Take care of the minutes
“Take care of the minutes and the hours will take care of themselves.”
— Philip Stanhope, 4th Earl of Chesterfield
I don’t know where I first came across this quote, but I loved it immediately.
While it applies to just about every part of life, I tend to think of it through the lens of photography - specifically, how even small pockets of time can meaningfully improve our skills. For a long time, I believed I needed large, uninterrupted blocks of time to edit photos. I thought real progress required going deep for hours at a stretch, with total focus and no distractions.
It turns out I was wrong.
What I actually needed wasn’t more time - it was better focus.
I’ve learned that I can go surprisingly deep on a subject in as little as 15 minutes. Will I completely master something in that time? Of course not. But I can move the needle. And when I stack another 15 minutes later that day, or tomorrow, or next week, those small sessions compound.
The key is to not bite off more than you can chew in the time you have. Don’t tell yourself you’re going to “master” something complex. Just focus. Practice. Get some reps in. A little dedicated time will always beat the good intentions of a longer session that never quite fits into your schedule.
It’s far easier to protect 15 minutes than it is to carve out a few hours. What I’ve found is that by consistently focusing in short bursts, I can make real progress over the course of a week or two. That’s far more realistic for most of us than trying to shoehorn a three-hour block into already full calendars filled with work and family commitments.
I use this approach with much of my photography work - both editing photos and writing blog posts like this one. I had to adjust my expectations and accept that most things I create are iterative. I rarely complete something end-to-end in a single sitting. Instead, I apply focused attention in small increments and let the work evolve over time.
Unsurprisingly, I can almost always find 15 minutes in a day to do something.
Nearly all of these blog posts live in draft form in a Google Doc for weeks, and sometimes months. When I have a few spare minutes, I open it up and write a little, edit a little, and brainstorm a little. I generate raw material and refine it gradually in 15–30 minute sessions until it’s ready to be shared.
I often work the same way with photo edits, especially my five-star images. I’ll do quick edits in the field or shortly after getting home, but the true final versions tend to take time. And not coincidentally, they’re usually better. Working in small sessions keeps me from rushing and allows the image to breathe between edits.
Here are a few ways you can improve your photo editing in just 15 minutes:
Focus on a single tool. Don’t try to finish an edit. Explore every slider, see what it does, and observe how it affects the overall image.
Work on masking. Challenge yourself to use the same type of mask on every tool. For example, use a luminosity mask throughout an entire edit to build real comfort with it.
Edit only the light. Ignore color and detail. Use multiple tools to shape the light and see just how far you can push it.
Edit only the color. Do the opposite - focus solely on color and experiment with how you can shift and shape it to match your taste.
Dissect presets you like. Break them apart, study what each tool is doing, make adjustments, and build your own custom preset along the way.
There are countless productive things you can do in 15 minutes. And let’s be honest - we’ve all lost at least that much time scrolling on our phones before. Why not redirect a bit of that time toward something that actually moves you forward?
Those small, focused practice sessions add up faster than you might expect - and over time, they can have a meaningful impact on your images.
So the next time you find yourself with 15 free minutes, how will you use them?
