Fifteen Minutes I Don’t Have
Work, surrender, and choosing what matters
Most of us think of work as a job —
the thing that drains us so we can afford to live the rest of our lives.
But that definition misses something fundamental.
Work isn’t what you think it is.
Work is the act of surrendering control.
Whenever we give up ownership of our time — our preferences, our moment-to-moment desires — to do something that matters, that’s work.
It might look like effort, but underneath, it’s the practice of giving ourselves to something beyond ourselves.
The Back-Exercise Confession
I’ll admit something — I don’t always do my back exercises.
It’s only fifteen minutes a day.
I know how much better I’ll feel afterward.
I have the video bookmarked. I know exactly where it is. All I have to do is press play and follow along.
But on weeknights when I leave for work at 7 a.m. and get home near 6 p.m., those minutes vanish into dinners, homework help, dishes, bedtime, and sometimes — just silence because my brain is done.
Even on weekends, I’ll reach the end of the day and realize: I didn’t do it again.
Fifteen minutes of back exercises somehow lost to the noble project of “reorganizing” our kitchen drawers — pulling everything out, vacuuming the crumbs, rearranging the utensils as if this time I’ll unlock the perfect configuration of spatulas and spoons. As if there’s a Platonic ideal of drawer organization that will finally bring peace to our household.
There isn’t.
But I’ll spend forty minutes trying to find it anyway.
Or worse: I’ll read another financial article about “how to find more time,” while… not doing the thing I actually meant to make time for. The irony is not lost on me. It just doesn’t stop me.
It’s not that I avoided the work — I just made different trade-offs.
Some I’m proud of: reading with my daughter, talking with my partner, writing these words.
Others reveal imbalance — moments where the urgent crowded out the meaningful, where I mistook motion for progress. Where I chose the illusion of control (perfectly organized spatulas!) over the actual work my body was asking me to do.
That’s life.
A rhythm of surrender and re-surrender.
And here’s the thing: the back exercises are work.
Not because they’re hard (they’re not — literally just follow a video for fifteen minutes).
But because they require me to surrender control of those fifteen minutes.
To stop optimizing.
To stop planning.
To just... press play and move.
Planning vs. Participating
Planning is intoxicating.
It feels like control.
We make lists, color-code schedules, design the “perfect” system that will finally balance everything — work, health, family, creativity.
I am guilty of this. I’ve reorganized my task management system more times than I can count. I’ll use my phone’s to-do list for a while, convince myself a different app is the answer, then inevitably return to what actually works: a paper list where I can scratch things off with a pencil.
And when I finish everything? I take that completed list and impale it on one of those restaurant receipt spikes — the kind that used to live next to cash registers. It’s completely unnecessary and deeply satisfying. Both symbolic of finishing and literal proof that I conquered the day.
But even that system eventually needs reorganizing too, apparently.
The real work begins when we stop managing life and start living it.
When I take the walk instead of planning the route.
When I write the paragraph instead of reorganizing my outline for the third time this week.
When I stretch my back for fifteen minutes instead of reading one more article about core strength.
That’s the quiet truth:
participation beats perfection every time.
The Evolution of Work
In my twenties, exercise didn’t feel like work at all.
I got it by accident — walking across campus, biking with friends, pickup basketball.
My back didn’t hurt.
My knees didn’t complain.
I could cook a box of pasta, open a can of black beans and a can of salsa, mix it all together and feel like a chef. It was easy enough to make but complex enough to look like I knew what I was doing. I could eat that at midnight and wake up ready for anything.
Now, maintaining that same body is deliberate.
What was once effortless is now intentional.
Work evolves because we evolve.
The things that once came freely now require commitment.
The things we once resisted sometimes become the ones that save us.
This is true of back exercises.
It’s true of relationships.
It’s true of money.
Work changes shape as we do — but the surrender never disappears.
Money, Trade-Offs, and the Freedom to Choose
This is where financial independence often gets misunderstood.
Many people believe that once they reach it, the hard work will vanish —
that freedom means doing only what you want, all the time.
But that’s not freedom.
That’s isolation.
Doing exactly what you want, every moment, is its own kind of cage. Ask anyone who’s spent three months unemployed refreshing social media: unlimited free time without purpose is its own special kind of hell.
Money doesn’t erase work — it reshapes the trade-offs.
It gives you room to choose which hard things are worth your energy.
Money protects time not by eliminating the difficult parts of life,
but by widening your options —
by letting you choose the work that aligns with your values.
You still surrender control.
You still work.
You still have to choose between the back exercises and the kitchen drawers.
But now you decide what you’ll surrender to — your child, your art, your health, your rest.
You get to choose which fifteen-minute increments matter most.
That’s the real gift: not the absence of hard choices, but the presence of meaningful ones.
The Cadence of Surrender
If work is surrender, then freedom isn’t escape — it’s participation.
The practice is simple, but never easy:
show up, give what you have, and begin again tomorrow.
The system is that there is no system.
Only rhythm.
Only now.
Time is your most precious resource.
Money is just the practice that protects it.
Tonight, I might reorganize the silverware drawer again.
Or I might finally press play on that video.
Or I might sit on the couch with my daughter and hear her try to explain what “67” means for the sixth or seventh time. (Sorry, sweetheart.)
All of it is work.
All of it is surrender.
All of it is the practice of choosing what matters — even in the fifteen minutes I don’t have.
— Cadence of Cash
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Cadence of Cash explores how time, work, and wealth intertwine — blending finance, music, and mindfulness to help you design a life that feels like your own rhythm.