Hand-Cutting Chips

Hand-cutting chips takes about 5 minutes. Peel, halve, slice into sticks, toss with a bit of oil. Done.

Five minutes is nothing — yet most people reach for the frozen bag. Five seconds: open and dump into basket or tray. I get it. I’ve done it too.

But somewhere along the way, I started cutting my own. They taste better. And something else happened.

The potatoes we always had lying around — slightly forgotten, sprouting eyes — suddenly had a purpose. Less waste. I started caring where they came from and what variety they were (Maris Piper ftw). Local ones taste different, and it Scotland we’re spoilt with choice. Then I was at the farmers’ market on a Saturday, which wasn’t the plan.

The plan was just: peel, cut, oil.

That’s how it works. The 5 minutes don’t stay 5 minutes. It ripples.

You can say, “well, it only takes you 5 minutes because you’ve done it a hundred times.” True. But you have to start somewhere. And it doesn’t have to be potatoes.

The 10 minutes tidying a corner of the house. What starts as a chore becomes a habit. You notice what you actually use. You let go of stuff that doesn’t serve you anymore.

The few minutes stretching in the morning. Nothing at first, but then your body starts asking for it. Then you’re curious what else it can do.

The time you take to actually listen to your partner, your kids. Not half-listening while scrolling. Present. It’s minutes, not hours. But they notice. You notice.

The pause before replying to a difficult message. Five minutes to think instead of react. The conversation that could’ve gone sideways — doesn’t.

None of this is a productivity hack. It’s closer to the opposite.

Convenience promises ease. And it delivers exactly that, technically. But ease isn’t fullness. The frozen chips are fine. They’re just… fine.

These small pockets of friction — the ones we’re trained to skip, promised we don’t need — turn out to be where presence lives. Where you’re actually in the thing, not just getting through it.

The 5 minutes I spend now used to be longer. You get faster. That’s not the point, but it’s a nice side effect.

The point is: you start somewhere. And you don’t know where it leads.

Maybe it stays at 5 minutes. Fine. But sometimes it grows. Ten, fifteen minutes. An hour of something that makes you feel more connected. To the food, the space, your own body, the people around you.

A fuller life. And yes, a fuller stomach too — but that’s beside the point.

I know how odd this sounds. A blog post about cutting potatoes. But the thing is: those 5 minutes can change your life. In little ways. Ways that ripple outward.

There’s probably a version of this in your life. Some small friction you’ve been avoiding because the frictionless option exists. Some door you haven’t opened yet.

Start with the potatoes. Or don’t. Start anywhere.