When it comes to meditation, quality is much more important than quantity. People who are new to meditation often use teachers who have been practicing meditation for years and years (and thus can meditate for hours) as their example of how to meditate. As a result, people often try to force themselves to try to meditate for too long. This tends to make their experience with meditation a miserable, unsuccessful experience. Remember that it can be better to do a five-minute quality meditation than an hour of meditation that is accomplished by force and effort.