Forty minutes at the piano is certainly more investment than no practice at all, but the total does not tell us what was learned. In the same ten minutes, one person may repeat comfortable material. Another may locate an unstable rhythmic bar, identify the cause, change tempo and test whether it can now be played correctly several times. The duration is identical; the outcome is not.
A study of pianists by Duke, Simmons and Cash found that later retention was related to features such as the proportion of complete trials played correctly and the number of incorrect trials during practice. Strategy explained the outcome better than duration. Time measures exposure to a task; it does not show whether an error was noticed or whether a briefly successful action can be reproduced after a rest.
A more useful approach is to define one audible problem before beginning, play the passage once at the end, then check it again after an interval. Today's result may be only four bars with steadier rhythm or one hand-position change that no longer interrupts the beat. That small change is closer to the purpose of practice than merely completing forty minutes.
<a href="https://apps.apple.com/us/app/scoreflow/id6796205656">ScoreFlow</a> can help track practice time and activity. Those figures are useful for seeing continuity, but they still need to be considered alongside what the session actually resolved.
Sources:
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0022429408328851
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