I’ve been running off and on for a little over a decade. I used to have a love-hate relationship with running, but I did it anyway. There’s no lead up to an inspirational message in that particular sentence; for years, I did a thing I found little joy in because I wanted to be a runner, and to me, that meant achieving a certain pace or running a certain distance. Things like split times and hill training brought me great stress.
Then a few years ago, I heard a fitness influencer discuss her running metrics. Instead of measuring speed or distance, she’d begun measuring time spent running. Her reasoning: You can do anything for 10 minutes. So, 10 minutes is always where she always began, and she built up endurance from there.
This advice unlocked some corner of my brain I hadn’t yet accessed, and eased the self-imposed pressure of running. Using her mindset shift, this practice of mine became very easy, meditative even, because I removed the metrics that distracted me from the experience of running, which like most sports is just as mental and emotional as it is physical. Now it wasn’t about how fast I was going or how far, but how my body felt over 10-minute increments and why:
Do I feel strong, or do I need to be gentler with myself and slow down? Maybe if I slow down I can go faster later. Maybe farther. Neither matters, really, because the goal is always 10 minutes or 20 minutes or 30, and everything else is extra. But can I go another 10? If not, what about another five? What’s keeping me from continuing—is it physical or mental? Can I move past it? Will it matter in 10 minutes? What can I change to make the next 10 minutes fun or relaxing or both?
That’s a taste of my inner dialogue when I’m running using the 10-minute rule, and this narrative—that the stakes can be lowered and the metrics changed—has markedly shifted how I approach other tasks that similarly challenge me but are good or necessary. I hate cleaning, but I can clean for 10 minutes every day while singing along to show tunes. And I dread some work tasks, but now the 10-minute timer in my brain prompts the right questions: How can I break this apart? How can I make this more fun? How can I honor how I’m feeling and also get this done?
It’s this granularity that’s quietly helped me reflect on what drives my fulfillment or what’s too big for me to process and needs a slower, more methodical approach.
More personally and philosophically I suppose, the 10-minute rule has taught me that how I feel remains a priority even when the goal seems far off. Future me deserves a clean house, a healthy body and relationships, a career I’m proud of, and so much more. But if I hate the process of getting there—even just 10 minutes—then I’m missing the point.
