A waiting room teaches you how long ten minutes really is when you’re not distracted.

Time has a different size depending on what is filling it. Ten minutes with a screen vanishes; ten minutes in a plastic chair with nothing to look at is enormous, and that enormous version is the true length. Most of your life is actually that long, and you have been spending it at the compressed rate.

The practical upshot is that ten real minutes is a lot. It is enough to learn a set of definitions, to write a decent message to somebody, to plan your week, or to think a problem through properly. Next time you are stuck waiting, pick one of those instead of waiting it out.