Alive Time or Dead Time?
The only asset no one can take from you
Life is short. And how we use our time dictates our destiny.
That’s the reminder I needed today from Robert Greene’s The Daily Laws:
“The time that you are alive is the only real possession that you have. Everything else that you have can be taken away from you—your family, your house, your cars, your job. The time that you’re alive is the only thing you truly possess.”
Read that again.
Your time is the only asset that’s actually yours. And yet—how much of it do you actually own?
Most of us are working on other people’s agendas.
Their priorities. Their deadlines. Their dreams.
We tell ourselves it’s necessary. We trade our alive time for a paycheck, security, belonging. Fair enough—we all have bills.
But then we compound the problem. The hours we do control? We give those away too.
Scrolling feeds that exist to harvest our attention. Binge-watching shows we won’t remember next month. Numbing ourselves with distractions designed by brilliant people whose job is to steal our time.
Greene calls this dead time—time that passes but leaves nothing behind. No growth. No creation. No ownership.
Alive time is different.
Alive time is when you work on something that comes from within you—your heart, your curiosity, your unique way of seeing the world.
It’s not about productivity hacks or optimizing every minute. It’s about ownership.
When you create something from your own ideas, you’re not just spending time—you’re investing it in yourself. That blog post, that business idea, that skill you’ve been meaning to develop, that conversation you’ve been avoiding—that’s alive time.
Greene puts it perfectly: “When you do that, that means that time is yours. It’s alive within you. It’s green. It’s growing. You own it and you’re making it happen.”
Freedom isn’t having more time. It’s making your time your own.
The external world will always offer easier options. Distractions are abundant and engineered to be irresistible. Every notification, every autoplay video, every “suggested for you” algorithm—they all want the same thing: your alive time converted to their profit.
Resisting isn’t about willpower. It’s about having something worth protecting your time for.
For me, it’s the creative process of learning and teaching. Each day, I carve out time to explore cutting-edge AI—not because someone assigned it, but because curiosity pulls me there. Then I translate what I discover into lessons that help others learn faster. That’s my alive time: immersing myself in what I don’t yet know, applying it to create value, and growing a business that’s fully my own.
Here’s my challenge for you today:
Look at your calendar—today, this week. How much of it is alive time? Or are you letting meetings, notifications, and distractions steal the hours that could belong to you?
Now think about one goal or priority that truly matters to you. Not someone else’s deadline. Yours.
Three questions:
What will you create? How can you use alive time today to make real progress toward that goal?
What will you stop doing? What dead time activity will you sacrifice to make room for what matters?
When will you protect it? Block one hour this week that belongs to you and your priorities alone.
One hour of alive time. That’s the commitment.
What will yours be? Reply and tell me—I read every response.
And if this resonated, share it with someone who needs the reminder. We all need help protecting our alive time.
-James