> idleness carries connotations of laziness

I actually like that it does. I'm lazy, and that's not a bad thing. I show up to work every day and get the job done with bare minimal effort, and then I go home an laze around with the lazy dogs, lazy family, and lazy friends. There's nothing wrong with that, but some people think there is. That connotation is useful in identifying those people, because they aren't people that I want to associate with further.

I have never practiced Buddhism and it is still indescribably blissful to sit in a clearing in a forest, provided you aren't sitting on the wrong kind of anthill.

Is there a right kind of anthill to sit on?

In my area, the wrong kind of anthill contains anything in the genus Myrmecia, and the right kind contains almost anything else.

I used to play on top of a giant (for a kid me, anyway) anthill in a nearby forest.

That's how I learned that forest ants, at least the local ones, are incredibly docile. I never got bothered by them.

Bullet ants, on the other hand, are not fun. Not even a little bit.

If you’re an ant, sure!

There's a Far Side cartoon in that

"Oh boy, look at that all that melting ice cream.. I hope he sits on our anthill!"

black ants, cuz they tickle the nethers instead of biting them

I would love to do this except I'm a magnet for bugs. My bliss only lasts 5 minutes or so.

The jargon term, slack, comes to mind, in the concept-cluster of the old Google 20%-time, Slackware Linux, and Church of the SubGenius.

I've never seen it mentioned anywhere in their histories but I always suspected the messaging apps Slack and Discord were references to Church of Subgenius and Discordianism respectively

In general use though slack has an even stronger connotation of e.g. slacking off and not doing anything useful with the time.

Alternatively, ensuring you have enough slack in the schedule is, at least for some tech leads and project managers, an essential tool to enable meeting deadlines.

(So, I suppose using "slack" in a positive sense by project management, while probably still being considered a pejorative thing by non technical management or beancounters...)

yep, having some slack is the only way for someone / something to able to respond to uncertainty. technically having firefighter on standby and policemen on patrol are a form of slacking, and we (should) have no problem with that.

and Bob with his Billard pipe, now as you brought these up!

My father did not smoke, but many of his colleagues did which some did look 60's bit like Bob. For some odd reason I still kind of remember what tobacco and pipe smell felt in room when I begin to think of it, like now in this occasion.

Slackers! You're all slackers! [0]

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tEsNiV8e4ko

I think I would say a better variant would be "the importance of being still"

As a french I like the term "idle", as the state my computer switch to when i'm not asking it anything.

It’s interesting that it mostly translates to paresseux (lazy) and not the more obscure oisif (leisurly idleness)

L'oisiveté est la mère de tous les vices ;-) Which is a lie of course.

Agreed. Meditation and mindfulness have confirmed the importance of “being idle,” at least for me. Making an active effort to not be distracted by thought is quite the challenge, but it has brought me great peace.

> It feels like there is no correct translation for it in English

Mindfulness, contemplation, mediation, being at leisure, stillness, serenity, tranquility, repose...

How strong the connotations of laziness are with the word idle probably vary with context and culture, and I wonder how much ti has varied historically.

Why do people(you, in this case, but this is a very common fallacy) assume that advocating for one thing(idleness) is implicitly advocating against its opposite(work)? We can do both, just not simultaneously.

Because the article's title is "The Importance of Being Idle" not The Importance of doing something that you enjoy"? It's all-too-easy to enjoy being idle, but ultimately it's also a bit mindless, and this deprives us of deeper forms of enjoyment and engagement.

it seems like you are interpreting this as an argument for "not doing work" - but it's not the case. It is more so saying that rest is important too. You ever have the experience that you are bashing your head against something, take a break to stop working on it, and come back refreshed and solve it quickly? Just because something is important, doesn't mean you should do that thing, single-mindedly, at the expense of other things.

Two things can be important

I start my day with deliberate idleness. Just coffee and music in my living room, or tea on the balcony.

Productivity needs purpose and direction, and you find those through pausing and looking around you.

This reminds me of our painting teacher randomly forcing the whole class to put their paintbrushes down, take a step back and see if their painting still makes sense. Otherwise you get stuck on details while your perspective is all wrong.

The two states are in no way in opposition to each other. In fact, experiencing deep meditation can improve one's ability to get into that desired productive flow.