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" 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
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" 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
" 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
History
" 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
" I love the 19th-century idea of the flaneur, the poet wandering through the streets. "
Tom Hodgkinson
Love
Poet
Streets
" All poets are idlers, even if all idlers are not poets. "
Tom Hodgkinson
Poets
Idlers
Even
" If you can find a way to make a living doing something you enjoy, or a range of things that you enjoy, then it can scarcely be called work. "
Tom Hodgkinson
Living
You
Work
" If you look at the literature of the 19th century, you get things like Kafka and Dostoevsky, who basically write about feeling bored and alienated. That's because we lost contact with the important things in life like work that you enjoy, or the garden, nature, your family and friends. "
Tom Hodgkinson
Nature
Life
Friends
" The phrase 'work/life balance' encapsulates a depressing outlook. "
Tom Hodgkinson
Phrase
Balance
Depressing
" 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'm not sure if I could bear to go on an aeroplane again. It's not my concern for the welfare of the planet. It's not even the long check-in times and queuing. No, it's the humiliation of the security process that has finally done it for me. "
Tom Hodgkinson
Security
Me
Bear
" In this age of getting what you want and getting it now, the simple pleasure of browsing is often forgotten. "
Tom Hodgkinson
Age
Want
Simple
" 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
" Am I the only person in the world who is shocked and amazed at the ongoing flattery of uebergeek Mark Zuckerberg? "
Tom Hodgkinson
Mark
World
Who
" 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
" 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
" 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
" 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
" 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
" Although I played a lot of computer games in my 20s, now I have children of my own, I hate them with a passion. "
Tom Hodgkinson
Hate
Own
Passion
" Faffing is good. It is an important part of life. Faffing is when we disconnect from the matrix and idle for a while, like a car. Our body and spirit know deep down that human beings were not made for constant toil so subconsciously creates space through the mechanism of faffing. "
Tom Hodgkinson
Life
Deep
Car
" 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
" You can become very serious as a parent. That's got to be fought against. "
Tom Hodgkinson
You
Against
Serious
" As the son of a feminist mother, I grew up with the idea that work was a sort of salvation for women as it would give them freedom from the domestic grind. Now it seems work is a form of slavery, undertaken out of apparent compulsion rather than choice. "
Tom Hodgkinson
Son
Grind
Mother
" 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
" 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
" 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
" 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
" On bikeback, there is a delightful sense of self-direction and autonomy. Lately, I have taken to cycling slowly, more fun than the fast, competitive commuter cycling I used to do. No longer do I jump lights or attempt that irritating wobbling thing that semi-professional cyclists like to indulge in. "
Tom Hodgkinson
Jump
Fast
More
" 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. "
Tom Hodgkinson
Life
Family
Parents
" Poetry, being supremely useless, by its very existence represents a protest against the so-called 'real world' of busy-ness and moneymaking, so we must embrace, salute and support our poets. "
Tom Hodgkinson
Poetry
Support
World