The Return on Idleness

The Return on Idleness

Returning from vacation, it only seems fitting to produce something profound on the merits of vacating, being idle, and staring up at the ever-changing clouds. Luckily for me Brian O’Connor, a professor of philosophy at University College Dublin, wrote a significant essay about this very thing for Time while I was away in …Ireland.

He includes a favorite vignette of mine often used in stories on productivity and efficiency. The original, published in 1963 by German writer Heinrich Böll, tells a fictional story of a visitor to a small fishing village somewhere in the West of Europe. In the story the precursor of an efficiency expert thinks he has a way to help this fisherman find more leisure. We were in a fishing village in the most western part of Europe, as I practiced being idle. Yet the pressures of productivity are waves that keep lapping at the shores of modern Ireland. On our last day we met a fascinating artist and entrepreneur. She told us of a movement in Ireland to slow down and have a cup of tea as a way of checking in with people; to see how they are really doing. So perhaps these words in O’Connor’s essay remind us of the ROI on idleness: “…yet Böll’s story captures a recognizable time when work was considered a necessary evil, second in value to other goods like friendship, rest and community.” Read More Here

The Return on Idleness

The Return on Idleness

Returning from vacation, it only seems fitting to produce something profound on the merits of vacating, being idle, and staring up at the ever-changing clouds. Luckily for me Brian O’Connor, a professor of philosophy at University College Dublin, wrote a significant essay about this very thing for Time while I was away in …Ireland.

He includes a favorite vignette of mine often used in stories on productivity and efficiency. The original, published in 1963 by German writer Heinrich Böll, tells a fictional story of a visitor to a small fishing village somewhere in the West of Europe. In the story the precursor of an efficiency expert thinks he has a way to help this fisherman find more leisure. We were in a fishing village in the most western part of Europe, as I practiced being idle. Yet the pressures of productivity are waves that keep lapping at the shores of modern Ireland. On our last day we met a fascinating artist and entrepreneur. She told us of a movement in Ireland to slow down and have a cup of tea as a way of checking in with people; to see how they are really doing. So perhaps these words in O’Connor’s essay remind us of the ROI on idleness: “…yet Böll’s story captures a recognizable time when work was considered a necessary evil, second in value to other goods like friendship, rest and community.” Read More Here