What potmeter is good to use? 10k ohms?
That would be a good start. All you need is for the center pin to go from 0 to 5v and the current to not be so high as to heat things up.
10K is good because when connected across 5V you get 0.5mA flowing down it. This is a good compromise between wasting current and not having so little current that noise can get in to the analogue input. Although strictly that last point is to do with the impedance that the input pin sees.
So there is a ton of theory but simply yes it's good. A lot of electronics is like that, there are rules of thumb but they all have reasons. 