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" 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
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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
Real
Royal
People
" 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
" 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
Me
Work
Tree
" 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
" What seems extraordinary is that the richest countries in the world, in terms of economic output, are the ones where we work hardest. "
Tom Hodgkinson
Economic
World
Work
" 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
" 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
Power
World
" 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. "
Tom Hodgkinson
Writing
Day
Reading
" 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
" The phrase 'work/life balance' encapsulates a depressing outlook. "
Tom Hodgkinson
Phrase
Balance
Depressing
" If we are to make life into a pleasure rather than a struggle, then I would suggest that we have to start with our own mental attitudes. "
Tom Hodgkinson
Struggle
Life
Own
" 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
" 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
" 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
Nap
Human
" We no longer sing and dance. We don't know how to. Instead, we watch other people sing and dance on the television screen. Christmas, which was once a festival of active enjoyment, has turned into a binge of purely passive pleasures. "
Tom Hodgkinson
People
Christmas
Dance
" Working is bad enough in the winter, but in the summer it can become completely intolerable. Stuck in airless offices, every fibre of our being seems to cry out for freedom. We're reminded of being stuck in double maths while the birds sing outside. "
Tom Hodgkinson
Enough
Birds
Winter
" 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
More
Me
Laughter
" Beauty, pleasure, freedom and plenty of sleep: these are the hallmarks of a successful idler's break. Travel should not be hard work. "
Tom Hodgkinson
Work
Travel
Freedom
" You can become very serious as a parent. That's got to be fought against. "
Tom Hodgkinson
You
Against
Serious
" 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. "
Tom Hodgkinson
Flower
Gardening
Magic
" 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
" Laziness works. And the simple way to incorporate its health benefits into your life is simply to take a nap. "
Tom Hodgkinson
Way
Laziness
Life
" 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
Me
Mission
Language
" 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
" 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
Lunch
Escape
Friend
" 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. "
Tom Hodgkinson
Gate
Day
I Am
" 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
" 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
" 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
Train
Car
" 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