Brother, Can You Spare Five Minutes?
Hoping to take advantage of what remained of my lunch hour on an unusually warm mid-October day, I made my way to the local park, where I planned to do a little reading. I located an empty bench in a very nice spot, sat down, and opened my book. Almost immediately, a well-dressed businessman sitting directly across from me (whom I’d mistakenly assumed was napping) began to engage me in conversation.
“Nice day,” he exclaimed.
“Yes,” I replied, “wonderful.”
“Doing a little reading?” he queried. Before I could reply, he continued: “I wish I could read more, but I just don’t have the time.”
By now, I instinctively knew that further attempts at reading would be pointless, and I was right. For the next 20 minutes this well dressed stranger, who was unable to find any time to read for himself, had somehow managed to find plenty of time to keep me from reading.
I always have 5 minutes
Obama & Company are doing their darndest to make sure we all get our 5 minutes plus…and they’ll pay for it too! Ain’t socialism grand?
Thank you…great article. Very true. For me…the internet has emerged as my #1 time-waster. I just don’t have the time right now to leave any meaningful reply.
While I agree with the basic point of your essay, the average novel is closer to 80,000-120,000 words long.
Nice article. It’s annoying to hear people complain about not having enough time to do the things they love. Just as you should make time for your friends, you should make time to do the things you love. But I have to disagree about the average novel being 30,000 words long. I’ve worked in commercial publishing for fifteen years and copyedited hundreds of novels, and I would estimate the average novel to be more like 90,000 words. So for a person reading 5 minutes a day, it would take more like 60 days to finish a novel. Maybe they should spend 15 minutes a day reading instead!
Sorry to spoil the fun, but in 5 minutes you can do little more than pick up the novel and remember what the situation was when you stopped reading it. When you approach the end of a long novel, 5 minutes might not be enough to recall the entire story that you have already read.
If you read Aristotle, recalling what you learned in the 5 minutes that you spent reading yesterday will leave you little time to read further — but at least you won’t have much to recall tomorrow.
Better to consolidate the 5 daily minutes in a 35 minutes reading splurge on the weekend.
In addition to that, you have to spend time, every time you finish a book, in a careful consideration of what is worth reading next.
Of course, if what you want to do is reading as many pages as possible, rather than getting something from your reading, then you can actually do quite a lot in 5 minutes.
I agree, but you miss the point. Perhaps, the author should have set the bar at 10 minutes or 20 minutes. The point is don’t delay, don’t hesitate and don’t make excuses.
I certainly won’t argue with that!
“I’m sure you’ve realized by now that you are limited as to what you can do in five minutes only by your imagination. Five minutes is a good block of time — plenty of time in fact — to do just about anything you want or need to accomplish.”
Like write on blogs or blogging? I find it takes much more time than that if you want to write any coherent statesments on a blog, let alone have your own blog. Maybe I have found the only thing that takes a lot more time to do than just five minutes? Lucky me. Let me talk to that doctor I know and see if he feels the same way about things.
In your case, five minutes is a good starter technique, you know, write for five minutes and see what happens.
What five minutes IS good for is those small cleaning jobs one tends to put off because they’re so irritating or just not urgent enough, like wiping down the sink, putting shoes/magaines/papers in a neat pile, dusting a tabletop, stacking some dishes, folding clothes.
Or you can use them to assemble tools/utensils per five minute block of time for a big job eg the paint tins, then the rags/paintbrushes/roll back the carpet/set out the tarpaulin, etc.
Really works and a great break from the net before the eyes start bugging out!:)
I think writer makes some excellent points.
“the”
Maybe the guy in the park needed a friend for a few minutes?
He might have recently lost a loved one, or the doctor gave him some bad news?
Maybe his puppy died or he was thinking about jumping off of a bridge?
Who knows?
It’s sad to think that some snoot is too busy with himself and his own world to take a few minutes to listen to a fellowman.
Welcome to life in the big city, the kind of place that people bring their books to a public park instead of taking it to the library or some privy and locking the door.
I was tripped up immediately by the inaccurate average novel length estimate, but when I got over my nit-pickiness, I appreciated the actual thought expressed here. It is not the amount of time one has, it is the consistency of effort. That is my downfall–I’m a great starter, but …. You’ve inspired me once again to remember that even an elephant can be eaten one bite at a time, and so there really is no excuse for not going for whatever “it” is. And even if five minutes a day would only account for six books completed in a year, I seem to remember a shocking (to me) poll that revealed that the average American did not read even ONE entire book in a year.
I find it more efficient to hire a full-time speed-reader.
It’s amazing how much I can have read for me every week. Several novels a day, in fact.
Since he’s an employee, I can even have fun with the reading.
For example, I sometimes have him read the same book over and over, and when I’m particularly ambitious, I have him read books in various foreign languages. He doesn’t understand them, so I have read them out loud. I’m pretty sure he’s mispronouncing the words.
In any case, I’ve never slept better, and I feel ever so much smarter.
People who say they don’t have the time often really mean they don’t feel they’re allowed to enjoy themselves, possibly due to an upbringing where they had to work and didn’t have the luxury of earning money by what they were good at; or they feel pressured by other obligations; don’t realise they can FIND the time.
Sometimes people feel guilty when they see others enjoy things that they don’t and feel they should, so they sigh that they don’t have time to do these things!
Sometimes people say they don’t have time when other people are pressuring them to do something – just their way of saying no!
I sympathise with you though – I once wandered off from a tour group for a bit of alone time and the bus driver followed me, telling me he often wanted to be alone. I kept wondering why, if he liked it so much, he didn’t find his own space and leave me to enjoy my temporary solitude!
One book in the bathroom.
One book in the bathroom at work.
One book in the lunch room.
One book on the desk at home.
One book on the bedside table.
Visit the library every 3 weeks and take out more books.
I guess I will just have to think of something else to do with my 5 mins. everyday. I love reading, and one of my fears in life is going blind and NOT being able to read. Who cares how long or short a book is. You will remember, when you pick it up, where you left off. (Beware reading several books concurrently, by the same author.)
300-400 words per minute? Not in any study I’ve ever read. Most sources, like this one, put it around 200-250.
I would have a real struggle to read that slowly, but I know it can be done, because I see it all around me.
But as some have already suggested, 5 minutes of free time does not equal 5 minutes of productivity. Interruptions rob us of time simply because we need time to get our minds back on track. The same is true for reading. More time is needed for some people than for others, and more time is needed for some subject matter than others (involved technical material vs. a novel, for example).
I never had time to study French until I began driving 1-2 hours each way to work. Now, I do two 30-minute lessons each direction every day (I repeat them, since I get better at pronunciation and comprehension of each lesson with multiple passes). I hate my new job, but at least I’m learning French instead of complaining that I don’t have the time to learn it!