Discussion

The Importance of Being Idle

dripdry45: I started with “How to Be Idle” by Hodgkinson about 20 years ago. Found “The importance of living “ by Lin yutang. I now have a small collection of books about idleness… yet here i am working and then throwing myself into working on a century house in my spare time… feeling starved for idleness. Yet my most creative ideas for it come when I’m idle.Idleness led to Taoism, the pursuit of being useless. Led to Buddhism: just sit.As the quote sort of goes: The great preponderance of society’s problems come from people’s inability to sit quietly in a room by themselves.It’s a noble pursuit, idleness. Really. If you haven’t tried it, give it a real shake. A little more might fall out than you expect.

ibeckermayer: Sounds like something a communist who killed himself would write.

mitchbob: Earlier discussion of Lafarge's The Right to Be Lazy (217 comments):https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33901623

Fricken: And Bertrand Russel's "In Praise of Idleness" (1932)https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40257677