I know it seems like a daunting task to define every curl. I try not to think about it. Two things help: The most important is I know my hair takes 2 hours to do, once a week. Once I accept that it's going to take that long, it's not a big deal. I just plan for two hours. I watch a movie or some television shows, drink chai. Try to make it fun. The other thing is I comb a section, then define the section, then move to the next. That way I'm never facing an entire head full of curls to do all at once.

That process takes me about two hours once a week to comb and define. That sounds like a long time, but that's all the time I spend on my hair all week. All the other days during the week, it takes me less than a minute to get my hair ready in the morning, and just the time it takes me to braid it up at night.

So if you are normally taking 20 minutes every morning and/ or night to do your hair using another technique, you end up actually spending way more time when you add up all the time you spend on your hair for the entire week, plus combing and styling, than you do when you define your curls after combing. It's just that the time spent on your hair when you define it is up front so it seems like more, when really, it often isn't. You are just putting in your time up front instead of spreading it out throughout the week.

However, there is a shortcut to defining: you can run your fingers through your hair when it's soaking wet with conditioner in it. You can do it section by section to make it easier for you to get through all your hair. But you don't need to run your fingers through every curl, just sort of run your fingers through all your hair a few times. This will give you definition, but just not great definition.

I've experimented with just running my fingers through my hair versus defining every curl, and I've found that my hair seems to tangle up a bit more in places when I just run my fingers through. So it actually ends up taking me more time the following week to comb out the heavier tangles.