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Part of this individualism is you feel this pressure that you alone have to conquer the world, and if you don't work all the hours God gives then you start feeling really guilty. If you can stop feeling guilty, then I think it's easier to start doing what you want to do.

Tom Hodgkinson

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Tom Hodgkinson
Age: 56
Born: 1968
Born: January 1
Bookseller
Essayist
Journalist
Writer
Newcastle
Feels
Stop
Giving
Alone
Work
Feeling
Individualism
Really
Start
Conquer
Think
Hours
Guilty
Thinking
Feelings
Pressure
World
Part
Gives
Feel
Easier

More quotes by Tom Hodgkinson

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Laziness works. And the simple way to incorporate its health benefits into your life is simply to take a nap.
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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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One aspect of fast London life I have never understood, for example, is the custom of the gym. Why do people go to gyms?
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Paradoxically, to be truly idle, you also have to be efficient.
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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.
Tom Hodgkinson
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When walking you see things that you miss in a motor car or on the train. You give your mind space to ponder.
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Beauty, pleasure, freedom and plenty of sleep: these are the hallmarks of a successful idler's break. Travel should not be hard work.
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.
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Although I played a lot of computer games in my 20s, now I have children of my own I hate them with a passion.
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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
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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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Doing something you enjoy at times of your own choosing and making a living from it: now tell me, is that work?
Tom Hodgkinson
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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.
Tom Hodgkinson
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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.
Tom Hodgkinson
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Life is about recapturing lost freedoms.
Tom Hodgkinson
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It takes a while to master the art of hammock-lounging. At first I could only manage five minutes or so before I thought I ought to get out and go and help a child learn how to swim or something. But after observing the Mexicans' capability for staring into space for hours on end, I decided to put in some proper practice.
Tom Hodgkinson
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Pain will never leave us. Instead of putting energy into destroying pain, we need to put energy into creating pleasure.
Tom Hodgkinson
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My idea of childcare at festivals is to sit at a trestle table with an ale while the kids run around and make up their own games.
Tom Hodgkinson
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We have become so obsessed by numbers and by bottom lines that beauty and truth has been knocked aside.
Tom Hodgkinson
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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.
Tom Hodgkinson