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" Deleting 200 spams a day is a drag. And I was checking my email constantly, rather than getting on with my real work, which is reading and writing. Email was becoming a distraction, a burden rather than a liberation. "

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" When we are busy at work and busy at home, an hour's walking every day becomes a real luxury. If done alone, the walk injects a period of meditation into the day, and if done in company, it allows space for some really good conversation. "

Tom Hodgkinson

Day

Home

Good

" It takes a while to master the art of hammock-lounging. At first I could only manage five minutes or so before I thought I ought to get out and go and help a child learn how to swim or something. But after observing the Mexicans' capability for staring into space for hours on end, I decided to put in some proper practice. "

" One of the least arduous but most productive of gardening jobs, the magic of deadheading never fails to delight me. It was a revelation when the principle was explained to me: that flowers are the attempt by the plant to reproduce itself. So if you cut the heads off before the flower turns into seeds, the plant will continue to flower. "

" The reason laziness is rarely pushed as a lifestyle option is down to one simple reason: money. There are fortunes to be made out of active lifestyles. Gyms charge fees. But no one is going to make money out of sleep. It is free. "

" If your work is done on the phone, then surely you can set up some kind of wireless system. If your work involves reading or writing reports, then this too could be done outside. "

" You can become very serious as a parent. That's got to be fought against. "

" Alongside my 'no email' policy, I resolve to make better use of the wonderful Royal Mail, and send letters and postcards to people. There is a huge pleasure in writing a letter, putting it in an envelope and sticking the stamp on it. And huge pleasure in receiving real letters, too. "

" It's pretty obvious that Western lifestyles which rely on gigantic amounts of electricity use up far more resources than a subsistence-based life. A little more poverty would be a good thing. "

" Laziness works. And the simple way to incorporate its health benefits into your life is simply to take a nap. "

" I love the 19th-century idea of the flaneur, the poet wandering through the streets. "

" Beauty, pleasure, freedom and plenty of sleep: these are the hallmarks of a successful idler's break. Travel should not be hard work. "

" Indolence, of course, is an absolutely crucial part of the creative process: you do not find poets sitting in rows in cavernous word factories, staring at screens. They are rather to be found lolling on the sofa or strolling through the groves, nursing their melancholic temperaments and losing themselves in extended reveries. "

" My hope is that flexible working and varying shift patterns will give workers a taste for idling and that they will gradually demand greater reductions in the length of the working week. "

" My idea of childcare at festivals is to sit at a trestle table with an ale while the kids run around and make up their own games. "

" Whether you live in the city or in the country, creating time for a leisurely ramble is an easy thing to do. "

" Of all the depressing abuses of language in business, there is none that gets me so incensed as the rampant overuse of the word 'passionate' in company slogans, marketing blurbs, mission statements and on the sides of vans. "

Tom Hodgkinson

Mission

Language

" All of our technology is completely unnecessary to a happy life. "

" Am I the only person in the world who is shocked and amazed at the ongoing flattery of uebergeek Mark Zuckerberg? "

" I could happily lean on a gate all the livelong day, chatting to passers-by about the wind and the rain. I do a lot of gate-leaning while I am supposed to be gardening; instead of hoeing, I lean on the gate, stare at the vegetable beds and ponder. "

" Doing something you enjoy at times of your own choosing and making a living from it: now tell me, is that work? "

" Punk was a protest against work and against boredom. It was a sign of life, a rant, a scream, a rejection of bourgeois morals. But have things improved since then? Arguably, they've got worse. "

" Being lazy does not mean that you do not create. In fact, lying around doing nothing is an important, nay crucial, part of the creative process. It is meaningless bustle that actually gets in the way of productivity. All we are really saying is, give peace a chance. "

" Meetings, clearly, can take place anywhere, and wouldn't it be nice to see your coworkers lounging on the grass with their shoes off? "

" Festivals are fun for kids, fun for parents and offer a welcome break from the stresses of the nuclear family. The sheer quantities of people make life easier: loads of adults for the adults to talk to and loads of kids for the kids to play with. "

" What seems extraordinary is that the richest countries in the world, in terms of economic output, are the ones where we work hardest. "

" Facebook is not ideologically neutral. In fact, it emerges from a very particular world view which we can trace back to Hobbes. I discovered this by examining the profile of Zuckerberg's fellow board members who, unlike him, are a very interesting bunch and, I suspect, the real power behind the poster boy. "

" I originally welcomed the mobile phone, as it seemed to me that it would enable you to work from anywhere. On the mobile, who was to know if you were sitting on the branch of a tree or sitting in an office? But it instead had the opposite effect: instead of freeing us from the office, it allowed the office to take away our freedom. "

Tom Hodgkinson

Work

Tree

" The phrase 'work/life balance' encapsulates a depressing outlook. "

" Bosses should sanction the nap rather than expect workers to power on all day without repose. They might even find that workers' happiness - or what management types refer to as 'employee satisfaction results' - might improve. "

" Faffing is completely harmless, whereas its opposite - dynamic, purposeful activity - is often very harmful. Faffers do not tend to kill people or make them work 12-hour days or sell them shoddy merchandise or lend them vast sums of money that they cannot pay back. "