Idleism

A High-Level Introduction to Idleism

Not to be confused with idealism. Although, I wouldn’t mind making the argument that idle is the ideal. Some principles of Idleism, in no particular order:

• You are more than an hourly rate.

  • You will never get paid “what you are worth” by an employer. The entire precept of capitalism is that they make more from your

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It’s ok to wait, and it’s definitely ok to de-wheel from the hamsterism of today’s productivity theatre. In fact, you might need to if you really want to dream up a monster story.

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

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“People go to church for the same reasons they go to a tavern: to stupefy themselves, to forget their misery, to imagine themselves, for a few minutes anyway, free and happy.”

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

“I felt like I was just a flightless bird that could only grip the railing and gaze into the distance,” he said.

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

Sometimes when I’m parenting alone, I slip into a mental state I call “idling.” It happens when my toddler’s nearby but playing on her own, meaning I only need to pay her half of my attention.