My dog, SnowBelle, has a move.

I’ll be sitting at my desk working, usually staring at one of the two monitors in front of me, when she wanders into the office and pushes her nose underneath my hand. It’s not subtle. Sometimes I get a paw instead. Other times she doesn’t ask for anything at all — she just comes in, lies down next to me, and apparently decides that if I’m going to spend the day in there, she might as well keep me company.

She’s never been much of a whiner. She doesn’t need to be. I know what she wants.

Lately, it feels like she’s been making that trip into my office a lot. Work has been consuming a significant portion of my life as I wind down several projects at the same time — and when I say work, I don’t mean eight to five. There have been days that stretch considerably longer than that. I knew this stretch was coming, and I’m not particularly interested in complaining about being busy. Clients have their deadlines. These are projects I agreed to and commitments I made. That’s on me.

But I’ve noticed something. When most of a day is already spoken for, it’s remarkably easy to surrender the rest of it too.

I’ll finish this first. I’ll take a break after this meeting. I’ll go outside when I get through these emails. The problem with a busy day is that the stopping point has an annoying habit of moving. There’s always one more thing. And if I’m not paying attention, I’ll look up and realize I’ve spent the entire day working while everything else that makes up my life has been waiting patiently around the edges.

Sometimes literally. Usually with four legs.

So I’ve been trying something. When work is genuinely consuming most of the day, I’ve been trying to actually claim the parts that remain instead of letting them disappear into the pull of one more thing. And I mean something specific — not a vague intention to take better breaks or be more present. I mean ten minutes. Deliberately chosen. Actually used.

Ten minutes outside. Ten minutes with a cup of coffee I’m not drinking while also answering an email. Ten minutes on the phone with someone I keep meaning to call. Ten minutes listening to a song and actually listening to it instead of letting it play in the background while I do something else.

Here’s the thing I keep coming back to… those ten minutes don’t solve anything. The work is still there. The deadlines haven’t moved. Whatever I was doing before I stopped is waiting for me when I sit back down. The only thing that changed is what I did with ten minutes.

And that turns out to matter more than it sounds like it should.

I’ve been writing a lot lately about living intentionally, about participating in life instead of just moving through it. But there’s a trap hiding inside that idea that I want to name, because I think it’s easy to fall into. It’s easy to imagine intentional living as something we do when we have enough time for it. When work settles down. When the deadline passes. When the calendar finally opens up. Then we’ll take the walk. Then we’ll call the friend. Then we’ll sit outside and actually enjoy the morning.

But what if the calendar doesn’t open up? What if life doesn’t clear the afternoon?

I don’t think the answer is to abandon our responsibilities every time we’d rather be somewhere else. But I do think there’s something worth questioning in the habit of dismissing whatever time remains in a busy day just because it doesn’t seem like enough to matter. Ten minutes feels small. It is small. But small and meaningless aren’t the same thing, and I think we confuse them more than we realize.

Being present applies to work too, by the way. If I’m going to spend hours on something, I’d rather actually be engaged with it than spend half that time wishing I were somewhere else. But when I decide that these ten minutes belong to something other than the screen in front of me, I want to actually be there for them. Not mentally organizing what I’ll do the second they’re over. Not half-present while checking something on my phone. Just here, in the ten minutes I said I was going to take.

We can make presence sound like one more thing to master. Another habit to build, another area to improve. I don’t need that right now. I just need ten minutes.

Maybe you do too.

Your Turn

So here’s what I’d actually suggest for this week — don’t wait to find ten minutes. Busy days are remarkably good at making sure there aren’t any left over. Claim them. And when you do, don’t make them productive. Sit outside. Drink your coffee without doing something else at the same time. Call someone. Stare out a window. Whatever sounds good.

Just be where you decided to be. Then go back to whatever needs you.

SnowBelle will probably wander back into my office again tomorrow, nose first, looking for a few minutes of my attention. Some days she’ll get a quick scratch and I’ll turn back to the screen. But sometimes I’m going to stop. Because those ten minutes aren’t taking me away from my life. They’re just a reminder that I’m still in it.