I spend a lot of my time juggling. Juggling projects. Juggling deadlines. Juggling priorities. I sometimes think if I stopped and counted, I’d realize there’s no way to keep all these plates spinning in the air, and they’d all come crashing down! I’m a novelist who needs side gigs (mostly ghostwriting and teaching), as well as marketing her own work, to pay the bills—so it’s a challenge. I use everything I can to help myself: to-do lists, a calendar, reminders scribbled on the back of receipts.

Multitasking? Right on!

Except… maybe not so much. I’ve finally caught up with what psychologists have been saying for some time: that multitasking means less attention paid to any one task. Quantity of work may go up; quality of work goes way down.

So as I’ve stepped back from trying to write an essay, check on a client’s publication stats, scribble a new idea for a novel-in-progress, and listen to James O’Brien on LBC all at the same time, I’ve had to figure out how to still get everything done in the time I have. I’ve explored time management techniques, journal options, organizational software; I’ve read advice from authors whose work I admire; I’ve even questioned whether I really have to read all the cool newsletters that populate my inbox. (Yeah, usually, I do.)

But I found the answer—or at least part of the answer—in a novel published in 1969. Back before there were quite as many temptations to mutitask. And while your mileage may vary, to my mind it’s far better advice than anything published since.

Rumer Godden’s In This House of Brede is a layered and fascinating story of a woman who enters a Benedictine monastery; the novel then is enlarged to encompass the many varied lives of the community that lives there. I’ve read it so many times I have certain passages memorized, and once went so far as to look up the actual monastery that served as Godden’s model. (See? That’s part of my problem. I can’t stop myself from pursuing stuff I find interesting.)

One small, insignificant line in a scene—focused on something else altogether—caught my eye.

“Use every odd space, each ten minutes,” Dame Emily had always taught her novices that; “It’s how all our tasks are done.”

And there it is. I will tell you that I used to (and still do, sometimes) routinely throw ten-minute spaces away. Not enough time to start something, not enough time to do anything. Might as well update social media or get a snack or … who knows what else? Nothing intentional, that’s for sure, and later in the day I’d find myself wondering where the time had gone.

I even wasted time due to my obsession on arriving at any appointment or meeting early, because I respect others’ time and don’t wish to infringe unnecessarily on it. But that just adds empty spaces to the schedule.

And then, one day…

I was a few minutes early for a Zoom call, prepared and ready, when Dame Emily’s words came to me. Yes, I had ten minutes before the call. Normally I would sit and wait, perhaps play a hand of solitaire, but this time I glanced at my daybook and saw I needed to respond to an email. I did it, was still on time for my Zoom call, and (best part of all!) got to cross the task off my list.

It's such a small thing, but it has made a tremendous difference in both my productivity and also my—okay, I’ll say it, mental health. Items on my lists don’t loom quite as large when I glance at the clock and see I have just ten minutes of space before I need to do something else. Even if a task can’t be completed in that time, it can be started, and starting, as we all know, is everything.

I love Dame Emily’s ten-minute rule. It’s made my life so much more manageable. And what I especially love is that I got it out of… a novel.

Books really are the best thing in the world.

The Power of Dame Emily’s Ten-Minute Rule

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