A fifteen-minute daily routine.
Fifteen minutes every day beats two hours on Sunday, and not for the reason people usually give.
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The argument for daily practice is not discipline. It is that forgetting runs on a daily schedule, so anything less frequent spends its first minutes recovering ground it had already taken.
Five: review what is nearly gone
Start with the material from previous days that is closest to being lost. This is the highest-value five minutes in the routine and the one people skip, because it feels like going backwards.
Five: read something real
A news paragraph, a page of a book, a comment thread. Real English, not exercise English — at a level where you can follow it without a dictionary open.
Five: produce something
Output is the part that converts recognition into use, and it is the part that gets cut when time is short. Cut the reading instead.
Frequently asked
Is fifteen minutes really enough? It is enough to keep moving forward, which is the thing that compounds. It is not enough to reach a deadline quickly — but an hour on one day a week is worse at both.
What if I miss a day? Return to the same routine rather than doubling it. A missed day costs very little; abandoning the schedule to repay it costs the rest.