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time management books and Six Sigma courses? That is certainly what the evangelical time management industry wants us to believe. Is it the case that if we could just get more done, we could have more time off?
    On the contrary, I believe there is a fundamental contradiction underlying the relationship between our culture of time management and the number of hours that professionals work. The more effective we become, the more we are pressured to do. It is an endless cycle. It stems from our belief that time cannot be wasted under any circumstances. However, wasted time is not an absolute value like mass. You can only waste time relative to some context or goal. While you are reading this book, you are wasting time relative to your goal of getting to the store before you have to pick up your kids. In fact, from some perspective, you are always wasting time.
    A scientific view of the brain is incompatible with the Lutheran or Christian view of man, and this view is also incompatible with our work ethic. The much-vaunted work ethic is, like slavery, a systematic cultural invention that resulted from a commonly held, but mistaken, idea about human beings. We look back at the slavery system now and think it ridiculous and appalling. It is clear to us now how wrongheaded the very idea of slavery was. One day, we may look back at our work ethic in much the same way. Once we correct certain errors in our beliefs about our brains, our overworked society will appear to future generations as ridiculous and appalling.
    In the early 1990s, Steve Sampson, an anthropology professor of mine, was recruited as a consultant for a Danish computer company. The Danish company was hired by a company in Romania to modernize its operations. The Danes installed computers and an IT department. Everything seemed to function as planned, but a problem arose. After the computer system was activated and the employees were trained, people started leaving work at lunch time. Puzzled, the Danish managers asked why the Romanians were leaving halfway through the work day. The Romanians explained that the computers enabled them to do a whole day’s work in half a day, so when they were finished with their work they went home. My professor, an anthropologist, was brought in to help solve the minor crisis that ensued. The Danes were baffled that the Romanians did not want to do twice as much work now that they had computers, and the Romanians thought the Danes were crazy for expecting them to do twice as much work just because they could do it faster. This example illustrates a cultural gap, but also that technology such as PCs that are ostensibly supposed to give us more free time actually either reduce our leisure time or eliminate it.
    Many of us read the summaries of scientific health studies that appear in popular magazines or the New York Times . Some of us try to implement the suggestions that researchers make about how to eat healthier, how to exercise, how to avoid cognitive decline as we age, how to educate our children, how to sleep better, how to avoid getting diabetes, how to avoid knee problems from running, etc. This book should be read similarly, as a how-to book about how to do nothing. Obviously, the “how-to” part is easy. The “why” part will take some explanation. Idleness may be a loathsome monster, but it’s a monster you should get to know.
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    From an evolutionary perspective, going back a couple of million years, when homo sapien-like species were beginning to evolve more advanced cultures, one thing that distinguished us from the apes was the ability to plan for the future.
    For example, apes are known to be proficient tool users, but they only seem to use the tools in their immediate vicinity. Chimpanzees often use nearby twigs to lure ants out of a colony. But no chimpanzees have been seen to carry a twig for miles, knowing that they might get hungry later and there might be an ant colony along the way.
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