The Sloth Ethic

There’s a worrying cult at work in the world. It proselytizes at seminars, and through innocent looking web sites. It spreads its insidious message through books that are shelved in ordinary bookshops, where even children could see them.

You can tell its adherents by their pallor, their bleary eyed thousand yard stare, the stains on their shirts from where their shaking hands, have trembled some of their espresso doppio.

These are the believers who professs that sleep is nothing more than an inconvenience. They believe that if only sleep was shorter, life would be longer, and they could do more, and then sleep less, and then do even more, and then more and more until life was nothing but a triumphant orgy of getting one thing done after another, a glittering parade of achievement and success. I I could sleep half the time I do now, I could run twenty miles every morning, work on one new innovative business proposal after another, finish a chapter of the novel every week, everything faster, sooner, better. Well, faster, maybe.

Because of course, life’s not quite like that. The cultists will stagger from task to task like indecsive butterflies, desperately substituting variety for commitment, because it’s the only way that they can keep going. They’ll snap at their kids, grouse at their spouse, and drink so much coffee their stomachs are sour, and their moods even worse. They’ll drive like they’re drunk. And they’ll make sure that everybody, just everybody, knows about their sleep-sacrificing feats. But their captive audiences at the dinner table or bar will also notice how, when the speaker is listing all the things they gain from giving up on the self-indulgence that is a good kip, they tend to lose their train of thought a lot, and end up mumbling.

But hey, they’re being productive. And being productive now is like being a good Catholic at the time of the Inquisition. (Famous short sleepers: Napoleon Bonaparte, Margaret Thatcher.)

So new drugs like modafinil are welcomed like a cure for cancer. After all, scientists don’t even yet know for sure why we need to sleep, the science of chronobiology is still in its infancy.

And sleep is regarded as a curse to be got through as quickly as possible. No relishing the gorgeous soft sink into cool white sheets for the new puritans of productivity. No revelling in the joys of smacking the snooze button so hard the whole damn clock might be broken and hey ho, who cares, not I. No lying with a lover half-asleep, half-awake, listening to the clatter and rumble of the street as the world comes alive outside, not caring because the two of you have a world of your own, encompassed in the infinity of the bed.

Not for them the dozey bliss of an extra hour. No, for them it is four hour sleep slots timed to match their sleep cycle, supplemented by grim-faced powernaps in the afternoon. There’s a lot given away by the terminology there. Not siesta, with all the relaxation that involves. Not forty winks, the endearing slumber of a half-drunk grandad on a sofa at Christmas. No, they have powernaps. Gosh wow. They’re so tough and committed they even sleep hard.

Donald Trump wrote in his book Think Like a Billionaire: “I have friends who are successful and sleep ten hours a night, and I ask them, ‘How can you compete against people like me if I sleep only four hours?’ It rarely can be done. No matter how brilliant you are, there’s not enough time in the day.”

Motivational guru Brian Tracy is even more emphatic: ‘Getting up late, having fun at work, these are all for losers.’

Oh dear. It sounds rather bitter, doesn’t it? Like the way a person who’s given up cigarettes a couple of months ago will rail and rail against the evils of the weed. But that’s ok. We can forgive them. They are just being grouchy, bless. it’s understandable. After all, they’ve not had enough sleep.

Now, blessings light on him that first invented sleep! It covers a man all over, thoughts and all, like a cloak; it is meat for the hungry, drink for the thirsty, heat for the cold, and cold for the hot. It is the current coin that purchases all the pleasures of the world cheap, and the balance that sets the king and the shepherd, the fool and the wise man, even. ~Miguel de Cervantes, Don Quixote, 1605

Tags: idling, power nap, productivity, sleep, slow, unproductivity