Ten Minutes. No App. No Technique. Just This.

This is the piece I wish someone had written for me when I first started.

Not a guide with steps. Not a programme with phases. Just an honest description of what I actually do — in the ten minutes each morning before anything else begins — so that if you want to try it, you know exactly what you are getting into. Which is: very little. That is the point.

People often ask me how to begin a stillness practice. What to read first, which approach to try, whether they need to learn to meditate before they can sit quietly. The answer, each time, is the same. You do not need any of that. You only need somewhere to sit and the decision to sit there for ten minutes.

Find somewhere to sit. It does not need to be quiet — though quiet helps. It does not need to be special — a kitchen chair is fine. You do not need a mat or a cushion or the right kind of light. You only need somewhere you can be still for ten minutes without being needed.

Set a timer for ten minutes. This matters more than it sounds. Without it, part of your mind will stay occupied with the question of how long has passed and whether it is time to stop. The timer removes that question. It holds the container. You can let everything else go.

Close your eyes, or soften your gaze toward the floor if that feels more comfortable. Take one breath that is slightly longer than usual — not a technique, just a small signal to yourself that something is shifting. And then stop.

That is it. That is the whole instruction.

What happens next will be different every morning. Some mornings the mind is almost immediately quiet — or quiet enough, which is what you are actually aiming for. Not silence. Something slightly less than the usual volume. Some mornings it is relentless. The list arrives. The worry arrives. Something you said yesterday arrives, and behind it something from five years ago, and behind that something you need to remember to do. Let it all come. You are not here to stop any of it.

This is the part that trips people up — the assumption that stillness means the absence of thought. It does not. Thoughts will come regardless. They always do. The practice is not to empty the mind. The practice is to stop feeding the thoughts. To let them arrive and move through without following them, without arguing with them, without building on them. You are not a participant in what the mind is doing. You are simply the one sitting with it.

Some mornings this feels easier than others. The days when the mind is particularly busy are not failures of the practice — they are, in many ways, exactly what the practice is for. There is no version of ten minutes that does not count. Only ten minutes where you stayed, and ten minutes where you did not.

There will be mornings when the time feels like an hour. There will be mornings when the timer sounds and you cannot account for where it went. Neither of those mornings is better than the other. The practice does not grade itself. It only asks that you show up for it.

When the timer sounds, open your eyes slowly. Stay sitting for another thirty seconds if you can. There is a quality in those moments just after — a soft, brief clarity before the day reasserts itself. It is worth giving it a moment to settle before you stand.

That is the whole practice. A chair. A timer. Ten minutes. Closed eyes. Nothing to buy. Nothing to download. Nothing to learn in advance. No way to do it incorrectly — only the doing or the not-doing.

I kept it this bare for a long time. Just the sitting. Just the timer. Just the quiet permission to stop for ten minutes and let the mind do what it would.

I eventually turned this practice into something I could guide you through — if you would like company for those ten minutes. Not because the practice requires guidance, but because some people find it easier to begin when there is a voice to return to. Something gentle to anchor the time. If that appeals to you, it exists. But the practice itself — the one I have just described — needs nothing from you except your willingness to sit.

Ten minutes. No app. No technique. Just this.