Idleism
Not to be confused with “idealism.” Not everything needs to be productive. Life happens in the idle margins, margins that are shrinking by the day.
Idleism
The more I heal, the less ambitious I become.
The more I heal, the less ambitious I become.
“The culture tells us two things can’t coexist. People say to me ‘I want to love my life but also pay my rent’ or ‘I want to be super mature but also child-like’, or ‘I want to travel but I’m also a homebody’ or ‘I want to be productive and also relaxed.’ Calm down... you can do both.” — Martha Beck
Emma Gannon • The 'both/and' moments of life
Aggressively uncreative practices such as aimless wandering or birdwatching (or, as she perceptively calls it, “bird listening”) offer “an antidote to the rhetoric of growth” that surrounds us every day. There is ultimately a feminist and environmental case to be made for doing nothing: if we can shift our notion of constructive social behavior
... See moreSamuel W. Franklin • The Cult of Creativity: A Surprisingly Recent History
His biggest worry, though, is that we still mostly fail to acknowledge that we live in a roaring attention economy. In other words, we tend to ignore his favorite maxim, from the writer Howard Rheingold: “Attention is a limited resource, so pay attention to where you pay attention.”
nytimes.com • Opinion | Michael Goldhaber, the Cassandra of the Internet Age - The New York Times
Michael Goldhaber is the internet prophet you’ve never heard of. Here’s a short list of things he saw coming: the complete dominance of the internet, increased shamelessness in politics, terrorists co-opting social media, the rise of reality television, personal websites, oversharing, personal essay, fandoms and online influencer culture — along with the near destruction of our ability to focus.
I think that “doing nothing”—in the sense of refusing productivity and stopping to listen—entails an active process of listening that seeks out the effects of racial, environmental, and economic injustice and brings about real change.
Jenny Odell • How to Do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy
Capitalism tells us this. Rest Is Resistance by Tricia Hersey takes a deep dive into this link exploring how capitalism and white supremacy are at the heart of our inability to rest. These learnings have been crucial to my rest practices and are now weaved into my Yoga classes and wellbeing offerings because of it.
Jodie Melissa Rogers • Why we feel guilty & uncomfortable when resting
Today you rarely see the word “idle” except when used as a pejorative; to be idle is to be wasteful, and several of the most popular Internet startup companies have targeted underutilized resources such as idle cars (Turo, ZipCar), household equipment (SnapGoods), or empty bedrooms (Airbnb), allowing people to make use of them by renting them out... See more
Christine Rosen • On The Death of Daydreaming
You are allowed time off the Internet.
Emma Gannon • How to be less online in 2025
The internet doesn’t have to demand our presence the way it currently does. It shouldn’t be something we have to look at all time. If it wasn’t, maybe we’d finally be free to hang out. The first time I ever heard about Facebook, back in 2004, was from someone proudly declaring that she had just spent four hours using it. At the time, it was... See more