Laziness. How the Reluctance to Work Created Civilization. Trevor Norwood

Is laziness really a vice? For centuries, it has been considered a weakness, a moral flaw, or even a mortal sin. But what if the very unwillingness to work sometimes became the engine of progress?

The book offers to look at the history of mankind from an unexpected side - as a history of people who constantly tried to do less, but smarter. From the Greek philosophy of leisure and medieval ideas about the sin of laziness to the factory clocks of the industrial era, from the sofas of thinkers to modern gyms and smartphones - this journey shows how our attitude to work, rest, and free time has changed. The book features Socrates and the Taoists, Proust and Keynes, Schweik, and modern office workers trying to find a balance between productivity and the right to do nothing sometimes.

In a world of automation, artificial intelligence, and constant employment, the old question of laziness takes on new meaning. Perhaps the future will require from us not only the ability to work, but also the ability to learn to be lazy - and even learn to live with laziness. Because sometimes it is precisely the unwillingness to do unnecessary things that opens the way to the most important inventions of civilization.