Shrink "someday" to ten minutes

"I want to read more." "I want to learn to cook." "I want a tidy room." Things like these can sit in the back of your mind for a long time without ever starting. Usually it is not laziness. It is that they look too big in your head. Reading means a whole book. Cooking means a full dinner. You feel tired before you begin.

One way that works: shrink the thing until it fits into ten minutes.

What the ten-minute version looks like

There is nothing special about ten minutes. It is just small enough that saying no feels silly. For example:

• Read more: read for ten minutes a day, however many pages that turns out to be
• Learn to cook: learn one step a day, and today it is only slicing potatoes
• Tidy the room: sort out one drawer a day, or one desk
• Move a bit more: step outside for a short walk after dinner

Once it is shrunk, the job is no longer "reading" as a big project. It is the small act of opening the book right now. Small acts are easy to start, and once started you often keep going a little longer. Anything extra is a bonus. Ten minutes and no more still counts.

One more thing: shrink one at a time. Give yourself five ten-minute habits at once and you are back to nearly an hour a day, which is the same old "too big" problem.

Turn it into a habit

When you have the small version, put it in your habits and tap it each day when it is done.

Create one on the Habits page, or adapt a starter template such as Step outside for a bit, Read for a while or Tidy the desk. Nothing is created until you save. You can set a target length while you are at it. Ten minutes is fine, and leaving it empty is fine too. It does not have to be every day either. You can pick certain days of the week.

There are three places to check in. Use whichever is closest:

1. On the Habits page, where each habit has its own row and one tap records it
2. On the Today page, where the day's habits and to-dos sit on one screen
3. In the chat, by saying something like "read a bit today". The AI finds the matching habit and you confirm it

If the small habit serves a bigger goal, such as finishing a few books this year, you can link it to that goal when you create it. For a simple way to check a goal, see How to write a goal you can act on.

Missed a few days? Pick it up again

There will be days you cannot do it. Working late, feeling unwell, being away from home, or simply not wanting to that day.

Missed days are just missed days. Pick it up again tomorrow. Every time you did it before is still there on the calendar. If you did it but forgot to tap, fill it in on the calendar. If you tapped by mistake, you can undo that check-in.

If you know a stretch of time will be hard, such as a week of travel, you can pause the habit and resume it when you are back. Pausing is not giving up. It just admits that something else matters more for now.

After ten minutes

After a while, ten minutes may start to feel easy and you may want more. You can add more, but go slowly, say from ten minutes to fifteen rather than straight to an hour.

Or you can leave it as it is. For some things, ten minutes a day is exactly the right size. A small habit you can keep up leaves more behind than a big plan that lasted three days.

If you would like to keep a little time for yourself at the end of each day as well, Leave one line for tomorrow describes an even smaller practice.