Got 5 Minutes?

Pick one thing and give it five minutes. It doesn't need to fix anything or make you feel completely different. For now, it just needs to give you something else to do.

• Work out what these words mean: Rumbustious, Hircine, Taradiddle, Hapax, Perambulate. Look them up, then see if you can use each one in a sentence. No cheating by asking someone else. If you come up with a good one, we'd love you to send us your sentence.
• Learn one sentence in another language: here's one for you: Bugün hiçbir güvercine güvenmiyorum. We're not telling you what language it is or what it means. Work out both, then see if you can say it without looking.
• Do the annoying five-minute job: clean the microwave, wipe down the hob, empty the dishwasher, fold some clothes, clean a window or tackle something else you've been putting off. See how much of it you can get done before five minutes is up.
• Attack the paper pile: grab some post, receipts or paperwork you've been ignoring. Recycle what you don't need and put anything important together somewhere you can deal with it later.
• Find the silliest or most useful thing you own: have a look through a drawer, cupboard, bag or box and find something brilliant, ridiculous or strangely useful. What is it? What does it do? Does it have an actual name? If you find something good, we'd love to see it.
• Learn the words to part of a song: pick a song you know but always mumble your way through. Find the lyrics and learn one verse properly.
• Send somebody something nice: message someone just to tell them something you appreciate about them, thank them for something, send them a photo or simply tell them you were thinking of them.
• Get rid of one tiny bit of life admin: unsubscribe from emails you never read, delete an app you don't use, clear some screenshots from your phone or cancel a subscription you no longer want.
• Make something unnecessarily neat: organise one shelf, line up the things on your desk, straighten a drawer, arrange the tins in a cupboard or fold a few towels properly. Stop when five minutes is up.
• Take 10 completely pointless photos: photograph ten ordinary things around you: a mug, your shoes, a light switch, the view from a window. The photos don't need to be good. The challenge is simply finding ten different things.
• Find the most useless fact you can: find something so pointless that you can't believe somebody bothered to discover it. If you need somewhere to start, here's your question: Why do pigeons bob their heads when they walk? Find the answer, then see if you can find something even more useless. You may now be burdened with this knowledge forever.
• Rank five completely unrelated things: pick five things that have absolutely no business being compared and rank them from 1 to 5. Then explain your top five. Why is each one where it is, and what completely reasonable criteria did you use to decide?
  
  Here's ours:
  1. The smell just after it rains
  2. Dogs
  3. A supermarket trolley with four working wheels
  4. Getting a parcel earlier than expected
  5. Putting on clothes straight from the tumble dryer
  
• Become an expert on something completely random: your specialist subject is train tickets . You've got five minutes. Find out who invented it, how it works, why it exists, what its different parts are called or anything else you can discover. By the end, know at least one thing you didn't know five minutes ago.

Five minutes doesn't have to be productive. You don't have to achieve anything important. The point is simply that five minutes have passed.

If you can give yourself another five, let's find something for the next ten minutes.

Got 10 Minutes?

Ten minutes gives us a little more room to work with. We still do not need to fix anything. Pick one thing that catches your attention and give it a go.

• Plan a completely unnecessary trip: Your mission is to get to France to find a roundabout. Work out how you'd actually get there from where you are. How would you travel? How long would it take? Roughly what would it cost? And most importantly, work out exactly where you're completing your completely unnecessary mission.
• Make a backwards to-do list: Write down a few things you need to do, then rank them from 'absolutely cannot be bothered' to 'actually, that one's not too bad'. Now ignore both ends and start with something in the middle. Give it ten minutes. You do not have to finish it.
• Invent a terrible business: Invent a business that really should not exist. You need:
  • business name
  • what it sells
  • target customer
  • price
  • slogan
  Unfortunately, HRE4U has appointed itself as your business consultant. You must also follow this expert advice:
  • Never let customers see the back room. That is where the real chaos lives.
  • A bold slogan is more important than a working product.
  • If the product is genuinely terrible, call it artisanal and stand back.
  Our business: Sockrilege. A £9.99 monthly sock subscription. We only send left socks. Slogan: Because right is predictable.
• Make a slightly ridiculous meal plan: Plan seven meals, one for each day. Each meal must contain at least one food beginning with the same letter as the day: Monday - M, Tuesday - T, Wednesday - W, Thursday - T, Friday - F, Saturday - S, Sunday - S. It can be an ingredient, side, sauce, topping or whole meal. Too easy? Tuesday and Thursday cannot use the same food, and neither can Saturday and Sunday.
• Don't leave it for Future Homer: Homer Simpson once decided that dealing with something later was a problem for 'Future Homer'. Poor Future Homer. What's one thing tomorrow-you is going to hate doing? For example: making lunch, finding clothes, packing a bag, finding keys or replying to an email. Can't think of one? Here's yours: Write a quick list of what needs to happen first in the morning. Do it now. Tomorrow-you does not know it yet, but you've just done them a favour.
• Discover a genre of music you didn't know existed: Chap Hop Find it, listen to at least two different artists or tracks, and decide whether you've discovered something brilliant or something you never need to hear again. Bonus: work out what actually makes it that genre. Absolutely hate it? Good. Work out exactly what you hate about it.
• And what even is a phantom traffic jam?
• Cool the world's most unnecessarily hot cup of tea

  Somebody has made you a cup of tea at approximately the temperature of the sun.

  Take a slow breath in.

  Blow across it gently.

  Still volcanic.

  Take another slow breath in.

  Another long, gentle blow.

  Somehow still too hot.

  Keep going for a little while. At some point this tea must obey the laws of physics.

• Plan an away day: Find a Spain team that plays field hockey. Now find their next game. If you were actually going, how would you get there from where you are? Where would you stay? How much would it roughly cost? And how would you get a ticket?
• Message a mate: Start a completely normal conversation with somebody you know. There is one rule. Before the conversation ends, you must naturally use the words: fountain and whistle. You are not allowed to explain why.
• The calendar has spoken: Find ten minutes on one day this week and put this in your actual calendar: Delete 50 screenshots or photos from your phone. Pick an actual day and time. Put it in now. When the appointment comes around, you are doing it. No refreshing until you get one you like. The calendar has spoken.
• Design the perfect meal: No budget. No rules. Design a meal with:
  • starter
  • main
  • sides
  • dessert
  • drinks
  What is on the plate? What sauces? What sides? What are you drinking? The objective is simply to design the best meal you can imagine.
• That meal you just created? You're opening a restaurant. Name the restaurant. Give your meal a menu name. Write the menu description. Roughly work out what it would cost to make. Decide what you would charge. Invent a slogan for the restaurant. More importantly, give your masterpiece the unnecessarily pretentious restaurant name it deserves.
• Remember this song? “Under the moon” What is the song? Do not look it up yet. See how much of the song you can remember first, then check whether you were right.
• Find your mystery word: Grab the nearest book. Any book. Your page is: 71 Your line is: 9 Your word is: 2 Go to that page, find that line and count along to that word. That is your word. Then do something with it: find out where it came from, use it in a ridiculous sentence, find another word that rhymes with it, find a song or film containing it, or send it to somebody with absolutely no context. If the book does not have enough pages or lines, grab another book or move backwards until you find something that works.
• What happens if you put that in a sandwich? Go to your kitchen and pick three things you would not normally put together. Your job is to work out whether they could theoretically become a sandwich. Would it work? What would you add to rescue it? Give it a name and write the unnecessarily fancy menu description it deserves. You do not actually have to make it. Although if you accidentally invent something brilliant, that feels like your responsibility now.
• What words are as old as you? Go to Merriam-Webster's Time Traveler and choose the year you were born. Find three words whose first known use is listed for that year. Pick:
  • your favourite
  • the strangest
  • the one that sounds like it should be much older or newer
  Bonus: which word from your year best describes you? Do not claim the tool proves a word was invented that year. Phrase it accurately as first known use or first recorded use according to Merriam-Webster.
• Do baby leeches even exist? What do they look like? How big are they? Are they basically tiny versions of the adults, or something completely different? Find out.
• How many steps is it from your bathroom to your nearest window? Guess first. Now go and count them properly. How far out were you? If the locations do not make sense for your home, choose the nearest equivalent.
• Do you have more than 17 pairs of socks in your house? Do not guess. Go and count them. Were you even close?
• You counted them? Good. Now rank them. Which one is your favourite? Which is your least favourite? And much more importantly: Which is your middle favourite? If you have an odd number, find the exact middle one. If you have an even number, congratulations: you have two perfectly average ones. What makes them so spectacularly mediocre?
• Can you draw a okapi? There is one rule: do not look it up first. Draw what you think it looks like. Only when you are finished can you search for the real animal and compare your masterpiece. If you already know exactly what it looks like, refresh and take another animal.
• Reckon you could... Name 12 things you can find in a kitchen.
• Can you think up a joke about a pillow? Terrible jokes absolutely count. Do not generate the joke. You have to invent it.
• What is the funniest thing that happened yesterday? Define "funny" however you want. It can be hilarious, weird, awkward, ridiculous, unexpected or something that was only mildly amusing. Go back through yesterday and find one thing.
• Make a list of five things you think you should be doing right now. Next to each one, write why it can wait ten minutes. That is it.
• Wanna hear a joke? Why did the orange stop?
  It ran out of juice.
  Sorry.
• Wanna hear a story? In 1978, the first GPS satellites were launched.
  The system was developed for accurate positioning and navigation.
  It eventually became part of everyday life in cars and phones.
  It was the first GPS satellite launches.
  

Ten minutes is a decent chunk of time. If you picked something and got completely distracted by it, good. That was the point.

If you want something that can keep you occupied for a little longer, let's try twenty minutes.

Got 20 Minutes?

Twenty minutes is enough time to disappear into something properly. You still don't need to solve anything. Pick something that sounds interesting, ridiculous or just distracting enough and see where it takes you.

• Become a detective: Your investigation concerns the fork. Find one in your house and work out who made it, where it was made, roughly when it was made, what the company behind it actually does and what a new one costs now. Then see how far you can trace its journey before it ended up in your house. Congratulations. You are now dangerously knowledgeable about a completely ordinary object.
• £20, 20 minutes, somewhere new: You have £20 and tomorrow you have to leave the house and go somewhere you've never been. Find somewhere you could realistically get to, do something and get home without spending more than £20. Transport counts. Food counts. Everything counts. You don't actually have to go tomorrow, but the plan has to work.
• What's actually for dinner? No shopping. Look through the fridge, freezer and cupboards and work out the best meal you could make entirely from things already in your house. You don't have to cook it. You're just proving that those seventeen unrelated ingredients can theoretically become dinner.
• Go on a Street View holiday: You're going to Slovenia. Find a town or city there you've never heard of, drop yourself into Street View and start exploring. Keep going until you find somewhere you'd genuinely stop if you were actually there: a café, beach, park, weird building, pub, shop, view or something else. Work out what you've found.
• Build the world's most specific playlist: You need exactly five songs for this extremely specific situation: trying to look casual after waving at someone who was not waving at you. Pick them in order. Opening song, two in the middle, one for when things get unnecessarily dramatic and the perfect closing track. Give the playlist a name.
• You're moving house. Immediately. Somebody has given you £3,000,000, but there is a catch: that money has to cover the house AND everything you'd want to change about it. Find an actual property you'd buy. Work out what you'd change, what you'd keep and roughly how much money you'd have left when you've finished spending imaginary money irresponsibly.
• Recreate an old photo: Find a photo from years ago. Work out where it was taken, roughly when it was taken, who was there and what you remember about that day. If it's somewhere you can still get to, work out how you'd recreate the same photo now.
• Find the oldest thing that's actually yours: Not the oldest object in the house. Something that belongs to you and has been yours for years. Find your current champion. How long have you had it? Where did it come from? Why have you still got it? Then see if you can find something you've owned even longer.
• Rescue one room: Pick the room currently annoying you most. You are NOT cleaning the room. You are allowed to fix exactly 7 things in it. A pile, a surface, some washing, rubbish, dishes, whatever. Choose your 7 carefully. Once they're done, you're finished.
• You've just been given a bakery: Apparently you own it now. Name it. Decide what it looks like, what it sells, what music is playing, when it opens, what makes people come back and one thing that is absolutely banned. Money is apparently not a problem, which is fortunate because you have done no financial planning whatsoever.
• Get from kettle to the Eiffel Tower: Open the Wikipedia page for kettle. Your mission is to reach the Eiffel Tower using ONLY links inside Wikipedia articles. No search after the first page. Count how many clicks it takes. If you somehow manage it in fewer than five, you may be worryingly good at this.
• Can you find £10 hiding in your house? You've got twenty minutes to find something you genuinely don't want anymore that might be worth at least £10. Work out what similar ones actually sell for. If you fancy it, photograph it and list it. If not, at least you now know that random thing in the cupboard might actually be worth something.
• Build a Vietnamese-inspired meal for £30: You're making a three-course meal inspired by Vietnamese. You've got £30 for everything and you have to use prices you can actually find from a supermarket. Starter, main and dessert. See how close you can get without conveniently deciding that half the ingredients are free.
• Learn something you can actually demonstrate: Your challenge is: tie a bowline knot. You've got twenty minutes. Find instructions, practise it, then try it once without looking at the instructions. You do not need to become good at it. Mildly less terrible than when you started absolutely counts.
• Where does a old T-shirt actually go? You use it, then eventually it leaves your house. What happens next? Find out what you're actually supposed to do with it where you live and, if possible, what happens after it's collected. Does it get recycled, sorted, burned, reused, exported or turned into something else?
• Find somebody with your exact name: Search your full name. Your mission is to find somebody who isn't you. What completely different life is your name apparently living somewhere else? Do not contact them, dig into private information or go full internet detective. We're looking for harmless public information, not beginning an investigation.
• Create an unnecessarily difficult quiz about yourself:
  • What is my favourite smell?
  • What is the most embarrassing song on my playlist?
  • What song do I know all the words to?
  • What is my most predictable food order?
  • What is my most controversial food opinion?
  • Which household chore do I avoid most?
  • Which film have I probably watched too many times?
  • What do I do when I cannot sleep?
  • What is the first thing I do in the morning?
  • What item would I save first in a fire?
  Answer them yourself first. Later, if you want, send them to somebody who claims to know you. This may expose some disappointing gaps in their education.
• What can you walk to in 20 minutes? Open a map. From where you live, look roughly west and see what is about twenty minutes away on foot. Find one thing there you've never noticed before: a shop, park, road, building, café, monument or something else. You don't have to go. For now, just find out what has apparently been sitting there this whole time.
• Go outside. That's the entire assignment. Leave the house. Pick left or right. Walk for ten minutes, then turn around and come back. There is only one mission: find one thing you've never noticed before. A strange house, tiny alley, tree, sign, shop, car, view, ridiculous garden ornament, anything. No step targets. No exercise goals. You're just going to investigate the neighbourhood for twenty minutes.
• Find somewhere nearby you've somehow never been: Search the area around where you live. Find somewhere you've never visited before that makes you think 'how have I never noticed that?' It could be a tiny museum, park, shop, café, old building, footpath, monument or something completely pointless. Work out where it is, what it is and whether you'd actually go.

Twenty minutes is long enough to properly disappear into something. If one of these sent you down a rabbit hole and you forgot you were doing a twenty-minute challenge, even better.

If you want to keep going, let's find something for thirty minutes.

Got 30 Minutes?

Thirty minutes gives us enough time to disappear down a proper rabbit hole. Pick whatever catches your attention. You don't need to finish it, be good at it or learn anything profound. We're just giving the next half hour somewhere to go.

• Who is this person? This person worked as a doctor and Peace Corps medical officer before becoming the first Black woman to travel into space. That's all we're giving you. You've got 30 minutes. Work out who they are, then find out what they're famous for and three other interesting things about them.
• Six degrees of separation: Connect Marie Curie to Rihanna. Build a chain of real people connecting them. Each person must have a genuine, explainable connection to the next: they worked together, appeared together, are related, collaborated, competed, interviewed one another, played on the same team, appeared in the same production or publicly met. "They're both famous" does not count.
  Hint: Wikipedia hyperlinks are your friend. See how few links you can use.
• Explain it to a five-year-old: People say one way to find out whether you really understand something is to try explaining it simply. Your subject is inflation.
  
  Round 1: Explain it to a five-year-old. You can use stories, examples, drawings or anything else that helps.
  Rule: If you use a word the five-year-old might respond to with "What does that mean?", you need to be able to explain that too.
  
  Okay... how did you do? Now try again.
  
  Round 2: Explain the same subject to an adult who knows absolutely nothing about it.
  
  Round 3: Explain the entire thing in no more than three sentences.
• Ever played bog snorkelling? You've got 30 minutes. Find out what on earth it is, learn how it's played and see if you can give it a go. An online, digital or safely improvised version absolutely counts.
• What's your favourite kind of bread? You've probably got an answer. But why? Spend 30 minutes making the case that yours is objectively the best. We are looking for an unnecessarily strong opinion about something completely harmless.
• Draw someone famous from memory: Pick a famous person you know well. Do not look at a photograph. You've got 30 minutes to draw them entirely from memory: no tracing and no checking a picture halfway through. Artistic ability is absolutely not required. In fact, it might make this less entertaining.
  
  Want to make it interesting? Email your drawing to HRE4U without telling us who you drew. If we correctly guess the person, we'll send you a little prize.
• Build the world's smallest obstacle course: Find something very light: a small piece of paper, a bit of tissue, a cotton wool ball or a feather if you have one. Use mugs, books or other safe everyday objects to make a little tabletop course. Now get your object from start to finish using only your breath. Once an attempt starts, no touching it.
  
  Redesign the course and try again if it was suspiciously easy. Do not use anything unsafe, anything so small it could accidentally be inhaled, or anything that could cause a problem if it moves or falls.
• Tiny movement challenge: Stand by a sturdy surface and gently lift each heel three times. That is the whole challenge. This is not a workout. Only do what feels comfortable and safe, adapt it however you need to, or skip this one entirely if movement is not right for you.
• Do something for you: Not something productive. Not something you "should" be doing. Just something for you. Put out fresh towels. If that does not sound good today, choose your own thing or ignore us completely. It is your half hour.
• Your next mission requires another person: Ask someone what they would name a pub.
  
  Nobody you fancy messaging? Ask us instead. Send the question to us on WhatsApp. We'll play.
  We're not always awake, but we'll answer when we can 😴
• Photo mission: Can you take a photo of something perfectly round? That's the mission. Find it and photograph it. Don't overthink it. If you reckon it counts, it counts.
  
  If you fancy sharing it, tag HRE4U on Facebook or Instagram so we can see it.

That is another half hour accounted for. Finishing was never the important bit; giving the time somewhere to go was enough.

If you'd rather keep going, let's find something for the next 45 minutes.

Got 45 Minutes?

Let's mix things up. We've picked three things for you from the challenges above. Start wherever you like and move onto the next one when you're ready.

The timings are only a rough guide. If something takes less time, more time, or you decide you've had enough of it, that's completely fine. We're just giving the next little while somewhere to go.

1. 5 minute challenge
   Attack the paper pile: grab some post, receipts or paperwork you've been ignoring. Recycle what you don't need and put anything important together somewhere you can deal with it later.
2. 10 minute challenge
   Find your mystery word: Grab the nearest book. Any book. Your page is: 71 Your line is: 9 Your word is: 2 Go to that page, find that line and count along to that word. That is your word. Then do something with it: find out where it came from, use it in a ridiculous sentence, find another word that rhymes with it, find a song or film containing it, or send it to somebody with absolutely no context. If the book does not have enough pages or lines, grab another book or move backwards until you find something that works.
3. 30 minute challenge
   Your next mission requires another person: Ask someone what they would name a pub.
   
   Nobody you fancy messaging? Ask us instead. Send the question to us on WhatsApp. We'll play.
   We're not always awake, but we'll answer when we can 😴

Got a full hour? We've made you another mix.

Got an Hour?

An hour sounds like a long time when you're trying to get through it, so let's break it up. We've picked three completely different things for you.

The timings are only guides. Take longer, finish early or move on whenever you like.

1. 20 minute challenge
   Find the oldest thing that's actually yours: Not the oldest object in the house. Something that belongs to you and has been yours for years. Find your current champion. How long have you had it? Where did it come from? Why have you still got it? Then see if you can find something you've owned even longer.
2. 10 minute challenge
   Make a list of five things you think you should be doing right now. Next to each one, write why it can wait ten minutes. That is it.
3. 30 minute challenge
   Your next mission requires another person: Ask someone what they would name a pub.
   
   Nobody you fancy messaging? Ask us instead. Send the question to us on WhatsApp. We'll play.
   We're not always awake, but we'll answer when we can 😴

You don't need to have achieved anything by the end of the hour. If an hour has passed, this page did its job.