three won. | |
| Metcalfe, McFeaters and Voyer, 2024 · Smits, Wenzel and de Bruin, 2025 · The difficulty is well established. That practising the estimate improves it has weak evidence: one small trial, in children. | |
| Noting what got in the way, and the distractions | a review of several very small studies |
| Keeping track of your own attention raised time on task, with combined effects above 1.0. | |
| Harris and colleagues, 2005 · Reid, Trout and Schartz, 2005 · Almost all of it followed one person at a time, in children, in the classroom, with 3 to 6 participants. | |
| A limit on the time past the end | a study that asked a large group of people about themselves |
| More ADHD traits went with more reported hyperfocus in every setting, in a survey of 251 adults and a repeat with 372. | |
| Hupfeld, Abagis and Shah, 2019 · Self-report at a single point in time, with no objective measure and no cause established. | |
Evidence that something happens is not evidence that this app’s version of it works: none of these studies tested Vistempo.
How these numbers were measured. Vistempo is a timer: the person picks a duration, the app counts and records when the session was closed. “Focus time” is the time inside the agreed duration, without the pauses. “Extra time” is what went past it. Calibration compares what was agreed with what happened. Nothing here measures attention, productivity or use of other apps. Sessions closed by the time limit, with the device shut, stay out of the calibration. This document is not an exam nor a diagnostic instrument; it exists to support a conversation about a routine. Records stay on the person’s devices and in their private iCloud storage; the developer cannot access them.
This sample is HTML, written to fit on this page. The real PDF comes out of the app, on the person's own device, with their dates and their numbers.
The route
How the document reaches you
- In the app, the person opens the dashboard and goes to the Report section (on the Mac, the Report destination of the main window).
- They pick the period. Two and four weeks exist from day one; eight and twelve appear once there is history to fill them.
- If they want, they type a name, which appears at the top of the page. The field is optional and starts empty.
- They tap Generate PDF. Then they can view it on screen, share it through the system sheet — mail, message, AirDrop, Files — or, on the Mac, save it wherever they like.
The file is created on the device and leaves it only if they choose where to send it. There is no automatic delivery, no professional inbox, and no notification telling anyone the document was opened.
If it helps to agree on an interval, four weeks tends to cover the gap between two appointments. The number of pages depends on the report content.
Who tends to use this
Four ways to read the same page
Psychology
Activity logs and self-monitoring are already standard practice in cognitive behavioral work. The page is the log sheet that filled itself in, with the time, the agreed duration and the outcome of every session.
Caveat: the self-monitoring literature is largely made of very small studies, with children, in classrooms. None of it tested Vistempo.
Occupational therapy
Time-use diaries, occupational profiles and activity analysis are instruments native to the field. The fit is direct: category, time of day, agreed duration against actual, and what the person marked as getting in the way.
Caveat: the app records only the sessions the person timed. The rest of their day is not in here.
ADHD coaching
Here the word is client. The document serves the structure between one session and the next: what was agreed, what happened, and how much time separated the two.
Caveat: ADHD coaching is not a licensed profession in the United States or in Brazil, and the credentials that exist are private and voluntary. Nothing on this page is health care, and Vistempo does not claim otherwise.
Psychiatry
This is where the caveat is hardest, and it comes before any usefulness.
- These numbers describe the use of a stopwatch. They are not symptoms, not functioning, not the effect of anything.
- The before-and-after comparison exists because the person marked a date with a label they wrote themselves. The app never knows what happened that day, and the page says, above the numbers, that a difference there is no proof of cause.
- No line of this document was built to support a change in treatment, and Vistempo recommends no course of action at all.
If it is useful, it is useful for the same reason their account is useful: they are telling you how the last few weeks went — only with the dates attached.
Method
Where each number comes from, and where the ground is thin
Every page ends with a note that names what each number is: focus time is what stayed inside the agreed duration, pauses excluded; extra time is what went past it; calibration compares what was agreed with what happened. Sessions closed by the time limit, with the device shut, stay out of the calibration, because nobody recorded the end.
The app also shows, both to the person and in the report, what each mechanism leans on: stating an intention before starting, a duration drawn from their own history, noting what got in the way, and a limit on the time past the end. Each comes with a reference, the finding, the kind of study, and the honest caveat.
Vistempo has never been tested in any study. Evidence that something happens is not evidence that this app's version of it works. None of the studies cited in the document tested this app, and the document itself says so, in small type, right below the references.
No clinical scale is embedded, and that decision is not provisional. Scoring a scale and handing back a conclusion is the work of the person in the room, not of a timer.
Privacy
The person keeps their history
Vistempo has no account of its own, developer server, ads or analytics library. History uses CSV and JSON files on the device and, when enabled, in the person's iCloud Drive. Session state and lists can also sync through the private CloudKit database. The developer receives no history and cannot read this private Apple account data. The person controls their files and chooses what to export.
The PDF is theirs. They decide whether to hand it to you. From that point the document belongs to your practice and stays with you, like anything else a person brings in. Vistempo receives no copy, has no server, and never learns that the conversation happened.
There is no professional dashboard, and there will not be one. A dashboard would mean a server, and a server is precisely what this app does not have.
The full policy is at privacy.
Questions
What people ask
Can I get the data directly, without depending on the person?
No. There is no portal, no professional login and no sync with anyone outside the device. The only route is for the person to generate the PDF and choose to hand it to you.
Do I have to sign up for anything?
No. There is no sign-up, no professional edition, no clinic license and no waitlist. This page is all there is.
Is there a commission for referring the app?
No, and there will not be. No referral program, no codes, no payments. A commission would put you in a conflict of interest with the person in front of you and would turn a neutral record into a sales pitch — the fastest way to make a document worth discarding, and rightly so.
Does this measure attention?
No. It measures a stopwatch: how long it ran and when it was stopped. Attention, productivity and use of other apps are all outside it, and the document's own methods note says so on the page.
Is it for diagnosis or screening?
No. Vistempo plays no part in diagnosis and contains no instrument for it. It is the record the person brings to the conversation.
Can I keep the PDF in the chart?
What you do with a document a person hands you is your call, under your board's rules and your practice's. On Vistempo's side, it is a descriptive record kept by the person, not a clinical instrument, and it was not designed for that role.
Can I ask for a specific period?
You can: two, four, eight or twelve weeks. The longer periods appear only once there is history to fill them, so the page never prints empty weeks.
They use Android. Is there a version?
Today Vistempo exists for Mac and iPhone, in American English and Brazilian Portuguese. There is no Android version.
Does the document show what they wrote during sessions?
No. The notes written at the end of a session, the text of the intention and the app names do not enter the report. The PDF contains time summaries, categories and marked dates.
Before you close the page
Vistempo is a timer. It does not diagnose, does not treat and does not measure attention. The numbers it shows describe the use of a stopwatch and exist to support a conversation about a routine — with the person themselves, or with whoever works with them. No clinical decision should rest on them alone, and nothing here replaces your own judgment.
If it helps
A sheet for the waiting room
There is a one-page handout, made to print on A4 and leave in the waiting room or hand over during a session. It explains the app in a few lines, explains where records are stored, and shows how to generate the PDF — with a blank space for you to write your own name by hand.
Anything this page left out: support.