OVERWORKED!
How To Be Idle

An interview from Mother Jones courtesy of This is not a compliment:

MJ: What about this paradox that you do more by working less?

TH: I had lunch with these French people who said, “Travailler moins, produire plus.” In other words, the less you work, the more you produce. And certainly in my own experience—even in the really good jobs—a lot of the day is just spent sitting there, staring at your screen, pretending to work, checking your emails, on the phone to your girlfriend. I realized I’d rather work hard for two or three hours in a day—which was the only real work I was doing—and then bobble about the rest of the time, in the park or whatever. I’ve found that there isn’t any correlation whatsoever between the hours put in and the quality of what comes out. Most of the Beatles’ songs probably originated in about five minutes. Often, the things that a lot of work has gone into have been incredibly bad because they’re over-worked.

And

TH: For most of us, the opportunity to become creative is being squeezed at both ends. We think, “Well, I’ve been doing all that work, and now I’m going to reward myself by doing a lot of spending.” What would happen in the days before time was money and money and machines weren’t quite so dominant would be you’d have all this other time when you’d do what turned into hobbies. Little things like making clothes, baking bread, cooking, even useless things like bird-watching, sketching flowers, playing guitar in the home--that sort of time is gone. And the time we have? We’re so exhausted, we want to let ourselves get sucked in to the escape world of TV. I’m speaking from experience; I’m not above all this.

I like the idea of becoming [fairly] good at lots of things rather than very good at just one thing. So it would be nice to be okay at the guitar or at the piano, a reasonable cook, perhaps able to fix your car or do some basic carpentry, and be able to write the odd article. Rather than being super good at one tiny thing, to be kind of average at lots of things. It might mean that you have a more kind of enjoyable, complete life.

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The real question here is "why do we work?" The obvious answer is to keep civilization up and running. But do we really need to work forty hours a week in order to do that? Karl Marx long ago suggested that, in order to produce what society needs to function, the amount of time an indivudual should work is about four hours a day. That observation was made looking at nineteenth century technology: probably much less time is required today.

The reason we work so many hours for such low pay is because that suits the profit needs of big business. But what about our needs? When I was teaching, I was generally so drained by the time I got home that my own creative output did, indeed, suffer. True, I started this blog because I could work as much or as little on it depending on how much time I had, but I also had to pass up numerous opportunities to act and direct because I just didn't have the time. I wrote no songs during this period, no open mike nights. In many ways, it makes sense that so many people just come home and turn on the TV--what else do people have the energy for after a long day at work? I also went out a whole lot less, had fewer friends, saw my family rarely.

Our economy could easily absorb the lost work-hours with nary a ripple. Furthermore, fewer hours worked would turn into more employment opportunities for the jobless. In short, the quality of American life would be greatly enhanced if we were able to start living for ourselves instead of for the companies who employ us. This is no pie-in-the-sky fantasy: America could do this, if only the will to insist on it existed.

But who has any will power after eight to ten hours of the grind?

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