Leave the small ones empty

Once the one stretch is working, there are the small ones. The queue, the wait for the lift, the two minutes for the kettle, the car park, the platform. These are where the fill is most automatic and least chosen, and they're the easiest to leave empty once you've decided to.

Gaps under five minutes stay empty. That's the rule. Anything shorter than five minutes isn't long enough to listen to anything properly and is exactly long enough for a thought to finish. A queue of three minutes with a podcast in it gives you three minutes of a podcast you'll have to rewind. A queue of three minutes with nothing in it gives you the end of the thought you started in the shower.

Headphones in the bag, not the pocket. The pocket is where the default lives. A pair of headphones in a coat pocket goes into ears without a decision. A pair in a bag has a step between it and your ears, and the step is where the decision happens.

Radio off by default. Walk into the kitchen and don't turn it on. If you want a programme, turn it on for the programme, and that's chapter 21. What you're removing is the hand that goes to the switch on the way past because that's what the hand does in kitchens.

The phone stays dark in a queue. The earlier book in this series on the phone has the arrangements for this. The short version is that the phone in a queue is the fill in its most concentrated form, and a queue with a dark phone is the most ordinary quiet stretch there is, and was, until recently, what everyone did in queues.

Let the small ones be nothing. Not an exercise, not a practice. Standing in a queue looking at the shop. Waiting for the kettle looking out of the window. This is what the minutes were for before there was something to put in them, and it's what they're for now.

Expect the small ones to be easier than the big one. The itch in a two-minute wait barely has time to start. Once the one stretch has taught you that the itch passes, the small ones are almost free, and they add up to more quiet than the stretch does, because there are twenty of them a day.