"took me a minute" is a perfectly correct and usable phrase in written English. You can use it when you need to express that something has taken a short amount of time to complete. For example: "I figured out the problem - it only took me a minute."
It took me a minute.
Sorry – it took me a minute to think about it.
It took me a minute to decide which boyfriend I wanted to have".
I thought, 'Who stole my footage?' It took me a minute to realize it was CNN".
"It took me a minute to realize what I was seeing," she said.
It took me a minute or two to put it together, and when I did I wasn't happy.
"It took me a minute to twig that she was talking about the Queen".
"It took me a minute, and then I pulled out my plane ticket.
"It took me a minute to swallow the pill," Anderson said.
It took me a minute to realize that it was me, screaming.
"It took me a minute to figure out he wasn't making fun of me," Mr. Dowling said.
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Ha Thuy Vy
MA of Applied Linguistic, Maquarie University, Australia