“The worst thing in life you can have, is a job that you hate, that you have no energy in, that you’re not creative with and you’re not thinking of the future. To me, might as well be dead.”
—Robert Greene
According to Robert Greene, there are two different types of time in our lives: alive time, during which people are actively acting and learning, and dead time, during which people are passively waiting. This option is presented by every failure, every moment, or circumstance that we did not consciously choose or have any control over: Alive time. Dead time.
Robert is very knowledgeable about both alive and dead time. Although most people think of him as a highly successful and productive author of incredible books, they are unaware of the 20 years he spent in obscurity, working 80 or so different jobs, the majority of which he detested, and being at the mercy of terrible bosses.
As Robert Greene said, “The worst thing in life you can have, is a job that you hate, that you have no energy in, that you’re not creative with and you’re not thinking of the future. To me, might as well be dead.”
If you don't enjoy your job, this does not imply that you should quit right away. Robert's writing was significantly influenced by what he did during those years. In those pointless jobs, he wasn't dead; he was alive, learning about, studying, and taking note of the forces he would later describe in his books 48 Laws of Power, The Art of Seduction, Mastery, and The Laws of Human Nature.
Is this going to be an alive time or a dead time? is a question life asks us repeatedly. Lengthy commute, will we listen to an audiobook or just drift off to sleep? A n untimely flight. Do we want to energize ourselves with coffee and stuff a croissant in our faces, or are we going to walk around the terminal and log a few miles? That's up to us.
We occasionally have to do things that we'd rather not do in order to get where we're going or where we want to be. Our first jobs frequently "introduce us to the broom" when we are just starting out, as Andrew Carnegie once said.
Years of low-paying work would be a recipe for exhaustion for the majority of us. In actuality, Robert's perspective of the world was growing at every moment during those years, good or bad. The insane bosses. Rejections. Power actions. Relationships. These all evolved into the revelations found in his books that we adore. It was all written down.
We never have enough time to focus on the opportunities that are right in front of us because we are constantly preoccupied with thoughts of the future. especially when they appear to be burdens rather than opportunities. We believe that rather than creating the future, it already exists.
The type of time you are experiencing is not determined by your environment or circumstances, which is important. Dead Time is not something you have to go through; your attitude and energy at the time determine how you proceed.
The main idea is that each of us has control over how we perceive time. We can either let time happen to us or we can control it. The decision is yours, so make it: Will you spend the day alive or dead?