🎧 Why Ten Minutes Is Enough — And Why We Distrust That Idea
iServalan | The Continuum Approach
Ten minutes sounds like an insult.
After all, Chopin didn’t get to where he was on ten minutes a day.
Beethoven probably never said, “Just do ten minutes — I’ve got too many cat videos to watch on my phone.”
(You guessed it. My personal weakness.)
Ten minutes sounds like something you say when you are not serious.
When you are already preparing to fail.
When you are only pretending to be committed.
We have been taught that anything worth doing must be done for long stretches, with visible effort — and preferably with a degree of suffering.
So when someone suggests ten minutes a day, the instinctive response is mistrust.
What could possibly change in ten minutes?
The answer is: more than you think — if those ten minutes are real.
The problem is not time.
It is continuity.
Most adult learning collapses not because the learner lacks discipline, but because the imagined commitment feels unsustainable.
An hour a day becomes a burden.
A perfect routine becomes brittle.
Miss one session, and the whole structure fractures.
Ten minutes does not frighten the nervous system.
It slips in quietly.
It pretends to be non-intrusive — while all the while teaching the brain something new.
It fits into tired days.
It survives busy weeks.
It does not require negotiation with guilt or exhaustion.
You can do it while running a bath.
While boiling a kettle.
Even — dare I say it — while the kids are eating fish fingers and chips.
The washing up can wait ten minutes.
And because it is survivable, it is repeatable.
This is where the real work happens.
The body learns through repetition, not intensity.
The hands adapt through frequent contact, not heroic effort.
The ear refines itself through exposure, not explanation.
Ten minutes a day, returned to consistently, does something subtle but profound.
It teaches the body that this activity is safe.
That it will not overwhelm.
That it can be approached without bracing.
Over months, this safety accumulates.
Movements become more economical.
Attention sharpens without strain.
What once felt effortful begins to feel familiar.
And this is the part that is often misunderstood.
Improvement does not arrive as a breakthrough.
It arrives as a quiet recalibration.
Less tension.
Less hesitation.
Less internal commentary.
This is why ten minutes works — and why we resist it.
It offers no spectacle.
No dramatic transformation.
No evidence that can be displayed online.
It requires trust in a process that cannot be proven in advance.
But music has always worked this way.
Scales were never designed to be impressive.
Neither were open strings, long notes, or simple patterns.
They exist because the nervous system learns best when it is not being forced.
Ten minutes is not a shortcut.
It is an acceptance.
An agreement to return.
An agreement to keep the door open.
An agreement to let learning settle rather than be driven.
And here is the double-whammy:
Over six months, ten minutes a day becomes something substantial — not in hours, but in integration.
You get better. Properly better.
The instrument becomes a friend.
The body understands its commitment to movement and poise.
The mind stops resisting the act of beginning.
And at that point, time often expands on its own.
Not because you are pushing harder —
but because you are no longer pushing at all.
Ten minutes is enough to begin.
And beginning, done properly, carries further than most people expect.