We all have empty time. No matter how busy you think you are…you have it. And how you use it will make a big difference in your life. People always ask me how I get so much done. And to me, it honestly doesn’t feel like anything special. If I had to nail it to one thing, I always said it was because I worked in the margins of my life. I do stuff during the empty time.

About a year ago at PIMDCON, I was able to see the author Ryan Holiday give a fantastic keynote speech. After that, I read his book The Obstacle Is The Way (highly recommend) and I just finished reading another book of his, Ego Is The Enemy.

In that book, he talks about empty time. And I really liked the way he phrased things. Instead of emphasizing “working in the margins of your life,” he asked the question, “Are you making dead time or alive time?”

So, are you making dead time or alive time?

It’s a sobering question to ask and answer that requires a good deal of self reflection. But the promise is this. Think about your daily life. How are you spending your empty time? No matter how much or how little it is.

Are you using that time to grow? Or are you using that time idly and stagnantly?

I don’t think that anyone makes 100% of their empty time into alive time. But how about even 50%? Or 25%?

The reason this becomes so important is that our growth is measured in infinitesimally small units. We all think that some big act is going to change our lives. But that is not the way that things work. It’s what we do behind the scenes, when no one else is looking, when no one else care, that change occurs and that we grow.

When you really think about your day, you probably (like me) spend so much of it on what is necessary. The time we have to truly work on ourselves is limited.

And it’s up to us to spend it well, making it alive time and minimizing the dead time.

No, this is not about productivity

And I want to make this part really clear. It is easy to read this and think that I mean we should always be doing something objectively productive. But that is not what I mean at all.

I’m not saying to always start some new project in the minutes you have to yourself. Rest and relaxation are important.

The problem is that we often don’t do that. How many times have you needed a moment to recharge and, instead of practicing mindfulness or truly realizing, you scroll social media or ruminate in your head about some minute detail or the past or future, coming out of it 15 minutes later feeling somehow more stressed? I know that I do it all the time.

Well, the former is alive time and the latter is dead time.

Alive time need not be all about efficiency and human output. It is about growing you – attending to the aspects of yourself that need attention and nurturing at any given moment.

In the end, it comes down to habits

The reason that dead time is so tricky is that it tends to be our default setting. It’s the same reason it’s so easy to focus on the urgent instead of the important. When we have a moment, our brain can make us feel like we are doing something even when we are just stuck in idle.

The way to hijack this pathway is to build new healthier habits. When the cue hits (in this case, the cue is our empty time), we have to build in new actions that are tied to the ultimate reward of self-growth. Next time you have 20 minutes, try to read a book instead of scroll social media. When you find yourself idle, use that time to progress on a project that has been stressing you out…even if you only just get started. Have some downtime, try exercising or spending time with your family instead of ruminating.

It takes about 66 days to make a new habit. So just keep doing it in the beginning. And before you know it, your day will be filled with alive time and I promise you will see amazing growth!

Here are some ways you can even improve your financial well-being during your empty time:

• 7 Simple Habits That Will Make You Financially Successful
• The 10 Commandments of Physician FIRE
• Winning at Finance is the Same as Winning in Tennis
• Help! I’m a High Income Physician But Scared to Invest

What do you think? Is your empty time alive or dead? Why is dead time so tempting? How can we build better habits to make our empty time more alive? Let me know in the comments below!