Nothing doing

There is a long and noble history of books about doing nothing. In the 5th century bc the sage Lao Tzu argued that the wise man should refrain from action, and Christ’s Sermon on the Mount also told us not to bother ourselves overmuch: ‘Consider the lilies of the field, they toil not.’

For Christ, idling was a spiritual and political position: he taught us to live in the moment and reject riches and status as a source of enlightenment or happiness. Now the self-help industry has taken idling and converted it into, paradoxically, a tool for productivity, i.e. getting ahead and making money, which is not what Christ had in mind.

The first in this trio of new studies of idling is published by Ted, purveyors of positive thinking for go-getters, and in the tradition of that series of online lectures, takes a few platitudes and spins them into an ‘inspirational’ guide for corporate ladder-climbers.