In Praise of Idleness

Oliver Burkeman asks if the solution to busyness is not to work harder and organise ourselves but to indulge in a little idleness.

There's a ritual of the modern workplace - one you've heard and most likely indulged in yourself.

It's the call and response we go through when you ask a workmate how they're doing: "Busy!" "So busy." "mentally busy."

It is pretty obviously a boast disguised as a complaint. And our simultaneously grim and half chuckled reply comes as a kind of congratulation: "Ha, better than the opposite." When did we start doing that?

Producer: Peter McManus

First broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in September 2016.