10:10 on the clock
10:10 is the time on almost every watch in an advertisement, chosen because the hands frame the logo and look like a smile. Catching it on your own clock is a nudge to compare a posed face with a real one.
What it may mean
Look at nearly any watch in an ad and the hands sit at ten past ten, raised like arms or the corners of a smile. The pose is chosen, not caught. That makes 10:10 on your own clock a neat question about performance. Where in your life are you holding a smile for the camera, whether at work, online or at family dinners? And where can you let your face do what it actually does? Some posing is kindness; nobody needs every bad mood. But a smile held too long gets tiring. Other readings of 10:10 start from numerology; this one starts from the advertising fact. Who gets to see your unposed face?
Depending on how you saw it
On a watch in a store window
Every watch on display reads 10:10, a whole case of identical smiles. Stores present things from their best angle. What is your own best angle, and when do you drop it?
On a wall clock at work
Catching 10:10 on the office clock mid-morning can come with an odd sense of being watched by a happy face. How much of your workday goes into looking fine rather than being fine?
While scrolling through photos
Photos online are the ten-past-ten of daily life: arranged, lit, smiling. Seeing 10:10 while you scroll can make that obvious. Which post of yours would you rewrite if you were being fully honest?
Why it happens in nature
Watchmakers and advertisers set the hands to 10:10 because the pose is symmetrical and leaves the brand name under the 12 in view. A 2017 study in Frontiers in Psychology found that people rated 10:10 as resembling a smiling face and felt more pleasure looking at watches set that way.
What folk beliefs say
Numerology (Cheiro)
Cheiro's Book of Numbers gives ten the symbol of the Wheel of Fortune, a number of honor, faith and self-confidence, and of rise and fall.
Source: Cheiro (Louis Hamon), Cheiro's Book of Numbers (undated (7th impression, 1929 or later)), p. 80. View the page
To reflect on
Who in your life gets to see your face when it is not posing?