As you probably can figure out by the large number of book reviews and links posts on my blog, I read quite a bit. I also like to think that I try to find the value in anything that I read.
I think that approach comes from the belief that everyone sees things from a unique perspective and therefore has something useful to add. I used to get really wound up at school with a classmate who, while being extremely talented, had a tendency to denigrate anything that he saw as being even remotely cliched. He was unable to perceive the subtleties of work within a genre or value the contributions of “people who came afterwards.”
However, when something comes along that makes me see things in a completely new way, I get really excited.
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A stressful year
For some reason, I seem to be stumbling over new and exciting concepts a lot this year and all of them seems to centre around the concept of stress and how it affects health.
I started out the year by reading The Great Cholesterol Con, by Malcolm Kendrick, and I was surprised to find that he believes that coronary heart disease is not affected at all by dietary factors and is purely influenced by the level of stress in the organism. He feels that the medical research establishment doesn’t want to get to grips with stress as a factor because it is hard to test.
I then read Robb Wolf’s book The Paleo Solution and was knocked sideways by his chapter on cortisol and how it affects fat-retention, particularly around the middle, which leads to metabolic syndrome and health problems in later life.
So I was delighted when I randomly picked up Tom Hodgkinson’s book, How to be Idle (affiliate links: UK
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What’s it about?
Hodgkinson suggests that the mass employment that followed the industrial revolution was neither natural nor desirable from an individual’s point of view. He shatters the myth that people have always worked from dawn until dusk and that the industrial revolution increased the quality of life.
From a health perspective, he suggests that the ability to decide when to work and how much to work is a key factor in maintaining well-being. From a community perspective, he links this to the ability of people to be creative and invent solutions to problems.
Interestingly, it seems that Seth Godin believes that the industrial revolution is ending and that mass-production via mass employment is faltering as a business model. He thinks that the new opportunities are for smaller companies or individuals in creating new and interesting solutions to problems on a smaller, more independent and more agile basis.
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What does he say?
Well, he says a lot. It’s a big book and it’s crammed with all kinds of references. I mean, I was staggered by how well read he is. He seems to have read pretty much all of my favourite classics and a lot more besides.
He talks about the pleasures and benefits of being idle under a huge range of headings, which include:
- Waking up is hard to do – Hodgkinson starts his book with a bang by questioning Benjamin Franklin’s favourite quotation: “early to bed, early to rise, makes a man healthy, wealthy and wise.” He questions whether the people you see commuting early in the morning look healthy, since they seem so unhappy and stressed. He deduces that they are not wealthy if they are commuting in such a horrible fashion and concludes that they cannot be wise if they are dragging themselves through hell every day when there are so many better options. Hodgkinson recommends that we throw away our alarm clocks and stop forcing ourselves to get up at a pre-determined time. Which, of course, brings us on to…
- Toil and trouble – Hodgkinson confronts a fact that appears to be a self-evident truth to most people today. Drawing on studies of the industrial revolution in England, he demonstrates that the concept of a “full-time job” in which people attend an employer’s facility at pre-determined times five (or even six) days a week is a very modern idea. Prior to the industrial revolution, workers had skills and they employed them only when they felt the need for money. This could be as little as three days a week. However, once there were machines in place for making things, employers wanted them to run all the time and the skills of the individual labourers were no longer at a premium.
- Sleeping in – Hodgkinson uses this chapter to discuss two ideas. Firstly, he continues the thought process of the previous chapter and notes that employers dislike the very idea that someone might not be putting their time to good use. Hodgkinson sketches this kind of person well. They are the interfering sort. The kind of people who cannot help but insert their nose into other people’s business and try to influence what they are doing. Secondly, he builds a strong case for thoughtful contemplation (rather than mindless work) as the realm of the creative people, the composers, writers and inventors who have contributed significantly to human knowledge and culture.
- Skiving for pleasure and profit – having built up a strong dislike of employers of all kinds, Hodgkinson turns to the idea of skiving, which he develops by proposing that doing nothing is only enjoyable when you should be doing something, or when other people are doing something. So, for example, playing frisbee in the park is much less enjoyable on a Saturday when everyone else is doing it.
- The hangover – alcohol is clearly an important part of Hodgkinson’s life (he spends a lot of time idling and drinking!) and in this short chapter he suggests some ways in which you might deal with the inevitable excesses.
- The death of lunch – this is a very British book and one of Hodgkinson’s ideas is that the American way of life is being assimilated by the British people. We are moving from a nation of boozy, lunch-loving ale aficionados to an enclave of coffee-swilling, sandwich-eating, cubicle dwellers.
- On being ill – Hodgkinson notes that there is a tendency for people to see being ill as slacking or skiving. People are being faced more and more with the idea that it is not acceptable to be ill and it is being suggested that their jobs are less secure if they do take sick leave. Hodgkinson suggests that this culture of fear is promoted by the employers to try to eke just one or two more days of work out of the subjugated employees. The reality, of course, is that the employer has no real incentive to try to oust an employee who takes a few days of sick leave a year, unless they already have another reason. It’s just propaganda to try to extract more working time for the same amount of money.
- The nap – unsurprisingly, Hodgkinson is a fan of the Spanish-style siesta, which he believes helps to decrease the stress of a day by facing the practitioner with far less of a challenge, as only half a day is faced at any one time.
- Time for tea – and again, Hodgkinson returns to the anti-coffee theme, stressing the merits of tea as the provenance of meditators and thoughtful types everywhere. He compares these people with the go-getting, coffee-drinking types, who are constantly chasing something they don’t and won’t ever have.
- The ramble – Hodgkinson praises the casual amble or the stroll. He notes how in several of the Sherlock Holmes short stories, Holmes and Watson undertake rambles around London of up to three hours in length. It is easy to connect the amazing data collecting faculties of Holmes, particularly as portrayed by the exceptional Robert Downey Junior in the most recent film, with long, seemingly aimless rambles around London, observing every detail for future reference.
There are many more short chapters covering a huge range of ideas and references to different ways in which we can improve our lives by taking a step back and eliminating some of the stress. In each of them, Hodgkinson presents a firm opinion and backs it up with literary references, historical research and sound argument. It’s very like talking to a very well-informed friend in the pub…
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Conclusion
With a book as wonderfully rich and fascinating as this, it is almost impossible to avoid having some criticisms or recommendations for future development of the thesis, which you might offer by way of conversation in the author’s favourite pub. My primary thoughts are:
- There is no real attempt made to discuss the health impact of our stressful lifestyle, beyond taking it as read. Hodgkinson mentions businessmen drinking coffee and working hard and getting ulcers but he doesn’t delve into why this happens or what we should draw from this.
- There is no realisation that the way of life described before the industrial revolution goes back to hunter-gatherer times. For me, this is why it works and the industrial mass employment model doesn’t. We are quite simply hard-coded to work in fits and starts with long periods of rest in-between. We are not programmed to do a 9 to 5 day.
Other than that, it is a brilliant book which opens doors to many more literary places, including Dr Johnson, Keats and Nietzsche, and presents its ideas in a clear and persuasive fashion that will have you reconsidering your choice of career before you put it down.
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