For a really relaxing time, you want to go to a place where the work ethic hasn’t taken hold, where the culture hasn’t been taken over by the western values of constant striving. – Tom Hodgkinson
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
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
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
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. – Tom Hodgkinson
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
Doing something you enjoy at times of your own choosing and making a living from it: now tell me, is that work? – Tom Hodgkinson
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
I love the 19th-century idea of the flaneur, the poet wandering through the streets. – Tom Hodgkinson
I would like to propose slow cycling. Commute by bike. At a stroke, you remove the need for and absurd cost of public transport. Cycling is almost completely free. There is no longer any need for the gym as you get fit by cycling. And you can go at your own pace. – Tom Hodgkinson
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
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
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
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
Now I’m no biologist, but it seems to make a lot of sense that slow lives, as well as being enjoyable, are long lives. One only has to think of the example of the tortoise for proof of this theory from the animal world. – Tom Hodgkinson
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
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
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
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. – Tom Hodgkinson
What is required as we travel towards full unemployment is not new legislation but a gradual change of mental attitude, a shift in values. As our taste for idling grows, we will refuse to work for old-fashioned bosses who demand a five-day, 40-hour, nine-to-five type week, or worse. – Tom Hodgkinson
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
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
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
Laziness works. And the simple way to incorporate its health benefits into your life is simply to take a nap. – Tom Hodgkinson
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
