Is 5 Minutes of Practice Enough?

One of my goals for 2025 was to practise calligraphy everyday.

And I’ve kept to it so far!

Keeping a consistent habit every single day isn’t an easy feat.

Especially for anyone who may be neurodivergent, or struggle with executive dysfunction.

Or like me, who cycles through hormonal and mood swings every month thanks to being a woman.

So I’ll let you in on a secret.

Although I practised everyday in 2025 so far, what counts as practice varied drastically.

Here are some examples of what I counted as practice, from hardest (or most time consuming) to easiest:

• An A4 sheet of words in flourished Copperplate

• An A4 sheet of uppercase letters

• 3 lines of words in flourished Copperplate

• 3 lines of basic strokes

• 1 line of words in standard Copperplate

• 1 line of words in Spencerian

• 1 long word in flourished Copperplate

• A few words in cursive with a fountain pen

And if I’m completely honest, there was a day that I wrote just the letter a. Without ink. 😂 (There was a huge fight at home that day, and calligraphy was the lowest in priority.)

You may think such simple practice hardly counts, and I’m taking the easy way out just to cheat the system.

I just think I’m being flexible.

Keeping up with serious practice for 30 minutes to an hour everyday is really challenging.

Forcing myself to do so when I’m not well makes me disgruntled, like “why am I doing this to myself”.

So I allow myself to be flexible, based on how busy I am and how I feel each day.

5 minutes of practice is enough. It’s better than nothing.

Because it reminds me that I can show up and put in a bit of practice regardless.

So I’ll continue to do so tomorrow. And the day after. And the day after that.

But honestly, at the end of the day?

Calligraphy isn’t really that big of a deal!

It’s a hobby for most people. It’s not a matter of life or death. It’s not likely to have any concrete impact on your physical health.

So please, release yourself from any guilt.

Practise if you want to.

Make practice easier if you need to.

Don’t practise if you really don’t want to!

P/S You may be interested to check out a related book called Elastic Habits by Stephen Guise. He explained this flexible approach more systematically, by setting up mini, plus and elite wins for each habit. These tiers make it easier, more fun, and more fulfilling to keep at a habit over time.

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