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.