Another Idling Post -- Only Eight Months Later

See up there under the Trailheadcase where it says "militant idler"? I'm serious about that, you know. In fact, I let people know at the very beginning of this blog where I stood. More than once.

So Trailhead, you ask, why don't you write about it more? Well, mostly it's because I'm too busy idling. But it's also because I frequently use other stuff in the media to jumpstart my own commentary, and it's a rare thing to find something in the mainstream media affirming my vision of idling. But lo, today we have a Fortune article by Anne Fisher on CNNMoney.com entitled, "Be smarter at work, slack off."

Damn straight, Anne Fisher. Now, I can think of at least three of you who are thinking, "yeah, right. Slack off and get sacked is more like it." Hey -- I can't fix this with a snap of my fingers, people, I can only write about it. And you can nod your heads and continue to pour out contempt upon your greedy, asinine employers who do not understand that they are only hurting themselves when they suck the very life out of their workers. Well, they're hurting their workers, too, but who really gives a flying cat fuck about them, right? So it looks like we'll have to concentrate on the serendipitous fact that slacking is good for bidness.

Fortunately, we have Ms. Fisher here to underscore this point:

Consider that for most industries, the U.S. can't hope to be the low-cost producer in a global economy. With innovation now our main competitive strength, creativity is crucial for anyone who wants to move up.

But it's really, really hard, if not impossible, for the human brain to come up with fresh new ideas when its owner is overworked, overtired, and stressed out. And in today's wonderful world of nonstop work, 40% of American adults get less than seven hours of sleep on weeknights.

Come on, seems like a bunch of whiners to me.

Indeed, "the notion that busyness is the essence of business can only do us long-term harm," writes consultant Tom DeMarco in a book called Slack: Getting Past Burnout, Busywork, and the Myth of Total Efficiency.

Sounds like the bidnessperson's version of Tom Hodgkinson's How to be Idle. I'll have to pick it up.

But really, you say, this sounds great but there are no concrete examples to prove that this works out in practice as well as it does in theory. Well, you're right -- that's the weakness in this argument. There's only one example, and that's of an obscure little company of little consequence, called Google:

Google's headquarters in Mountain View, Calif., is a famously laid-back place, replete with lap pools, massage rooms, pool tables, free haute cuisine, and loads of other stress-reducing amenities like onsite dry cleaners and hair stylists.

"We want to take as much hurry and worry out of people's lives as we can, because a relaxed state of mind unleashes creativity," says Stacy Sullivan, the company's HR director. "And everybody's on flextime here, so we don't reward face time or working super-long hours. We just measure results."

In the end, what else matters? Of course, not every workplace can match Google's. But plenty of companies might do a lot worse than to emulate the thinking behind it.

At the risk of sounding like a Johnny One Note (like I really give a shit about that), think of where all your best ideas occurred to you. I can think of one of mine. Back when I worked in Indy in the same office as Bloggerdad and Trailhead Brother, it was TB's and my practice to cut out of the office in the mid-afternoon and get a Big Ass Drink at the Jimmy John's down the street. One day, I was in the process of trying to figure out how to get one of my clients out from under a 6 million dollar lawsuit (well, that's what the plaintiff thought it was worth, which isn't saying much).

Did the lightbulb moment come to me while hunched over my computer screen? Please. You know me better than that. It was on the way back to the office, Big Ass Drink in Hand, that I thought of a brilliant fucking argument. Needless to say, matters ended well for my client.

Archimedes I'm not, but the point stands.

Go read the whole article.