Idleness as Flourishing | Hacker News Reader

Idleness as Flourishing

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76 pointsblegh29 comments

I have learnt to value idle time over the last few years. I realized how privileged I am to have idle time. Many people are not that lucky - they have to work multiple jobs just to put food on the table. They have no time and money to pursue hobbies. Few years ago I always used to feel that I should be doing something productive with my time. I still value productivity but now I also value idle time equally. It has made a big difference in contentment level in my life. I don't feel life is whizzing by while I am busy working. I literally stop to smell roses, watch the sunset, look at the night sky. It's great.

That's honestly the main reason I'm still in my current job. I get plenty of idle time that I don't have to waste, and the pay (and benefits) are pretty good, even if I don't really like the job itself and the location.

But, I'm also really of the mind that I should still be productive with every moment of my life; at least in so far as "productive" means "making money". That's simply because I just want to retire ASAIP, regardless of age. When it comes down to it, though, it still seems like I love the idle time more, and always choose it when I can (which is great that I'm able to)

I always long for a life of idleness but financial constraints and my personal life are preventing it. I often dream of owning a house in the country with a few acres of land so I can live a life of seclusion, spending my days pottering about and indulging in hobbies.

I find that these days I rarely get any significant time to myself without interruptions of some kind. Like the article suggests this stifles my creativity because I can't think deeply enough about a subject before I'm distracted. It's true with my current lifestyle I get more done but it's less meaningful.

You should read "Deep Work" i found it very enlightening and have put a lot of it into practice to make sure i have time for deep and creative work.

https://www.amazon.com/Deep-Work-Focused-Success-Distracted/...

Thanks for the recommendation, I'll check it out

I recommend reading The Shallows by Nicholas Carr before reading Deep Work.

Why?

Because Deep Work is more a "how", while The Shallows is more of a "why". It's good to know why, before you try to get to know how. Specifically, The Shallows is an investigation into what the Internet and modern technology does to the brain and what kind of side-effects it may have (affecting our ability to focus). It's a very well-written and accessible book.

Deep Work is more of a how-to book - about how to get ahead in world that's losing its ability to focus (due to the stuff described in The Shallows).

Thanks for responding!

Thanks for the follow up i have ordered the book. I didn't find deep work lacking but still look forward to reading the shallows.

Having a house in the country, I have discovered that one of my new hobbies is mowing. :-) I quite like it, actually; it's very reflective and the immediate results are gratifying. I also get to pull vines and weeds out of the rose bushes.

Gardening is a great way to escape distractions, especially if your main problem is electronic distractions. Even if you’ve got a smartphone in your pocket, muddy and/or gloved hands are a good deterrent to “let’s quickly check ...”

Minimizing your commute goes a long way without having to physically remove yourself to some desolate region.

If you spend 2 hours commuting every day, then that's 2 hours that are essentially wasted, that could be used to cultivate idleness (or other, less idle activities).

I am so much happier to have all but eliminated my commute by living close to my office. Even when I was taking the train and could read, listen to music, play games, etc, those were always compromise activities and didn't contribute to my personal happiness.

Other people have suggested meditation/mindfulness as a solution, but that isn't necessarily the only way forward.

I agree that commute minimization is a game changer for freeing up time.

But it is a privilege.

Unless you happen to be very secure in your quickly-commutable job, or located a short commute distance from a variety of different job opportunities, you are at high risk of losing that short commute.

This is exacerbated in places like SV that have disparate job and housing centers, and extremely steep housing costs near those job centers.

> Even when I was taking the train and could read, listen to music, play games, etc, those were always compromise activities and didn't contribute to my personal happiness.

I've found that my short train commute (25 min) is a great time to memorize the compositions for an instrument that I play, with the help of a metronome app while viewing the sheet music on my phone.

It's far more relaxing than reading the news, for certain.

But it is a privilege.

I suspect that it's mostly down to undervaluing our time. Although we all complain about the hell of driving in traffic or riding on a busy train very few people are willing to compromise their income to avoid it. We probably get what we deserve.

I agree that we undervalue our time ... until we start to value it more, and then often it's too late (or expensive) to make a change to free more of it, and then the complaining commences.

I also think that this may have more to do with housing costs than income potential, given that there is a steep cliff of decreasing housing affordability associated with proximity to work, especially in knowledge-sector dominated areas.

This is usually the opposite in manufacturing industry dominated areas (i.e. the Rust Belt), where people often pay more to live farther away (and upwind/upstream) from the environmental externalities created by manufacturing facilities.

Sadly, I don’t know of too many rural tech companies. Which is sad, because I would take a fairly ridiculous pay cut to not live in a city.

In praise of idleness by Bertrand Russell is a great read on this topic

But also keeping a journal and writing everyday and analyzing the thoughts you have is incredible for slowing down time and cutting out fluff in life.

The opportunity to be idle is the greatest and, at the same time, the most underappreciated gift given to the man. No other animal, who is constantly in search of food, shelter, etc. can afford that.

I've definitely watched birds playing.

Most animals- at least megafauna- don't spend all day in search of food, shelter, etc. They almost all have daily periods of idleness.

Cats of all kinds would be a good example.

And parrots. No natural predators and spend most of their day eating from lush forests. Seems like they were born to be idle.

"The time you enjoy wasting is not wasted time." - Bertrand Russell

Idle time can be dangerous as well if your not in the right frames of mind. There’s a part of the brain called the default mode network that is associated with self referential thoughts and social thinking, which gets turned on when we are doing nothing. Essentially the part of ththe brain responsible for brain wandering, and generally the brain wanders to places where there are problems and it wants to solve it. So if your in a phase of life where your dealing with lots of ‘problems’ it might be better not to sit idly.

It's true that O'Connor's book doesn't really address idleness "in the face of urgent need," but I disagree with this article that it needs to. Before we can begin to justify the kind of idleness "in the face of urgent need" that is effectively "indifference to suffering," we have to first justify the lesser kind of idleness that is indifference to society's supposed needs, which I think O'Connor's book does adequately. Idleness has been dismissed by Kant and friends as a moral vice on the grounds that it's our "duty" to maximize our "usefulness" and "worth" to society. To alleviate others' suffering is a different matter entirely, and making an argument for idleness in that case is probably a lot more difficult.

Nothing is something worth doing.

I haven't read either, but O'Connor sounds more on the right track. The value of idleness is not that it will make you more productive or better at your job after you stop being idle; it's valuable in its own right. Work is important, but I think it's pathological to vaunt it as we do in our society, just as it's pathological to completely shirk it and live in squalor.

Basically, I just want to take a nap, much like O'Connor apparently. There is a note of desperation, perhaps nervous disavowal of death, in our society's insistence on always doing, always improving, always producing.

I haven't read either of these but I did enjoy "How to be Idle" by Tom Hodgkinson years back: https://www.amazon.com/How-Be-Idle-Loafers-Manifesto/dp/0060...

Tom Hodgkinson used to edit a periodical called The Idler which was always full of thought provoking articles.

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