Have you got 10 minutes?

OK, I’m glad you asked because this is a really easy one. No. I do not have “just” 10 minutes and neither do you. Which means, I’m afraid, that we must present a firm, united front to the hordes trying to convince us that we do.

The message in the flood of content being pushed across social media? A new dawn, a new day and a new you can be ushered in with such a pitifully tiny amount of time and effort that, honestly, what is wrong with you, you loser? Why aren’t you on top of these easy life hacks already?

Well, the fightback starts here. We simply do not have time for your “simple” three-move core exercises, your “easy” midweek meditation, your micro-lesson on French colloquialisms, nor for your “limber up” morning rebounder session, your instant bake-this-cheesecake-from-kefir-that’s-gone-off dessert, your “divide the perennials before you brush your teeth but have you tried a quick rub with coconut oil to whiten them?” advice. No, not for any of it. Not even for the rapid daily declutter that promises to allow me to see out from behind the current curtain of clobber all over my room.

You see the problem. It’s sold as self-help or self-improvement, but cumulatively all these life hacks make you feel much worse, rebuked that you’re not doing things properly. Like, who doesn’t have 10 minutes? Well, it’s me. I’m the one that doesn’t, that can’t and that jolly well won’t. There aren’t enough 10 minutes left of my life to want to waste them on daily facial yoga. Even if I was 21 again, it would still be a dreadful way to live. Do you want to be so distracted from what you really want, what you could achieve of any actual meaning?

For me, this online menace started quite benignly with reels offering individually achievable goals (mend that beloved sweater with Japanese economy and elegance) or useful tips (a breathing exercise devised for the Royal Marines to get through stressful situations like being taken captive by the enemy, or for my busy Friday shift).

Here’s what I was served up today, however: a couple of total crazies telling me, while they demonstrate, that 10 minutes spent stomping in bare feet on a pile of Epsom salts will cure pretty much all ills physical and spiritual. Gee whizz, thanks guys, move over and gimme some room on that wrecked bit of floor in your shonky video.

Clearly my algorithm, which I have tried to train towards thrift flips and plein air painting, thinks I want to be nagged about this perfectibility nonsense. Presumably it’s age profiling — so many exhortations to lubricate your hip joints! But being targeted by a bunch of guilt-inducers and their quick fixes is narrowing the world the internet was supposed to open up for us all.

Algo Fomo swiftly resulted from asking friends what they get served up. One of them has to put up with a certain amount of the same, but it’s leavened by videos of witches around the globe sharing spell tips, which sounds just as woo-woo as the Epsom salt people, but way more entertaining and less messy. Though I’ve heard there’s a lot of burning sage leaves involved and that could also be bad for the soft furnishings.

If you are similarly being told about these crappy little 10-minute paths to enlightenment, perfect health, beatific calm, multilingual mastery and all the rest of it, then remember this: each may sound doable but the aggregate is a disaster. Add up all the 10-minute hacks and where has your day/week/life gone? Good luck rotating that loosened hip joint as you eat your cheesecake, meditate and repot the plants, while emitting a stream of French idioms to describe how great your salted feet now feel. And you won’t have time to sit back and enjoy any of it because you need to keep on self-helping. Chop chop!

Never mind J Alfred Prufrock, lamenting that he has measured out his life in coffee spoons. We are in danger of measuring out our life in desperate attempts at everything-maxxing. Twentieth-century aimlessness and ennui sound frankly preferable to our deadly attention-economy-driven pursuit of (health and) happiness.

It’s a multiplying morass of snares and delusions, but we can make a break for freedom. Repeat after me: nobody’s perfect. Adopt this little mantra a few times each day and you’ll never look back. What are you waiting for? It’ll only take you 10 minutes.

Miranda Green is the FT’s deputy opinion editor

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