Andrew Balfour Thinks Ten Minutes Is Enough

Most people do not stop making things because they stopped caring.

They stop because the act of returning starts to feel too loaded. The guitar becomes a test of whether you are still a musician. The blank page becomes a referendum on whether you were ever any good. The project waits for some cleaner future version of your life, one with more time, more motivation, and fewer reasons to avoid beginning.

Andrew Balfour’s The Ten Minute Rule is built for that exact standoff.

The former touring musician and Netflix creative executive spent years away from music before finding his way back through small, repeatable windows of work. The book’s argument is simple enough to sound almost suspicious: set a timer for ten minutes, start, and stop when it ends. The trick is that ten minutes lowers the stakes enough for the work to become reachable again.

That is what makes the book feel more like a field manual than a productivity sermon. Balfour is not selling a system for doing more. He is writing about how to stay connected to the part of yourself that makes things, especially when motivation, perfectionism, grief, burnout, jobs, and ordinary adult life have made starting feel heavier than it should.

The discussion below gets into why the first step is often the hardest part, why judgment should wait until tomorrow, and how a crude piano sketch eventually became the award-nominated song “Serotonin.”

Interview With Andrew Balfour

Your book argues that creative work often dies in the moment before it begins. What usually happens during that moment?

That moment usually turns into a negotiation with yourself. I don’t have time. I’m tired. I’m not as good as I used to be. I’ll do it tomorrow when I can give it the attention it deserves. The reasons can sound practical and responsible, which makes them easy to believe.

I knew that pattern because I had lived it. After years away from making music, sitting down with a guitar started to feel like a judgment of whether I was still a musician. Something simple had become much heavier than it needed to be.

That was one of the insights that led me to write the book. Most people I spoke with still cared deeply about the thing they had set aside. They had built up so much pressure around returning to it that beginning felt almost impossible. Ten minutes gave me a way through that pressure. For ten minutes, I didn’t have to prove that I was still good, finish anything, or make up for the years I had lost. I only had to start.

Why did ten minutes become the right amount of time for overcoming the initial resistance to creating?

Ten minutes was small enough that I could find it in almost any day. We lose ten minutes scrolling on our phones, flipping through something on television, waiting for dinner, or doing nothing in particular. I knew I could find that same window for something I cared about.

It was also enough time to make real contact with the work. Five minutes could pass while I was still getting settled. Thirty minutes started to feel like an appointment I had to plan around. Ten minutes sat in the right place for me. It was contained, approachable, and long enough to play through an idea, write a few lines, or find the beginning of something.

The accumulation matters too. Ten minutes a day becomes more than sixty hours over the course of a year. That is a meaningful amount of time returned to a practice you thought you had lost. Ten minutes is simply the commitment. Some days it stays at ten. Other days you look up and an hour has passed. Either way, you showed up, and showing up is how the rhythm begins.

The Judgment Rule separates creation from evaluation. What changes when those actions happen on different days?

Creating and editing ask different things of you. When I am creating, I need enough freedom to follow an idea before I understand where it is going. When I am editing, I need distance, judgment, and the willingness to make choices.

Trying to do both at once usually means the idea gets judged before enough of it exists. You play a few chords, write half a sentence, or put one mark on the page, and immediately decide it isn’t good enough. The ten minutes disappear while you debate the value of something that has barely had time to form.

Coming back on another day changes the relationship. I can hear what is actually there instead of reacting to the uncertainty I felt while making it. Sometimes I hear potential. Sometimes I realize an idea is not going anywhere. Both are useful. I am making that decision from something real.

“Serotonin,” which later received an award nomination, began as a simple piano idea. Guitar is my main instrument, so the piano on the original demo was crude and not played particularly smoothly. One collaborator heard it, stuck his tongue out, and told me the progression wasn’t working. I understood his reaction, but I also knew that Ryan Lawrie, who records as KOOLKID, writes some of his best melodies and lyrics when the chord structure is simple and open.

Once Ryan wrote the vocal, the potential of the song became much clearer. I then asked Grammy-winning pianist Ruslan Sirota to replay the part and bring his own feeling and ability to it. The collaborator who initially passed later told me, “I wish I hadn’t written this song off. It’s so good.”

That is what the Judgment Rule protects. If I had treated my rough playing or one person’s early reaction as a final verdict, the song would have ended at the demo. The first version only needed to hold the idea long enough for Ryan and Ruslan to hear what it could become.

How did the Ten Minute Rule influence the writing and compact 104-page form of the book itself?

I used every rule in the book to write the book. I worked in small windows, separated writing from editing, and kept returning before I felt completely ready. The 104-page form followed the same logic. A book for people who already feel short on time had to respect their time. My years writing concise memos at Netflix helped me find the essential argument, but the goal was simple: give readers enough to begin, then give their time back.

After someone closes the book, what would you like them to begin or return to that same evening?

I would like them to return to whatever practice, or whatever part of themselves, they have had to set aside. Make one mark on the canvas. Put the guitar where you can reach it and play one chord. Lay out the materials. Write one sentence. Give it ten minutes tonight with no expectation that it needs to become anything more.

One of the first people to read the book was in Amsterdam. She went on to start a biweekly writing circle with other people. I loved that the book helped her return to her own writing and then create a place for other people to return to theirs. Nobody has to start a group, of course. The first step can stay very small.

Begin tonight. If it feels meaningful, tell one person what you did. You don’t need their permission or approval. Sometimes letting someone you trust witness the fact that you came back to it helps make the return feel real.

About Andrew Balfour

Andrew Balfour spent a decade touring in rock bands before stepping away from music entirely. He went on to spend fifteen years building creative and production teams across Netflix, Yahoo, and BrightRoll before returning to music in small windows, without a grand plan or clean comeback story.

That return eventually became Black Sands, an independent music project recognized by the Hollywood Independent Music Awards and the Unsigned Only Music Competition. The Ten Minute Rule grew from the same practice: small acts of return that helped Balfour reconnect with music, sharpen his professional thinking, and find his way back to a part of himself he had let drift.

Closing Thoughts

The most persuasive thing about The Ten Minute Rule is that it does not flatter the fantasy version of creativity.

It does not assume we are all one perfect morning routine away from our best work. Balfour is writing about the more common reality: people who still care, still have taste, still have unfinished ideas, and still cannot get themselves to sit down long enough to begin.

There is also a clear link to John Monkman’s interview on routine, parenthood, and protecting focused studio time. Monkman spoke about having less time than he once did, but finding that a limited window can create real focus. Balfour takes that idea to its smallest functional unit. Ten minutes is not a compromise with the work. It is a way back into the room.

The book also sits beside our piece on how to stop comparing your music to other producers.

Comparison turns unfinished work into evidence against you before it has become anything. Balfour’s Judgment Rule is an antidote to that habit. Create today. Judge tomorrow. The gap between those two actions gives fragile ideas enough time to become real enough to evaluate.

There is another line to Nihil Young’s interview on staying connected to music across changing seasons of life. Nihil Young has often talked about music as a long-term practice rather than a single campaign cycle, and Balfour’s book makes that same point in a sharper, more compact way. The creative life is not protected by one heroic burst. It is protected by the ability to return.

“Serotonin” is the best example in the interview because it shows how easily an idea can die too early. A rough piano part, an unimpressed collaborator, and a few seconds of embarrassment could have been enough to end the song. Instead, the idea survived long enough for Ryan Lawrie and Ruslan Sirota to hear what it could become. That is the real promise of the rule. It does not guarantee brilliance. It keeps the door open long enough for brilliance to have a chance.

The 104-page length also feels like part of the argument. A book about returning to creative work should not become another thing people feel guilty for not finishing. Balfour gives the reader enough to act, then gets out of the way. In an era where productivity culture often turns every private interest into another demand, that restraint is worth noting.

The broader takeaway is simple: you probably do have ten minutes. The harder part is trusting that ten minutes can count. Balfour’s book is for anyone who has let a practice become too heavy to touch, then mistaken that heaviness for proof that the practice is gone. It probably is not gone. It may just need a smaller door.