Customer Reviews

The Importance of Being Lazy: In Praise of Play, Leisure, and Vacation

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This well-researched book is a great place to start to learn about the slow lifestyle. Al Gini is Professor of Philosophy at Loyola University Chicago. He's also a business consultant. He previously explored a mixture of business, work, and philosophy, in his book My Job, My Self. Be warned, he describes himself as addicted to work.

The Importance of Being Lazy is about personal identity in culture. Our most frequent response to the question, "who am I", is to say what we do for a living. The book is about who we are and what we do when not at work. Professor Gini's own university has only a few books on leisure but thousands on work, jobs, and careers. We value work, we don't value leisure.

If vacations are a project of self-definition, then what does it mean to not even take vacations? Vacation starvation becomes a malady. The consequences, as Josef Pieper pointed out, is the destruction of culture. The idea of leisure time was to refresh and renew to have a life outside of work. But market forces have largely been against this.

Adam Smith said, "Consumption is the sole purpose of all production." Al Gini says, "To Shop is to be. " Our culture has degenerated from a society based around people to those around things."

There are five problem areas:

1.Lack of Self Development. Without adequate time and energy we become passive consumers of entertainment. This makes us dull.

2. Lack of Autonomy. Time away from constraints and conformity of work is necessary to build a more authentic sense of self. Spending all our time at work makes us compliant, and often against our own best interests.

3. Effects of Social Life. Less time means more superficial interactions with others. Lack of social involvement degrades our social environment. We are too busy to be courteous. We are too busy for civic involvement.

4. Positional Competition. In other words, "Keeping up with the Joneses." Our focus is on the superficial. We self identify through our buying habits.

5. Cognitive and Valuational Confusion. You might expect a title like this from an academic. However, the book is wonderfully free of academic writing. What does Professor Gini mean? Advertisers create discontent by holding up impossible promises and standards to which consumers aspire.

Professor Gini cites a host of thinkers including, Hegel, Kipling, William James, Marcuse, and Aristotle. My own favorite is Mark Twain, "I do not like work even when someone else does it.

We need to find a balance between work and leisure. We are responsible for at least some of the choices we make.
The notes are a wonderful resource for further reading.

Highly recommended.

Al Gini's book is not about the nature and characteristics of Play, but rather, it is a `working' diatribe against work; with only scant attention given to `Play, Leisure and Vacation'. Paradoxically, Al Gini failed to grasp his own message. He needs to lighten up his message and play more, either that, or change the title (a much easier solution).

His book starts with the chapter "The Problem," and the problem is, of course, that we work too much; we work ourselves out of both health and holiday. I believe the problem started with Walt Disney and his seven dwarfs, those midget miners who plagued America with that addictive workaholic song - "Whistle while you . . . "

In other chapters Gini covers various social attitudes, such as "The Overspent America." This is an interesting chapter on how TV and shopping are the chief cultural activities in America. In another chapter he discuses our national addiction to sports, "the spectacle of sports anesthetizes us to that which we are either unable or unwilling to deal with, in our own lives." Other chapters include: Retirement, The Sabbath, Weekends and Traveling. All interesting and serious stuff, but . . .

In "The Importance of Being Lazy," we have a commendable sermon, with serious stats, against work; but, there is little new insight on "how" to play, neither does Gini bring any new ideas regarding leisure that challenge the reader to chill out and vacate their busy lives.

So, fellow workaholics, if you are going to be speaking at Toastmasters, the week before Labor Day, then this is the material you will want to quote: "The workaholic lacks boundaries," "We made a fetish out of work," "Work preoccupies our life" and "Workaholics no longer show up for life," etc., etc., etc. On the lighter side consider Dale Anderson's playful book "Never Act Your Age." Conditionally Recommended.

The Importance of Being Lazy: In Praise of Play, Leisure, and Vacations, by Al Gini

First and foremost, this book is not a lazy read-it requires attention and commitment from the reader. It is informative and clearly well-researched. I find it amusing that a book on laziness requires so much of its readers.

Gini's main thesis in this book is that Americans aren't necessarily overworked, but we are defiantly under-rested. We work more hours a week than anyone (even the Japanese, he repeatedly points out), but take far less vacation, not even the vacation we're due. And when we aren't working, we certainly aren't resting. He likens the need for leisure and relaxation with the concept of the Sabbath, a useful analogy he continues through the book. Leisure time should be unwired, reflective, even spiritual-a way to look at ourselves and grow as people, bettering ourselves and becoming more connected to our communities and families.

Gini considers many reasons for us not embracing leisure and play. Primarily, we work too much-our careers define us. And even if we don't let our careers define us, we need more stuff (so does consumerism cause workaholism or is it the other way around?) Even during weekends and vacations, our time is packed with structured and prepackaged activities that claim to offer us whatever we feel is lacking in our lives for a few hundred bucks. And then it's all supposed to come to a screeching halt at retirement. We would be better served, he suggests, to find ways to improve ourselves and become more comfortable with who we are inside than flitting away all our time and money on flashiness (except when he says it, it doesn't sound nearly so shallow and new-agey).

Generally, if you have time and attention to read this book, you are not one of the ones who needs to read this book. Perhaps we are suppose to go out and proclaim the good news of laziness to others, or maybe we are suppose to pat ourselves on the back for not spending too much time at work and in front of the TV to enjoy other parts of life. Or maybe we should get our noses out of books for a little while and go play...

Americans are overworked compared to their European partners. They work for "addicted organizations" that push them to work harder, produce more, and take less vacation time. The end results are unsatisfying workplaces, boring and repetitive jobs, and bitter employees.

The author tells us to take our time and work in a leisurely fashion. This attitude refreshes our mind, uplifts our moral, and makes us a better worker. We also need to have a balanced life.

The problem is that it will be hard to convince many employers to allow their employees to work in a leisurely fashion. They would be fired for being slow and unproductive.

This is a fun, easy to read book, full of useful insights and great quotes. I think it would be a great launching point for anyone interested in learning more about the relationship between work and its opposites: from "doing nothing", to the highly structured round of extra-curricular "play" activities that characterize the lives of modern American children, to retirement - which some see as the ultimate vacation and others as the final way station on the highway to irrelevance and oblivion.

Gini does a fine job at surveying various aspects of downtime - including travel, the weekend, sports & play, and shopping - but those expecting some grand revelation of the meaning and purpose of "that which is not work" will be disappointed. It took the insight of a prior Amazon reviewer, Allan Gathercoal, to make me realize why this is: Gini's book is not actually about downtime; rather its subject is work. Gini - a self-confessed "workaholic" - is never more engaging than when discussing work. In fact, if the breadth of Gini's readings is any indication, his mind is seldom sitting still and doing nothing - and yet he is not always at work. That paradox could have been a much more interesting jumping off point for this book.

Recommended.

Gini's "Lazy" is a comprehensive record of rise or North America to become a nation of workaholics, and how this attitude affects the notion of leisure and play.

His main argument is, that North Americans are so obessed with being over-worked (or "busyness" as one of his references puts it), whether by choice or by circumstance, that they carry the same mentality in leisure, which deprived them the opportunity for rest, both mentally and physically.

He write about how North Americans spend their leisure time (e.g., week-ends, vacactions) as well as where they spend it (e.g., shopping, sports and travel). The reader will agree with him on many of his arguments, and this is also supported by the statistics he presented.

Parallels from his experience is also drawn into the book, making it a much more interesting read than some scholarly work. His presentation is unintrusive, and lets the reader make up his mind about the arguments. It is overall a very well written book, on one of the most impotant and yet least discussed, subjects in the North American collective consciousness.

I am from Indonesia, and on vacation. I grab this book during a short visit at University of California Berkeley campus bookstore. This is my time of laziness, so it seems perticulary fitting!

The book's argument is good and sometimes witty. I like the idea of laziness. Some parts are perticulary funny and sooo true, i love the "shopping as leisure and play" section.

One critic i have is that the narative is a bit difficult to chew, it is not a page turner. This is a good book with good grounded arguments, if you are like me, in love with laziness, or need some reasons to have funs, get this book.