I HATE 10/0

Having just given 5/5 another try, I have to conclude that it’s monstrously ill-proportioned. You want the time for middlegame complications. You don’t need five seconds a move for mop-up at the end. Whoever devised this abomination has no sense of chess rhythm. If you want to play ten-minute chess with an increment, it should be 8/2 or 10/2 or 10/1 — something like that. And if you want five-minute chess with an increment, make it 5/2 or 5/1. But I fail to see any earthly purpose for 5/5.

Read #20

Lack of time is one thing, but I feel like rapid games ending because of not being able to physically make a move isn’t really in the spirit of it. A bit of increment means time management is still important, but you’re less likely to get dirty flagged “bullet-style” - particularly as even premoves still knock 0.1s off your clock

Increment just transforms a 10 minutes game into something like 12 minutes game where one of players may still get flagged but with additional "circus-style" moves at the very end of the game when the amount of time left is comparable to the increment

15+10, my favorite time control, lasts about 40 minutes. I think playing only 1 game per day is a reasonable idea, and it is what I currently do. I recommend playing 1 quality 15+10 game per day and analyze the game. If you play too many times per day, your quality of play will likely decrease. Additionally, 15+10 is popular, and is likely the most similar to OTB classical on chess.com (quicker, but there really is no widespread slower alternative to 15+10).

Unfortunately these days as a working adult my lunch break is 30mins and that’s often when I play these days. And at the weekend when I DO have the time, because I try not to resign wherever possible I hate the idea of playing out a worse position for ages!

Try to allocate some time outside of work. That may pose its own difficulties, though.

Yeah I do occasionally play on lichess, but I much prefer the user interface on chess.com, it’s where I’ve played 7000ish games so don’t really want to switch to lichess where I’ve played less than 1000, and also peoples’ ratings on lichess are inflated up to like 200 points. I’m not wanting to be a lichess 2100-2200 haha

I personally much prefer lichess because it’s free. At my level lichess is very inflated but at your level it is actually much more even and only inflated by 50-100 points

I've flagged in winning positions, but I've also dirty-flagged opponents in losing positions.

Even when you are down x points of material, in 10|0, you can always pray for a miracle.