Many scientific models are completely unproven (but not disproven) and are accepted and used because they just seem to fit to reality. Until it is proven that they are wrong, we assume that they are true. That I know of, I can quote the Big Bang theory, the Quantum Theory, the String Theory, the black hole models. In the past, the atom theory (2000 years old, proven since 100).
There is no necessity for a model to be proven true to be accepted. Sometimes proof is just very hard to pin down.
So here is an unproven theory that fits reality quite well:
Let us state that there is, within each human being, a sort of capital or energy available for disposal. A unit that would be very hard to define scientifically for now, as its existence is not proven, but that allows us to construct a striking little model. This "energy", that we shall call "fluid" in the future for the sake of clarity (we can always rename it more conveniently later), would be available to all humans in sensibly the same amounts and everyone unsuspectingly spends it at his will, by undertaking activities that require focus.
Mathematically, Focus would be a derivative of Fluid.
Basically, this "fluid" would be the fuel of our capacity to focus our minds. If an individual keeps on needing focus after his daily capital of "fluid" is spent, he will feel nervous fatigue. If another goes to bed without having spent much of it, he will sleep poorly. One complete sleep cycle refills the fluid to its original level (minus an infinitesimal quantity that we will come back to later).
In a society where food is scarce, people would be spending the whole amount of fluid at their disposal in the satisfying of their vital needs. A society where food is abundant would leave to its members almost all their fluid to be spent, once survival was assured.
If we follow the model described above, it is sound to start a sleep cycle having spent as much fluid as possible, but without having required more than was available. An individual that under-uses his daily fluid would tend to boredom and depression. One that over-uses it would end up worn-out.
If we decide that it is good for every human that he wouldn't have to spend a too great amount of his fluid on insuring the continuity of his existence, it becomes necessary to interest ourselves in the investment of the leftover fluid. If you think that, on the contrary, it should be made sure that all humans spend all their concentration into the satisfaction of their vital needs, I invite you to walk away before I lose patience and start throwing pointy objects at you.
I will try to avoid philosophising around. I'll try to stick to what "seems to be" and describe it. My intent is not to give you a goal in your life, rather to give you tools to play around with.
If ever, the leftover fluid must be spent on something that requires concentration. It can be "concentrating for the sake of concentrating". Some people do that in the form of meditation or heavy duty prayer. The feeling of relaxedness that comes from those exercises is induced by the big load of fluid it can shed in a short while. I don't use the word "waste" because it is meaningless here. It could be defined that all unit of fluid not used for survival is wasted but that leads to slippery slopes.
I don't consider "working" as a case here, since usually, work insures your survival. But it is true that, for all wages superior to a certain amount, only part of it is for survival and the rest is "leftover-investment". Because the money that it earns will be spent in tour vacations, compulsive consumption, unneeded jewellery and so on...
Hobbies can be defined as: "unimportant activity that one does to keep oneself occupied". This is clearly a way of spending the leftover fluid in order to sleep better at night. Some glue little airplanes into shape, some play computer games, some try to write philosophy with a scientific taste, some "go to see friends"... This last one in particular is interesting.
This theory puts on the same level "socializing" and "compulsive consuming": Unnecessary activities that humans do to shed some fluid. This example shows how this theory is an argument to no philosopher. It is a very neutral and functional tool that can help in giving an original perspective.
It will not be treated here of the quality of fluid because the fluid is defined as a quantity. It does not accept the concept of quality in the same way as water, defined as H2O molecules, is just pure water. What comes out of a tap is water plus other component that, mixed together are qualified of good and bad. But water is just water.
It will not be treated either of the quality of the action fueled by the fluid. It could be discussed for many hours of the respective quality of "playing videogames" against "reading books" and I am sure that countless philosophers would be more than content to write on the subject.
It will be discussed of the quality of the focus, regarding to the apparatus that gives life to it. As we must spent close to the total amount of our dailly fluid in order to live a balanced life, we will now look upon the different ways that there are to spend it, and see how they affect our fluid-focus system.
Let us call "constructive spending" an activity that will bring to a person a feeling of "doing the right thing". For example, volunteering for cleaning a beach recently soiled by a black tide. Let us call "destructive spending" an activity that will bring to it's maker a feeling of doing the wrong thing, but he does it anyway. For example, beating up his dog.
And, saying that, we are assuming that the subject does have a sense of conscience.
No term really needs to be defined for an activity that will not affect the fluid-focus apparatus of the subject. And that represents the bulk of one's lifetime activity. It includes all hobbies, all remunerated occupations, all consumption of culture... and more.
For a person with no sense of conscience, of course, nothing would seem to be "right" or "wrong". It is believed by the writer that the sense of conscience is learnt, or not, during life. That it is not innate, or part of human nature. Then conscience can be define as what give a positive or negative value (in units of fluid) to a focus-requiring action. A weak conscience would give lower value than an accute one, the later giving a significant value to more actions than the first.
It seems to the writer that when the sum of constructive spending (counted in positive fluid units) and destructive (negative units) of one's recent activities is negative, the fluid-focus apparatus will be impaired by it. A person that activity would be mostly negative (T.I.T.S. counted in negative fluid unit) would see his efficiency in focusing decreasing. It is like the feeling of guilt refills the fluid reserve of part of the fluid it spend doing the incriminated action.
I have described to you how this model explains the way people invest their focus, as a given quantity. The model goes a little farther in penetrating human nature as it explains the degeneracy of sanity that almost all humans undergo while ageing.
This model does not interest itself in the physical degeneracy of the brain (and body), caused by genetic timing. It first needs the reader to accept that young persons (but past puberty, or before it) are more likely to be sane than older persons. Older persons more often behave in an irrational pattern admittedly due to the fact that Life leaves no one unscarred, and that some of our toughest experiences create paranoia, neurosis and other psychological anomalies that shake a little bit our rationality. A young person can be expected to have never lived such experiences and is very likely to react in the most rational way to a given stimulus.
This model has a different approach to the issue.
It gets a little sciency for a short while.
If the laws of thermodynamics can be applied to the process of reconstruction of the fluid capital over sleeping, the entropy of this process must be negative. And the process of spending it by focussing is obviously of positive entropy (if focus can be assimilated to "work"). It is then not foolish to assume that a successful reconstruction of the capital would take it back to it's exact previous-day-level, minus an infinitesimal quantity.
One wouldn't notice a difference from one day to the next, but over the years, it might make a difference. That would explain the reduced focus capabilities of the, let's say forty years old compared to that of the, let's say twenty years old.
And, as we are into defining "focus" as a physical quantity, then it follows very reasonably that the practice of an activity demanding a lot more focus than that available would cause damage to the whole apparatus. Damage that would be repairable in a few days by a few good nights of sleep if not too drastic, or repairable only to a certain extent.
Here is taken into account that some very stressful events of peoples lives affect their behaviour for some time, possibly for ever.
Now we will philosophise a little bit, but not about the tool itself.
In the same way that the use of a rational way for counting multiplies the mathematical capabilities of a culture (indo-arab numbering against roman), that the use of the concept of "energy" (capacity to produce work) has sped up the understanding of our surrounding world, I think that the definition of efficient units and tools can improve significantly our capacity to understand the mechanisms of the human mind. When I read pre-energy scientific publications, I get the same confusing feeling that I get reading modern psychology. I am persuaded that the confusion comes from the lack of solid concepts and tools. And I wrote this essay in an attempt to show how it is possible to define rationally a psychological tool. Maybe it will be thought useless by the people that know their dealings, but the method used to define it might be of interest to them.