The Joy of Not Working

The Joy of Not Working (or The Success of the Lazy / Slacker's Success - Ernie J. Zelinski).

The Success of the Lazy (2002 - Ernie J. Zelinski) is a book aimed at discussing the virtues of creativity versus daily or excessive work. The book leaves a lot to be desired. I didn't like it much. It has a somewhat misleading title. It has a good idea regarding leisure, relaxation, distraction, and everything that should be encouraged in people, to a certain extent, to face and solve problems that originate in work. In itself, it is written in a particular way that I didn't like: one page only contains phrases, no more than five, and the text is on the other page. In other words, if formatted normally, the actual text would take up just a little more than half of what the book currently is, rather than how it is presented.

The worst chapter is the one where the author dwells on speaking very poorly of workaholics, talking about them while forgetting many things and accusing them of all kinds of evils. Instead of speaking well or at least offering a fair critique, he goes out of his way to talk trash like a small-time gossip—a topic he shouldn't even touch upon, since it is not what the book is supposed to be about and/or conveying.

Also, in his attack on workaholics, it contains phrases like how they neglect "the good things in life"—that is, abstract, meaningless phrases that say nothing.

The book doesn't say much that one doesn't already know, and it contains many quotes from various authors. It talks about first-world countries, where opportunities are different from those in underdeveloped countries. On some occasions, the author speaks with a sort of disdain for those who work.

It also gets some things right for my taste; it's not like everything in what little he wrote is bad. It presents a few options for creativity, being independent, and two or three others, but the system is different—that's not enough. I believe his idea lacked greater options; they exist and many writers explain them, but the truth is this author does not.

The need for poorly paid and excessive work is simply not addressed in the book. Instead, the author dedicates himself to speaking ill of those who are in those conditions, but avoids presenting solutions or perspective. The author's ignorance of the reality of underdevelopment is clear.

It is true that the discourse comes from countries that are powerful in various aspects of the world, such as the USA and Canada, but he avoids dealing with the issue of the price paid to be powerful. Perhaps that price comes from the work and effort of many of their moderately governed fellow citizens as well, with respect to countries that are not, and in effect, those who work hard get their reward or return.

I don't know if the author, in an underdeveloped country, would have had the opportunity he had in a developed country to be able to write this book, which, in my view, is not recommendable at all.

I mention the developed/underdeveloped difference solely for the purpose of reviewing this book. In reality, the differences are different and cover various aspects: cultural, stability, economy, education, etc. Ultimately, the parameters are different. But for the purpose of reviewing this book, I used those two concepts.