Quote

Deleting 200 spams a day is a drag. And I was checking my email constantly, rather than getting on with my real work, which is reading and writing. Email was becoming a distraction, a burden rather than a liberation.

Tom Hodgkinson

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Tom Hodgkinson
Age: 56
Born: 1968
Born: January 1
Bookseller
Essayist
Journalist
Writer
Newcastle
Work
Burden
Constantly
Deleting
Becoming
Spam
Getting
Checking
Reading
Email
Rather
Distraction
Real
Drag
Writing
Liberation

More quotes by Tom Hodgkinson

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Embrace the faff. Stare out of the window. Bend paperclips. Stand in the middle of the room trying to remember what you came downstairs for. Pace. Drum your fingertips. Move papers around. Hum. Look at the garden.
Tom Hodgkinson
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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!
Tom Hodgkinson
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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.
Tom Hodgkinson
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Am I the only person in the world who is shocked and amazed at the ongoing flattery of uebergeek Mark Zuckerberg?
Tom Hodgkinson
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We bore ourselves in order to earn money that we'll later spend on trying to de-bore ourselves
Tom Hodgkinson
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It will soon be difficult to put up a shelf without a degree in shelf putting up.
Tom Hodgkinson
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The world's richest half billion people - that's about seven per cent of the global population - are responsible for fifty per cent of the world's emissions.
Tom Hodgkinson
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I would like to propose slow cycling. Commute by bike. At a stroke, you remove the need for and absurd cost of public transport. Cycling is almost completely free. There is no longer any need for the gym as you get fit by cycling. And you can go at your own pace.
Tom Hodgkinson
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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.
Tom Hodgkinson
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Sensible people advise against drinking on an empty stomach, but to my mind it is the best sort of drinking.
Tom Hodgkinson
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What I've found in working less is you start to get a bit more involved in the more real politics, which is local politics that affect what's going on in your own community.
Tom Hodgkinson
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One of the least arduous but most productive of gardening jobs, the magic of deadheading never fails to delight me. It was a revelation when the principle was explained to me: that flowers are the attempt by the plant to reproduce itself. So if you cut the heads off before the flower turns into seeds, the plant will continue to flower.
Tom Hodgkinson
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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.
Tom Hodgkinson
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The idea of a government is to create an ordered, willing work force where there's no trouble. I think idlers are generally seen as potentially dangerous because they're asking questions.
Tom Hodgkinson
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Idleness allows you to turn a situation from boredom to pleasure.
Tom Hodgkinson
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Faffing of course does not fit the programme. We are supposed to be busy, productive citizens.
Tom Hodgkinson
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The accusation 'unprofessional' means 'You did not behave like a machine today.
Tom Hodgkinson
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Often, the things that a lot of work has gone into have been incredibly bad because they're over-worked.
Tom Hodgkinson
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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.
Tom Hodgkinson
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Management gurus in general are, I think, best avoided. All too often they reduce your working life to a list of rules to be followed. Targets are aimed at. Goals kicked at. You then break the rules or forget them and, hey presto, you start beating yourself up.
Tom Hodgkinson