Time Gates × Time Gates Gates · 02 of 03

The sequence

Time Gates introduces required practice in four steps. Nothing is restricted during the first step. Later steps add more exercises a teenager may choose, while keeping the required routine short and never judging access by performance.

2.1

When each step happens

Product phase 1 is a pilot with one family: ten weeks of building followed by eight weeks of use. The computer provides Pause and Notice exercises, the phone provides Settle exercises, and a parent can use one household control. Product phase 2 adds all six exercise areas for five to ten families over four months. The four steps below fit within those two product phases.

Connect and Recall include the exercise with the strongest evidence, but they are not available during the pilot because they arrive in product phase 2. The pilot's required practice therefore uses Settle and Pause alone. They are also the smallest group of exercises that meets every requirement for being tied to access.

That leaves an inversion worth saying out loud rather than leaving in a table. Of the exercises a teenager must complete during the pilot, two carry evidence with a narrow confidence interval and a meaningful effect: the if-then plan and paced breathing. The two strongest exercises in the whole collection, the one-day memory course and the offline coach blocks, are one of them unavailable until product phase 2 and the other permanently optional, because a parent has to confirm it happened. Time Gates requires what it can verify, which is not the same as requiring what works best, and the pilot is arranged around that gap rather than around a claim that it does not exist.

2.2

The four gate phases

May be required can be part of the required routine Optional route may fulfill the day's practice when chosen, but is never the only option Always optional is available and may be measured, but is never required

What the evidence column is a grade of

An exercise can be here for three different reasons, and a single word in one column cannot tell them apart, so the rows below carry two chips wherever the reasons differ. A training grade says practising this shows up somewhere other than this exercise. A measurement grade says scores from it are a reliable way to watch change over weeks. A structural note means the exercise is doing a job that has nothing to do with training: choosing what comes next, warming up, catching a session that was rushed or faked, or recording the outcome everything else is aimed at.

Reading only one of those makes the collection look worse than it is. Category sprint has no training evidence and is one of the more reliable measures here. The accident log is unvalidated as an instrument and is the thing that actually matters. Neither is a mistake, and neither is training.

The reverse also holds, and it is the harder half. Nothing graded below Moderate as training may be required for access. The best reviews of drill-style training find that practice improves the drill and its close cousins and little else, and Time Gates takes that at face value rather than arguing with it. An exercise nobody has tested can be built, offered, chosen and studied. It cannot stand between a teenager and their apps. That rule moved Late-twist instructions and Hold until the cue out of the required routine, and what those reviews found is set out under what helped, what did not.

GATE 0

Practice first, with nothing restricted

pilot, use-weeks 1–3

For the first three weeks, every session is voluntary and nothing is restricted. The first two sessions are treated as practice and left out of later results. Time Gates also records the teenager's typical reaction time before completing a session can restore access, so that reward cannot distort the starting measurement. Notice exercises are available, but they do not complete the day's practice.

Exercise	Area	Evidence	Role	Why we chose it
Pause ritual	Settle	Routing, not training Low for one session, Moderate after three weeks	May be required	The teenager pauses for forty seconds, then chooses wired, flat, okay or foggy. There is no right answer. Their choice is what Time Gates uses to pick the next exercise, which is the whole reason the ritual exists; no claim is made that one forty-second pause trains anything. It never affects access.
Paced breathing	Settle	Moderate–High over weeks	May be required	The teenager follows a breathing guide for four minutes. Finishing is all that counts; Time Gates does not grade how they breathe. This exercise has relatively strong evidence and is simple to provide.
If-then plan	Pause	High	May be required	Before each group of exercises, the teenager spends about ten seconds making a simple plan for what they will do in a situation. Research found benefits beyond the exercise itself. Only making the plan is required; its wording is never graded.
Hold and release	Pause	High as a measure Moderate as training	May be required	The teenager waits for a signal before releasing a button. Time Gates counts completed turns and early releases in a way that detects altered records. The early-release rate helps show whether results from the other exercises are trustworthy.
Late-twist instructions	Pause	Low as training, untested	Optional route	The teenager follows an instruction that changes near the end. It is built from well-supported pieces, but nobody has ever tested this exercise, so it may be chosen and it may never be required. It also needs the longest real-world trial of anything here.
Hold until the cue	Pause	Not graded in the catalog	Optional route	A prompt appears, but the teenager cannot answer until a signal one to five seconds later. The wait grows as early answers become less common. The catalog does not grade it because it is a way of delivering any quiz question rather than an exercise, and an ungraded mechanism is not something to hold a phone for.
Rushing check	Not applicable	Moderate support for the idea	System support	Time Gates records the teenager's typical reaction time before sessions can restore access. Later comparisons can then show whether the access rule is making them rush. The teenager sees only a description of their current pace; this is not a score and never affects access.
Practice and completion record	Not applicable	Not applicable	System support	Time Gates records at most one completed practice day per teenager and date. Delayed device reports can be sent again without creating extra completions. The record is built now but does not restrict anything until the next phase.
Notice, all of it	Notice	High as a measure	Always optional	Notice exercises are part of the pilot, as planned, but they always remain optional. Gate phase 3 explains why.

Access ruleOff. No task closes anything. Sessions are invited by notification, and a skipped day costs nothing at all.

Before the gate may be switched on

The teenager has completed two practice sessions, and those sessions are excluded from every later result.
Ten voluntary sessions have been recorded, so the team knows how often the teenager practises before access depends on it.
Time Gates has recorded the teenager's typical reaction time without any reward attached.
Safety checks confirm that changing a device's date, sending the same report again or putting a timer in the background cannot create a completion.
The required exercises take less than ten minutes at the teenager's actual pace on their own phone and computer.

GATE 1

The first required routine

pilot, use-weeks 4–8

Completing the day's practice can now satisfy one task, the only household control used in the pilot. The required exercises still take about eight minutes across the phone and computer. There are now enough Pause exercises for Time Gates to vary the activity from day to day. Research links that kind of variety with benefits beyond the practised task, and the variety may also help people continue after the first four weeks.

Exercise	Area	Evidence	Role	Why we chose it
Go/no-go with feelings	Pause	Moderate	May be required	The exercise uses faces rather than shapes because research found benefits in handling emotions when the training used emotional material. Time Gates tracks taps made when the teenager should wait; this is one of the two measures used to decide whether the pilot may continue.
Stop-signal	Pause	High for closely related skills	Optional route	A useful session needs at least fifty stop signals, or about two hundred turns and seven to ten minutes. That is longer than the entire required routine. Results are also discarded unless the teenager stops on 25–75% of signals, so this exercise can never be the only way to complete the day.
Reversed Simon-says	Pause	Moderate	May be required	The meaning of each instruction changes for every group of turns. Time Gates considers both speed and accuracy because accuracy alone may not show differences once the task becomes easy. It adds variety without much extra work to build.
Picture the evening first	Pause	Moderate short-term effect	Optional route	Before the session, the teenager spends thirty seconds imagining one specific event later that week. In research with twelve- to fourteen-year-olds, this reduced the tendency to choose a smaller immediate reward over a larger later one. There is little evidence that the benefit lasts, so the exercise stays optional.

Access ruleOn, as one task. Today's practice, before After school appears on the Home screen from the morning and can be finished early. If it is still due when After school begins, Games closes until the practice is completed or twenty minutes of movement is recorded. Education and Essentials always stay open, so homework and Time Gates's Tasks page remain available. The hold screen links directly to the practice.

Why the required session is shorter than the research sessions

Published trials used fifteen to twenty-five minutes of exercises, three to five days a week, for four to ten weeks. Time Gates requires about eight minutes. Requiring a short session may make daily practice more likely, but that is a design choice, not a research finding. Research has not established that eight minutes produces the same benefits as the longer sessions. Teenagers may choose longer sessions, but do not owe them.

Before more exercises are added

The rates of tapping when the teenager should wait and responding before the cue are no higher than they were in gate phase 0. These are the two dependable measures used to decide whether the pilot may continue; the separate comparison of rushing with errors is experimental and never decides a phase.
After week four, the teenager still completes more than 60% of sessions, the pilot's stated target.
The typical session has not fallen close to the minimum possible time, which could mean the teenager is rushing through it.
Time Gates's own records confirm that it has never closed an app group because of a lost connection, a clock disagreement, a crashed session or a report arriving from only one device.
Without prompting, the teenager can explain which exercises are required and why.

GATE 2

More exercises, with ratings kept out of access decisions

product phase 2, first half

Connect and Recall exercises now join the other four areas. They include the exercise with the strongest evidence, but arrive later because most require an automated model to read written answers. The model may compare an answer with a fixed checklist, but its rating never decides whether practice is complete or access is restored. Only actions such as trying the required number of prompts and spending the required time count.

Exercise	Area	Evidence	Role	Why we chose it
One-day memory	Recall	High, large effect (d≈1.1)	May be required	This is a two- to three-week course rather than a permanent daily exercise. Because its benefits fade, the course returns in later cycles. Trying ten prompts completes the exercise; the teenager sees the rating of how specific each memory is, but it never affects access.
Detail dive	Recall	High for adults Moderate for teens	May be required	After the memory course ends, a two-minute version becomes the regular warm-up before Connect exercises.
Yesterday quiz	Recall	Moderate	May be required	Each evening, the teenager recalls three events in one line each. Time Gates compares them with the daily log that also supports the memory course.
Palace	Recall	High for the practised skill	May be required	Time Gates can check an exact list without interpreting free text. This is also the most game-like exercise in the collection.
Relation puzzles	Connect	Moderate	May be required	Time Gates creates a set of stated relationships and works out the answer from those facts. An automated model does not generate or judge the answer.
Three words, one link	Connect	High as a measure Low as training	May be required	Time Gates starts with a published, standardized set of 144 questions. An automated model may suggest new questions, but Time Gates accepts one only when every required word combination appears in a dictionary.
Analogies with traps	Connect	Moderate	May be required	Before a question is shown, a separate check rejects it if one of the supposed wrong answers could also be correct.
What, not why	Recall	High with guidance Low without guidance	Optional route	Every prompt uses an imaginary situation. If an answer mentions harm, Time Gates stops the exercise and shows a fixed help screen. Because that safety stop can interrupt the exercise, another option must always be available to complete the day.
Category sprint	Connect	High as a measure No training evidence	Warm-up	A sixty-second warm-up and one of the more reliable ways to watch change over weeks. Time Gates does not describe it as training, because no study shows that practising fluency builds a broader skill. Both halves of that are on the chip.
Word chain · Other uses · Build a map	Connect	Low–Moderate	Optional route	These open-ended exercises add variety, but an automated model must rate the answers. They may complete the day when chosen, but are never required.
Sound switch	Recall	Moderate	Optional route	Only completion matters, but the exercise takes twelve minutes. That is too long to require every day in addition to the other exercises.
Weekly trends	Not applicable	Not applicable	System support	The first results anyone sees are the teenager's weekly trends. A range around each trend shows how uncertain it is. Time Gates never turns a difference between reaction times into a score.

Access ruleOn, with another group of exercises three days a week. Practice takes about twelve minutes on those days and eight on the rest. The teenager chooses the additional exercises; Time Gates does not assign them.

Before camera, movement and social exercises are added

Before anyone sees an automated rating, its judgment of how specific a memory is must agree with people's ratings on a sample of fifty answers.
The filter that prevents condition labels and the safety stop for mentions of harm pass a written set of difficult test answers, including messages a teenager might enter simply to test the app.
Teenagers complete twelve-minute days as often as eight-minute days. If they do not, the second group of exercises is removed.
The parent view continues to show only whether practice happened, time spent, trends the teenager chose to share and one sentence the teenager approved.

GATE 3

Exercises that always stay optional

product phase 2 onward

Notice and Balance have meaningful evidence and address everyday skills such as avoiding bumps, drops and spills or joining a group of people. However, these exercises may require a camera, room to move, licensed videos or another person. Time Gates cannot always verify them safely and fairly, so they are never required. When the teenager chooses an eligible one and completes it, it can fulfill that day's practice.

Exercise	Area	Evidence	Role	Why it cannot be required
Room-entry rehearsal	Notice	Moderate	Always optional	There is a limited supply of licensed filmed scenes, so a daily requirement would quickly repeat them. More importantly, studies found a large improvement in knowing what to do (g≈1.15), but a much smaller improvement in doing it in real life (g≈0.28). Time Gates should not present practice results as proof of everyday progress.
Read the scene · Tone · Face and voice	Notice	High as measures	Always optional	These exercises use licensed materials with per-person terms. Some questions must remain unseen to provide a meaningful later comparison, so Time Gates cannot require them for daily access.
Gather evidence first · Change scan · Turn-end tap	Notice	Low–Moderate	Optional route	Time Gates can check these exercises automatically, so choosing one may fulfill the day's practice. They stay optional because requiring exercises about social situations is especially likely to create resentment, which would work against continued use.
Coach blocks	Balance	High, moderate-large effect (g≈0.7)	Optional route	These offline sessions have the strongest evidence for movement training in the collection. The teenager reports completion and a parent confirms it, which can fulfill the day's practice. Participation in programs like this often falls after week four, so Time Gates plans other choices from the start.
Balance hold · Reach and freeze · Dual-task walk	Balance	Moderate as measures	Always optional	A camera estimates the teenager's position. Because standing still or walking for a camera may not always be safe, these exercises can never stand between a teenager and access to an app group.
Movement counts	Settle	Moderate–High	Optional route	Twenty recorded minutes of sport, dance or martial arts fulfills the day's practice. This alternative keeps Time Gates from forcing screen exercises when the teenager has already been active, as the proposal promises.
Heart game · Heartbeat sync	Settle	Moderate	Always optional	These exercises require a heart-rate strap or a camera reading. Time Gates never sets target heart-rate ranges, turns a camera estimate of variation between beats into a score or interprets that variation for the teenager.
Sleep regularity	Settle	High that it matters	Always optional	A teenager does not fully control when they sleep. Sleep also happens after the evening schedule has already closed app groups, so it can never be required to restore access.
Accident log	Balance	Outcome, not an exercise Unvalidated as an instrument	Always optional	This weekly check-in takes about thirty seconds and records everyday bumps, drops and spills. It is not training and does not pretend to be: it is the thing the balance work is meant to change. Connecting access to those reports would encourage people to leave incidents out, making the record misleading.

Access ruleUnchanged. This phase adds choices without adding requirements. Success means the required routine still takes about eight minutes in month six.

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