Apparently you can do pretty much anything in 10 minutes a day: get six-pack abs, declutter your home, meditate and reduce stress, cook a Jamie Oliver dinner and of course, learn a language. So why the obsession with 10 minutes? Why not 7 and a half minutes or 13 minutes? Well, first of all, people tend to hate uneven amounts of time (Does anyone set their alarm clock for 7:03? No way, it’s gotta be 7:05 right?!) And of course, the idea is that no matter how busy you are, everyone should be able to put aside 10 minutes at some point in their day to work on something specific. 10 minutes sounds less scary than a quarter of an hour but a bit more meaty than 8 minutes. So, considering there are 1440 minutes in a day which means we all have 144 slots of 10 minutes available to us, how come we are not all walking around with six packs, in perfectly decluttered homes, serving up Jamie Oliver dinners and speaking about 10 languages perfectly? Why do we still find it hard to follow the “10 minute a day” rule?

Well, I decided to put the theory to the test and aimed to do 10 minutes of a) exercise b) playing guitar and c) learning Japanese, every single day for 6 weeks. And this is what I found out:

The Positives

• I nearly always did more than 10 minutes. Once I actually got started on my yoga mat or with my Japanese textbook or my guitar, I found I was motivated to continue. It felt easy to do more than 10 minutes. But knowing that I only had to do 10 if that was all I wanted to do or had time for, really took the pressure off.
• It really is amazing what you can achieve in 10 minutes. Just 10 minutes of yoga made me feel better. More refreshed and relaxed. You can easily learn a new chord on the guitar in 10 minutes. And 10 minutes of vocabulary learning is so easy to fit in.
• You start to build good habits. Doing something on a daily basis makes things become more routine and habit-like.
• You break things down into manageable steps. Learning a chord on the guitar, rather than struggling your way through a whole song is much less intimidating. Spending 10 minutes learning a couple of new Japanese phrases or memorizing 5 Kanji is simply more fun than opening up a textbook and slogging through a whole chapter.
• If you miss a day, it’s not the end of the world. If you had only planned one really long session a week and you missed that, it would be much worse. Combined with the fact that you probably did more than 10 minutes on some days (see positive point 1) you know you are still ok. And of course, you could always do a little bit more tomorrow!

The  Negatives

• Despite those 144 time slots available, there are still days when you just don’t manage it or let’s be honest, you just don’t feel like it. Knowing you HAVE to devote 10 minutes of your day to something does create a certain amount of pressure. There was only one week out of 6 where I actually did all 3 activities for 10 minutes every day.
• It can get a bit boring. Sometimes you get a bit stuck for ideas of what to do each day so you do the same as you did yesterday. Good for repetition of something but can quickly be the road to snoozeville. Which brings me nicely to my next point.

• When learning a language every day, beware of something called False Fluency. Research shows that if we learn the same thing every day, the brain starts to get lazy. So, for example, if you try to learn the same 10 words every day, by day 3 or 4, your brain no longer needs to try as hard to recall the words i.e. it thinks yeah, yeah, I know that. Studies show that interval learning i.e. intermittment learning is more effective for long-term memory. So, if you do decide to learn a language every day, make sure you are mixing it up i.e. one day vocabulary, the next day a bit of grammar, next day phrases and then back to the vocabulary again.

Despite the negatives, I did feel happy with my progress after 6 weeks. So, if you are planning something similar here are my ideas for making it a success:

My top tips

• Have your materials/equipment ready. Often we put things off because it seems like a hassle to just get started. But if your guitar is stood in the living room, the yoga mat is right there ready to be rolled out (the dog actually helps me do that!) or you have all your language stuff in one box so you can just pick it up and begin, it makes things a lot easier.
• Use 10 minutes that would normally be wasted. By this I mean, if possible use up “dead time”. It takes 10 minutes for a pan of spaghetti to cook. My guitar is right there next to the kitchen so it was easy to just pick it up and strum away until the pasta was done. Multi-tasking at its best. My other favourite “dead” time to use is commuting time. Great for using language apps or listening to a podcast. Again, just make sure your materials are at hand so it is as convenient as possible.
• Mix things up. If I get bored with something, YouTube is the first place I go. There are gazillions of useful short videos which can teach you how to do pretty much anything. Languages, 10-minute yoga routines, guitar lessons and it’s all for free!
• Don’t overload. As you’ve probably already realised, I wasn’t just committing to 10 minutes a day, I was actually committing to 30 (exercise, guitar AND Japanese). Some days it worked but others it really was just too much. I found I had weeks where 2 things went really well but the other got totally neglected. Again, I think that’s natural but it does make you feel a bit guilty. Keep things realistic.
• Accept there will be days when you won’t manage it or you are just not in the mood to put those unflattering yoga pants on. Accept it, focus on tomorrow (and buy new yoga pants!)

• If you are having a good day, go with the flow and do more than 10 minutes if the mood takes you.
• Track your progress. Nerdy I know but ticking things off a list, whether it’s an app or in my case a whiteboard that I put up in the office (which my husband writes silly comments on!) is strangely satisfying. I like this so much I sometimes even write things on the board AFTER I’ve done them, just so I can ceremoniously tick them off. Yes really.

So on the whole, there are lots of benefits of taking small slots of time and trying to make use of them. I would definitely recommend giving it a go and seeing how it works for you. Let me know if you give it a try or maybe share your own personal “learning tips” in the comments below. I’m off now to do a bit of Portuguese ready for my holiday next week. Estou ansioso! (Ha! Learned that in my 10 minute podcast last night!!)