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One aspect of fast London life I have never understood, for example, is the custom of the gym. Why do people go to gyms?

Tom Hodgkinson

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Tom Hodgkinson
Age: 56
Born: 1968
Born: January 1
Bookseller
Essayist
Journalist
Writer
Newcastle
London
Fast
Aspect
Understood
Example
Gyms
Never
Custom
Life
Gym
People
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Paradoxically, to be truly idle, you also have to be efficient.
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Labour-saving devices just make us try to cram more pointless activities into each day, rather than doing the important thing, which is to enjoy our life.
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A conclusion I’ve come to at the Idler is that it starts with retreating from work but it’s really about making work into something that isn’t drudgery and slavery, and then work and life can become one thing.
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The way to stop feeling guilty is to read stuff - I'm not saying my book, but works by Bertrand Russell or Oscar Wilde, people who weren't losers but who didn't believe in the work ethic, and argued this thing about guilt or wrote philosophy about idleness.
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Life has been reduced to a series of long periods of boredom in the office punctuated by high-octane experiences which you can rack up on your list of things to do before you die. That's not really living: that is slavery with the occasional circus thrown in.
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The art of living is the art of bringing dreams and reality together.
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I suddenly realised, hey, I'm not a lazy idiot, I'm an idler! It's something to aspire to, it's part of the creative process! That's fantastic!
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Pain will never leave us. Instead of putting energy into destroying pain, we need to put energy into creating pleasure.
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Alongside my no email policy, I resolve to make better use of the wonderful Royal Mail, and send letters and postcards to people. There is a huge pleasure in writing a letter, putting it in an envelope and sticking the stamp on it. And huge pleasure in receiving real letters, too.
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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.
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If you look at the literature of the 19th century, you get things like Kafka and Dostoevsky, who basically write about feeling bored and alienated. That's because we lost contact with the important things in life like work that you enjoy, or the garden, nature, your family and friends.
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Faffing of course does not fit the programme. We are supposed to be busy, productive citizens.
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I count it as a certainty that in paradise, everyone naps.
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There is nothing so perfect as pinball and a pint at 11 a.m.
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Doing something you enjoy at times of your own choosing and making a living from it: now tell me, is that work?
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Guilt is also a way for us to express to others that we are a person of good conscience.
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Being lazy does not mean that you do not create. In fact, lying around doing nothing is an important, nay crucial, part of the creative process. It is meaningless bustle that actually gets in the way of productivity. All we are really saying is, give peace a chance.
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Sensible people advise against drinking on an empty stomach, but to my mind it is the best sort of drinking.
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The accusation 'unprofessional' means 'You did not behave like a machine today.
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It will soon be difficult to put up a shelf without a degree in shelf putting up.
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