Alastair Humphreys Adventurer | Author | Motivational Speaker

Society, I hope you’re not lonely without me.

Struggling to overcome inertia a week or two back I listened to the soundtrack to Into the Wild, one of my favourite films.

It helped me to remember the power that the world’s natural places can have on us, and also to maintain my priorities. I had sunk into the typical London trap of equating quantity of hours spent at my desk with levels of success. Of course that is nonsense. So I’m trying to remind myself that spending less time at the desk, (but doing work of quality when I am there) and more time out doing things I love, is not wasting time. It is using time!

Last week I used some of my newly-gleaned time to read an essay from Harper’s Magazine expounding the virtues of idleness.
I don’t aspire to be idle, I don’t plan on dying in a bus in Alaska. But I appreciate their wake-up calls to focus on what is important.

“Oh, it’s a mystery to me.
We have a greed, with which we have agreed…
and you think you have to want more than you need…
until you have it all, you won’t be free.

Society, you’re a crazy breed.
I hope you’re not lonely, without me…”

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1. Being more Creative
2. An interesting interview (for once)
3. Lecture at the Royal Geographic Society
4. The dangers of an Office Job

Great Album, those lines have played in my head more than once over the last few months.

Funny you should mention the virtues of idolness, I just bought a copy of Bertrand Russell’s “in Praise of Idleness” today from a street vendor selling books from a tricycle in the shadow of the second highest building in the world in Shanghai.