Plan & Place — move the beads, watch your plan

What this task does

Three beads sit on three pegs of different heights. Your job is to rearrange them to match a goal picture — in as few moves as possible. The pegs hold 3, 2, and 1 beads, and you can only move the top bead of a peg.

Tasks like this one are used to look at executive planning: how you delineate a goal, organize a sequence of steps, and integrate them into action. One of the most telling numbers isn't the moves at all — it's the pause before your first move. That pause is your Processing phase made visible: planning before responding.

Before each problem

You'll see the goal and predict how many moves you'll need, and how confident you are. Afterward, we compare your prediction to what actually happened — that gap is your calibration, and it's worth talking about.

How to move beads

Click (or tab to and press Enter on) a peg to pick up its top bead, then click another peg to place it. Clicking the same peg puts the bead back without counting a move.

This is not a normed clinical instrument. It is a teaching and self-reflection tool inspired by tower-type planning tasks (e.g., Shallice's Tower of London). Results are conversation starters about how you plan — not diagnoses, scores, or comparisons to any population.

Results — Plan & Place

Planning pause by problem

Seconds between "Begin" and your first pick-up. In strong planners, this pause tends to grow with problem difficulty — spending time up front is a feature, not a flaw.

Problem-by-problem

#	Min	Predicted	Your moves	Extra	Plan pause (s)	Total (s)	1st move optimal	Conf.

Reminder: this is a reflection tool, not a normed instrument. Use these numbers to ask questions — Where did my plan live: in my head before moving, or on the board while moving? — not to rank yourself.