What can you write in 10 minutes?

I’ve seen Seth Godin on stage three times now and I just love his work. After the keynotes, someone always asks him this question.

How much do you write every day?

Seth is famous for his habit of publishing one fantastic blog post every day. His practice is much more rooted though. He writes five posts daily and then discards four of them to ship only one.

It seems that quality content emerges from quantity after all.

But his answer always takes me by surprise. First, he gets interested in the question. “Do you mean how much time do I spent typing or writing every day?” he asks.

“You see, there is a difference.” he continues. “I am inside the process of writing 24 hours every day, but I only type 15 minutes daily. I’m kinda fast typer because I’ve been doing it for decades.”

I’ve got to agree. I typed in this post in 10 minutes, but the process of writing was much longer. The idea came one morning weeks before, and today it turned into a blog post that feels satisfying to me.

While typing this, I noticed that the same process occurs in my mind considering the practice of software testing that I do for living or even the diet that I choose today.

The diet is a process in the thought all day. But it emerges as decisions only 3–5 times during the time.

So if we considered that this principle can be transferred elsewhere, where could you apply it?