REDISTRIBUTING OUR 1440 MOMENTS: DEAD TIME VERSUS ALIVE TIME
We have 1440 minutes in a 24 hour day.
Each minute provides us with an opportunity to make a conscious choice - about how we show up and about how we spend our time.
These days, for most of us, our 1440 minutes look a bit different than they did just a few months ago.
There’s been a lot of talk about productivity versus Netflix and Chill; getting stuff done versus trying to work during a pandemic; cleaning out closets versus taking a nap and practicing self care; making home school schedules versus turning on a movie and calling it a day; whether we should be doing more to make use of this time, or doing less to take advantage of the slowness and the pause.
While there’s wisdom to be found on all sides of these discussions, we might be better served by focusing on being intentional with how we’re spending our minutes - versus being productive and measuring how much we achieve or get done.
With this approach, we can think about not only how we’re spending our time but also how we’re distributing our energy accordingly.
We could think of this intentionality as a way to create what Robert Green (frequently shared via Ryan Holiday) calls “alive time” versus “dead time.”
According to this philosophy, there are two types of time: Dead time—where we are passive and biding and Alive time—where we are learning and acting and leveraging every second toward our intended future.
The questions, along these lines, that we might invite in include:
How might we turn “dead time” into “alive time?”
What is possible now that wasn’t possible before?
How might we redistribute not only our time, but also our energy accordingly?
Ryan invites us to do the following in his recent book, Ego is the Enemy:
"Think of what you have been putting off. Issues you declined to deal with. Systemic problems that felt too overwhelming to address. Dead time is revived when we use it as an opportunity to do what we've long needed to do.
As they say, this moment is not your life. But it is a moment in your life. How will you use it?"
These are moments in our lives, indeed.
How do we feel called to use them?
And how can we make the best use of our 1440 minutes these days not by trying to do more or less, but by engaging intentionally and thoughtfully in the moments that we have?
A few questions to ponder; thank you as always for reading.
Related Reading:
Alive Time versus Dead Time: Which Are You In? By Ryan Holiday, Thought Catalogue
Ego is the Enemy by Ryan Holiday
The Power of Full Engagement by Jim Loehr and Tony Schwartz
