The phrase “Time Alive vs. Time Dead” it was coined by popular author Robert Green and has been popularized by blogger and writer Ryan Holiday.

“Time-out” it is defined as time spent waiting passively killing time until better times come.

Where, “Live Time” it is time spent consciously and constructively learning, growing, developing, and growing.

2020 has been a tough year. Covid has had an impact on all of our lives.

here is a question for you

“When you can’t work because you don’t have a job, when you feel stuck and see no way out of this situation, when you don’t even know if there is an end to the tunnel, what do you do with your time? ?”

I found myself facing this question at the end of March 2020 when my business dried up, emails and calls slowed to a trickle and then stopped, my travel plans were dashed and I found myself with nothing to do, no where to go. go, with nothing to look for. ahead, and very little hope for the future.

It became very clear that I could sit around moping around and fill this time with distractions to block out my irritation and frustration, or maybe I could turn this downtime into something constructive.

This feels like a prison to me.

I remember years ago as a child wondering how I would manage if I were ever incarcerated at some point in my future life. I always thought that if I was unlucky enough to have this happen to me, I would use the time, if possible, to study, read and write.

Well, I don’t know about you, but this feels like a prison to me…

I thought deeply about all this and it occurred to me that I needed a project, something constructive to do with my time, something that would be good for me and hopefully useful for some other people as well. So I launched into writing a series of 30 articles for my website, based on personal reflections and ideas that I wrote at a rate of about 3 per week for a couple of months.

Since then, I’ve decided to expand the project and tackle a variety of topics that I had been avoiding tackling because they were “too hard” or would take too long. Well guess what, now I have the time, all the time in the world, and have researched and produced a wider range of material on thinking skills, a critical appraisal of the law of attraction, I have also attempted to write about consciousness.

Instead of treating this as a chore and something that would supposedly be good for my soul, but otherwise routine (what, frankly, writing can be), to my surprise I am finding this process educational and personally helpful, and naturally I hope that visitors to this site are finding something useful in these articles as well.

Arrive and the bank of karma

But aside from the introspection of researching and writing, I am a social animal and have been desperately missing personal contact and connection during this extended period of lockdown.

I have come across a constructive way to channel my frustrations into a productive outlet. Several friends, family, and business associates have contacted me for advice or input, and I spend a lot of time mentoring business, reviewing business proposals, and helping people write resumes.

Sure, I would have tried to help in these areas in the past, but now, having the time to do so, I treat each and every one of these situations as if it were a well-paid consulting job and give it my best attention. .

I see this as an opportunity to “put a deposit in the karma bank”.

exercise control

In difficult times like these, we can choose to back down and feel impatient, resentful, or angry.

Or we can exercise control over our use of this time by finding a way to solve a problem, reach a goal, or help someone else with these things.

“Downtime is revived when we use it as an opportunity to do what we’ve needed to do for a long time.”

Read more: Alive Time Vs. Dead Time