The Sloth Ethic

Everyone’s favourite productivity tool is a moleskine notebook. But they can also be equally useful for not getting things done.

(photo thanks to Lost In Scotland)

Moleskines are wonderful quality notebooks. So wonderful, in fact that it is a crime to despoil the silky cream opulence of the paper by anything so mundane as writing in them. Revel in the off-white expanses. Stroke the pages. Keep them pure. They will love you for it. And you will love them.

There are many varieties of moleskine for you to buy, arrange on a shelf, fondle and think about maybe, one day, using, secure in the knowledge that you will never give in to temptation and ruin them forever with your inane and inky ramblings. You can buy lined moleskines to not write notes in, squared moleskines to not draw graphs in, and moleskine diaries to not keep your appointments in. But remember, these are the notebooks of Chatwin and Van Gogh, Hemingway and Indiana Jones’s dad. The moment you write “think about idea for novel – epic sweep and moral weight like Dostoi Dosteyev Dostoyi Tolstoy only with man-eating slug attacks” you will curse and decide that notebook’s ruined, and decide to buy a new one to keep the really good thoughts in. And that’s why a moleskine is better than any old notebook – they are harder to get hold of than any old scrap you can pick up anywhere, and therefore buying one takes up lots of time you could otherwise spend doing something sordid and distasteful, like working.

If you do succumb to writing in it, do not worry, all is not lost. Scribbling in a moleskine is a tremendous alternative to doing anything productive – if the urge strikes you to get something done, then simply spend a few minutes, or hours, outlining your project plans in your new notebook. You’ll need some detailed brainstorming, several mind maps, a list of spin-off projects, a list of things that you’ve thought of during that you maybe want to write down anyway, a list of possible names that you could call a dog should you find one that’s really not that keen on walking, a picture of a dog, a picture of a dog which you can draw without the pen leaving the paper, a picture of a cat because you don’t want to leave them out because they are truly the gods of sloth and you want to appease Bastet – and lo…the urge to do something productive has drifted away like dandelion seeds in a freshening breeze.

Other uses for your moleskine are as a place to store notes about things you really don’t like and would rather not do again, prices of hammocks for that shady spot in your garden, or best of all, notes that will make no sense when you look at them two days later.

Get F&D with VB. Stamp. Stamp?
Don’t forget Qu. 67 – 9A. WTF p84? Mem: a seventeenth, no more.
Romney! Romney!

There is a down side though, to the notebook obsession. A dark side. It is terribly distressing when there’s an occasional quality control failure and you unwrap your moleskine only to find the snout still attached, or a sad little webbed digger paw hanging still and cold beside your handy ribbon bookmark. Do please offer up a thought for the small ones that made your lovely, strokable cover possible.

Tags: moleskine, not getting things done, procrastination, producivity