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" 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. "
Tom Hodgkinson
Working
Week
Patterns
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" To me there is no more depressing sight than a five-year-old staring at a screen, unsmiling, mouse in hand. Besides whatever dreadful things this prolonged exposure to screens is doing to their brains, computer games tend to be solitary affairs, and produce little laughter. "
Tom Hodgkinson
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" All of our technology is completely unnecessary to a happy life. "
Tom Hodgkinson
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" When stuck years ago in a job I hated, my only friend was the public bench. As the tedious mornings dragged on, how I would long for the lunch hour, when I would be able to escape the torture of the office and stroll over to the churchyard and into the comforting wooden embrace of one of its benches. "
Tom Hodgkinson
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" 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. "
Tom Hodgkinson
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" Surely, anyway, a working day of eight or nine hours which is not split by a nap is simply too much for a human being to take, day in, day out, and particularly so in hot weather. "
Tom Hodgkinson
Weather
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" When walking, you see things that you miss in a motor car or on the train. You give your mind space to ponder. "
Tom Hodgkinson
You
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Car
" I've never understood activity holidays since we seem to have far too much activity in our daily lives as it is. Find a culture where loafing is the order of the day and where they don't understand our need to be constantly doing things. Find somewhere you can have a hammock holiday. "
Tom Hodgkinson
Daily
Holiday
Day
" You can become very serious as a parent. That's got to be fought against. "
Tom Hodgkinson
You
Against
Serious
" Truly, the bench is a boon to idlers. Whoever first came up with the idea is a genius: free public resting places where you can take time out from the bustle and brouhaha of the city, and simply sit and watch and reflect. "
Tom Hodgkinson
You
Time
Free
" These days we seem more bound to our bosses than ever before. We even identify our own selves with the jobs we do: 'What do you do?' is the first question we ask each other at parties, as if a job title could express a fundamental truth about our personality. "
Tom Hodgkinson
You
Truth
Job
" I suddenly realised, hey, I'm not a lazy idiot, I'm an idler! It's something to aspire to, it's part of the creative process! That's fantastic! "
Tom Hodgkinson
Process
Aspire
Creative
" The siesta provides a delightful detour from the working day and it also has a practical value as far as productivity is concerned. Winston Churchill had a good long siesta every day during the Second World War, and he said it was the thing that enabled him to cope with the pressure. "
Tom Hodgkinson
Pressure
Good
Day
" The terrible thing about the Internet and Amazon is that they take the magic and happy chaos out of book shopping. The Internet might give you what you want, but it won't give you what you need. "
Tom Hodgkinson
Happy
Shopping
Chaos
" I've often said that far more sensible than a 'make poverty history' campaign would be a 'make wealth history' campaign. It is, after all, the wealthy people who do all the damage. The less money you earn, the fewer resources you use up. "
Tom Hodgkinson
You
Money
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" Computers tend to separate us from each other - Mum's on the laptop, Dad's on the iPad, teenagers are on Facebook, toddlers are on the DS, and so on. "
Tom Hodgkinson
iPad
Teenagers
Us
" Management gurus in general are, I think, best avoided. All too often they reduce your working life to a list of rules to be followed. Targets are aimed at. Goals kicked at. You then break the rules or forget them and, hey presto, you start beating yourself up. "
Tom Hodgkinson
Life
Yourself
Best
" Once you explore life outside of work, it becomes addictive. The less you work, the less you want to work. At first, the odd afternoon off seems like a fantastic luxury. Before long, you are opting for a four-day week. Then a four-day week becomes an intolerable demand on your time, so you find a way of moving to a three-day week. "
Tom Hodgkinson
Time
Work
Moving
" 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. "
Tom Hodgkinson
Boredom
Life
Morals
" In both word and deed, one of the greatest idlers of all time was John Lennon. In his songs we see repeated defences of simply lying around doing nothing. "
Tom Hodgkinson
See
Time
Word
" Whether you live in the city or in the country, creating time for a leisurely ramble is an easy thing to do. "
Tom Hodgkinson
Time
You
Easy
" 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. "
Tom Hodgkinson
Process
You
Creative
" I've given up email. Well, almost. At the weekend I set up one of those auto-reply messages, informing my correspondents that I would no longer be checking my emails, and that instead they might like to call or write, as we used to in the olden days. "
Tom Hodgkinson
Days
Email
Like
" Meetings, clearly, can take place anywhere, and wouldn't it be nice to see your coworkers lounging on the grass with their shoes off? "
Tom Hodgkinson
Shoes
Grass
Meetings
" We can live frugally. The less you work, the less you spend and the more time you have for loafing about. But when I put forward this simple notion, I was greeted with a volley of resentment. "
Tom Hodgkinson
You
Forward
Live
" Idleness allows you to turn a situation from boredom to pleasure. "
Tom Hodgkinson
Turn
Boredom
Pleasure
" 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. "
Tom Hodgkinson
Thought
Art
Child
" 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. "
Tom Hodgkinson
Boy
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World
" Long weekends at festivals, short weeks at home, all summer long: now that is surely preferable to the immense cost and headache of the nuclear family holiday in the sun? "
Tom Hodgkinson
Sun
Long
Home
" One aspect of fast London life I have never understood, for example, is the custom of the gym. Why do people go to gyms? "
Tom Hodgkinson
Life
Why
People
" The world's richest half billion people - that's about seven per cent of the global population - are responsible for fifty per cent of the world's emissions. "
Tom Hodgkinson
Half
World
Responsible