Focus Knob
Focus Knob
[Caption above the drawing:] Personal Focus
[A gray rotary control knob with the range of options divided by small ticks on a black semi. The knob has a black line that indicates that the knob's setting. At the bottom left and right where the semi circle begins and ends there are two labels in normal black text:] Left: Detail-Oriented Right: Big Picture
[Above and all along the black semi circle with the range, another semi circle is drawn in light gray. This has been divided into three sections, with two large sections left and right forming the actual semi circle with double arrow lines. There is a short section with no tick inside it between the two other sections. There are three labels for each of these section, with a line from the label down to the small section. All described here are drawn light gray color. Note that Randall has misspelled "existential".] Left section: Fiddling with email settings Right section: Panic and existental paralysis Small section: Healthy balance


The comic is a pun. Normally, a rotary control knob is used for adjusting parameters in instruments, and the parameter "focus" is used to adjust the focal length on microscopes, telescopes, and other lens-based equipment. Here, however, the "focus knob" is used for Randall's personal sense of focus -- that is, how focused he is on his work and productivity, with the extremes of focus being towards Detail-Oriented (small details) and the Big Picture respectively. (A similar knob was used in 1620: Christmas Settings ).
The healthy balance, Randall suggests, is focusing mostly towards the Big Picture (two thirds of the way towards the Big Picture between ticks 24 and 25 out of 37), while keeping an eye on the details by still staying one third Detail-Oriented . Focusing too much on the big picture can ensure nothing gets done, leading to panic and existential paralysis . Unfortunately, the range of healthy balance appears to be vanishingly small and difficult to reach; additionally, if we assume the knob can only stop at the little ticks marked along the outside and that the boundaries are not inclusive, there is no way to set it in the window of Healthy Focus .
While performing any task (including your daily life as well as editing explainxkcd), it is easy to get so lost in the details that you forget the big picture. It is also equally easy to think too much about the big picture and make vague plans while missing out on the details.
It is clear that at the moment Randall is mainly focusing on the small details fiddling with his e-mail settings as the knob is set to the 13th tick only just past one third away from Detail-Oriented . He thus seems to try to avoid seeing the big picture right now, since it is his personal knob to set as he wishes.
Existential paralysis stemming from Randall getting worried about realizing how serious the state of the world is today (at the time of the comics release) are a common punchline in xkcd. With all the crises going on around the world, people get bombarded with these negative stories if they follow the news, either on TV, in news papers of on any social media (See 1773: Negativity ), especially on Facebook (see 1761: Blame ). It can thus become very overwhelming, if people do not focus more on their e-mail settings! This goes especially in a time like this, where many panics on Facebook due to for instance wars and conflicts around the world (like in Syria ), talk about climate change , or all the executive orders currently being signed by the recently inaugurated President Donald Trump , who took office less than three weeks before this comic's release. See more about these issues and other recently released sad comics here .
Getting too deep into all this could cause the kind of panic attacks that could lead to the existential paralysis mentioned on the right side of the knob. It is these that Randall may be trying to avoid by keeping his focus firmly in the realm of e-mail settings rather than anywhere near the big picture.
The joke in the title text relates to Randall's use of an old fashioned analog control, probably a potentiometer , in the graphic versus a more electronically modern and efficient switching system.  Randall imagines a replacement control using pulse-width modulation (PWM), which is a technique often used to control the regulation in electronic power supplies or the speed of electric motors with far greater power efficiency than simpler analog controllers. This technique consists of shifting between fully on and fully off states so that the average is the expected output, but no power is wasted by holding the control mechanism "partially on". For example switching back and forth between 0 and 1, spending half the time in each position will lead to a mean value of 0.5. To code 0.67 (the healthy balance ), Randall would have to spend more time in the extreme big picture position (67% of the time) than in the detail-oriented position.  In the real world of course, a person switching so radically and completely between attention states might get diagnosed with some sort of mania . But the knob might just be switched between the dividers bordering the healthy zone, creating the perfect balance.
[Caption above the drawing:] Personal Focus
[A gray rotary control knob with the range of options divided by small ticks on a black semi. The knob has a black line that indicates that the knob's setting. At the bottom left and right where the semi circle begins and ends there are two labels in normal black text:] Left: Detail-Oriented Right: Big Picture
[Above and all along the black semi circle with the range, another semi circle is drawn in light gray. This has been divided into three sections, with two large sections left and right forming the actual semi circle with double arrow lines. There is a short section with no tick inside it between the two other sections. There are three labels for each of these section, with a line from the label down to the small section. All described here are drawn light gray color. Note that Randall has misspelled "existential".] Left section: Fiddling with email settings Right section: Panic and existental paralysis Small section: Healthy balance

