5 Reasons Why 10 Minutes a Day is All You Need
10 minutes a day devoted to your Dream Project will change your life.
We believe 10 minutes a day devoted to your dream project will change your life.
Tiny actions create meaningful progress. Ten minutes a day spent on your Dream Project is better than the zero minutes you will spend when you realize you can’t quit your job and neglect your life. We’ve worked with hundreds of people in Brainstorm Road and beyond who have proven that this 10-minute edict is true.
Here are five reasons why 10 minutes a day is all you need:
(1) The Turtle Step 🐢
Ten minutes feels easy. Martha Beck calls this the “turtle step.” The “turtle step” is “the largest possible task that your essential self can do easily.”
Trying to carve out a four hours to tackle a big block of work can feel overwhelming. And when we’re overwhelmed, we default to inaction. We want something we can do easily, so we’ll do it again.
Beck says, “We’re not talking about how much you can do when you’re pushing a deadline, ignoring all other responsibilities, fueling yourself with gallons of caffeine, and receiving a fortuitous visit from the muse.”
We’re talking about real life, a bad day, a hard day, a day when the ideas aren’t coming and the motivation isn’t there and your basement is flooding and your kid just puked at school.
“Even on a bad day, when you contemplate your turtle steps, your immediate, genuine gut reaction should be, ‘Oh, yeah, sure. I can do that.’”
When was the last time you looked at a project and thought, “Oh yeah, sure, I can do that?” With her characteristic sense of humor, Beck says, “A turtle step is the least I can do, divided in half. It’s also the only way I’ve ever achieved anything.”
(2) 10 Minutes Gets Things Done
Whether you’re trying to write a memoir, open a vegan sub shop, or whittle a flute, ten minutes of work will get you where you’re trying to go.
Sixteen hours a day on your project gets you burnt out. And we’re not trying to go up in flames.
What works is consistent effort and small steps. Take tiny actions that fit within the constraints of your real life. That is how you get things done.
If you go all or nothing, you’re more likely to quit. If you go 10 minutes a day, you’re more likely to actually keep going — and finish.
(3) 10 Minutes Can Turn into 30
We take tiny actions and make meaningful progress over time. And sometimes our small 10-minute efforts will spill over into longer sprints. 10 minutes expands into 15, 20, 30, or an hour.
When time and energy allow, this is a beautiful thing. Start small, then get sucked in if the conditions are right.
If the conditions aren’t right, not to worry. You’ll be back for ten minutes again tomorrow.
(4) 10 Minutes Keeps the Faucet Running
Louis L’Amour said, “Start writing, no matter what. The water does not flow until the faucet is turned on.”
Lin Manuel Miranda echoed this quote when he tweeted that your creative practice is like a faucet with brown water coming out - you’ve got to keep it running until it turns clear.
Coming back again tomorrow keeps the creative faucet running. Drip by drip, bird by bird. Ten minutes. Ten minutes. Ten minutes. Drip, drip, drip.
Flow, baby, flow.
(5) 10 Minutes is (Almost) Always Possible
If we do ten minutes on the pretty dark days and the pretty okay days and the pretty good days, we win. We find meaningful progress and, most importantly, we find that we are spending our days the ways that we’d like to spend our lives – doing the things we dream about doing.
We find that we are spending our days the ways that we’d like to spend our lives – doing the things we dream about doing.
“There is no shortage of good days. It is good lives that are hard to come by. A life of good days lived in the senses is not enough. The life of sensation is the life of greed; it requires more and more. The life of the spirit requires less and less; time is ample and its passage sweet. Who would call a day spent reading a good day? But a life spent reading -- that is a good life.”
― Annie Dillard, The Writing Life
Spend your days the way you want to spend your life.
At least…for 10 minutes.
I have been a practitioner of Julia Cameron's 3-pages per day for years. Until I discovered 10-minutes here at Brainstorm Road. I must admit, that I would skip days with the 3-pages if I didn't have the 30-40 minutes to get to the end of my third page. With 10 minutes per day, I usually have almost 2 pages. Somehow the time-page ratio is better with 10 minutes, and that makes me happy!! It's "the least I can do, divide by half" - Ten minutes is almost always possible. Give it a try!