How many minutes a day should you play brain games?

01Why there’s no magic number

Brain training studies differ widely in how much practice they give people and in what they measure. The ACTIVE trial, for example, gave older adults ten training sessions, which is very different from a few minutes on a phone each morning. No study pins down an ideal number of minutes a day for brain games.

What the research does show is that people get better at the tasks they practice. A large 2016 review led by Daniel Simons found extensive evidence of improvement on trained tasks and little evidence of broad everyday benefits. So the useful question isn’t how many minutes make a difference to your thinking, but how many minutes you’ll enjoy and keep up.

02A practical range: 5 to 15 minutes

Five to fifteen minutes a day is a sensible place to start: short enough to protect on a busy day, long enough to feel like you did something.

The Wits iPhone app asks you to choose 5, 10 or 20 minutes a day when you set up. Each game takes a minute or two, and each lesson about a minute. On the website, a day is Dot Path, Color Clash and Word Code.

03Make it a habit first

In a 2010 study by Phillippa Lally and colleagues at University College London, volunteers each built one new daily eating, drinking or exercise habit. Among those whose data fit the researchers’ model, the median time to reach 95% of their own peak sense of automaticity was 66 days, ranging from 18 to 254. Missing a single day didn’t materially set people back.

That study was about health habits, not games, and it was small. Still, it suggests two things worth knowing: a new routine takes weeks to feel automatic, and one missed day isn’t a reason to quit.

04Spread it out rather than saving it up

A few minutes on most days is easier to keep up than one long session at the weekend, and it gives you something small to look forward to. If you miss a few days, don’t try to make up the time in one sitting; just start again with your usual amount.

05Keep it short and steady

A few ways to make a daily few minutes stick:

• Attach it to something you already do: morning coffee, the bus, or the moment you’d otherwise open a social feed.
• Stop while it’s still fun; ending on a good round can make tomorrow easier.
• Rotate games so no single one gets stale.
• If a day goes wrong, just pick it up the next day.

06When to play more, or less

If you look forward to your games and want more, play more; extra rounds mostly mean more practice at the games you enjoy. If it starts to feel like a chore, cut back to a few minutes rather than stopping. And take breaks as you would with any screen time.

07How to tell your routine is working

You don’t need a test score to know. A routine is working when you play without having to think about it, when you notice yourself getting quicker or more accurate at the games, and when you look forward to the next one. Getting better at the games themselves is the part research reliably supports, so it’s a fair thing to watch.