Being in bench is the time to learn.

People in IT industry sometimes may run out of projects and will eventually be in a virtual project called "The Bench". I have been in bench for the past few months.
At first i was a bit worried about my career, but then I just thought being in bench just means I cannot be billed for a client at present. That's only for a small period of time. We have to be hopeful that we will be assigned to a project in the coming days.
And that doesn't mean that you can just relax, have coffee , eat your lunch and go home. The time you are given here is the time to learn new things which you might not even think of while working in a project. It need not be technical, you can learn about new tools being used by the developers, you can try to followup the marketing strategies of companies, you can have a peep into a different domain of work.
Time, the fourth dimension is always precious in life.