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July 6, 2005
Time to be idle
Maybe it's our age, but chriscurnow.com feels he needs more time to be idle.
Don't get us wrong. We don't ever want to stop working. We have an ambition to be still working into our 80s. However we want to do a different type of work.
Sitting and thinking can be work. We love writing and we love sharing what little wisdom we have picked up with others in workshops, consulting and coaching. To do all that with any sort of accomplishment we need to be profoundly self aware. To be self aware, we need idle time. Time that is not taken up fulfilling deadlines, working late and not taking the dog for a w-a-l-k. Idle time that is spent in reflection. Thinking about why we do what we do. Idle time to talk, really talk, with others who know us or who have ideas that may spark new ideas for us.
Sounds like the traditional ancient concept of university.
This profound thinking was prompted by comments by our co-bloggers Bleeding Edge and Leon Gettler on the French book Bonjour Paresse (roughly "Hello Laziness") by Corrine Maier which has just been translated into English.
We don't know how serious Maier is but she taps into "common knowledge" that all managers are useless, you may as well do as little work as possible and what work you do do should be disguised laziness.
There is definitely a serious side to laziness. We once remarked to a colleague in a well known consulting firm that we were frustrated that we were not getting time to reflect. "Oh there's never time for reflection." he replied. We privately lamented the quality of management advice most likely being given around the world by consultants who do not have time to reflect.
We wonder just how effective our CEOs could be if they worked a little less and idled a little more.
Posted by chriscurnow at July 6, 2005 11:07 AM
Comments
I just came across this quote:
"God does not judge us by the multitude of works we perform, but how well we do the work that is ours to do. The happiness of too many days is often destroyed by trying to accomplish too much in one day. We would do well to follow a common rule for our daily lives: Do less, and do it better."
--- Dale Turner
Posted by: Chris Curnow at July 7, 2005 11:41 AM
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