Sarah who always posts these great links - just posted this 37 Signals post on FB; Urgency is Poisonous about a companies decision to move to a four day work week, and how much they are enjoying it. It not only because it supports a theory I have about how full-time work is pretty bluhh... But I also like it for the comments which are replete with a bunch of work addicts basically asking - "but how many hours are people actually working?" And the writer repetitively saying, "I don't care how many hours people work, I care that they get the stuff they need to get done, done." Finally winding up saying - most people in an eight hour workday actually do four hours of work. That's one of those little truths that needs to be said *way* more often, and not in the sense of - how can we stop people from telling knock knock jokes at work, but in the sense of how can we realize that the number of hours a person spends working is not the ne plus ultra of life.

There was something else I wanted to write here, but I accidentally on purpose made myself a second cup of coffee and now I feel that sweaty eyeball feeling which means I need to go and run around outside.

Oh yeah, just before I run around, this is it: In an interesting little coincidence, I also came across this project at Oxford university, it's hard to accurately date this initiative but I like that teh focus seems to be "promoting a dilletantism as a way of life" Okay that's not what Project Muse says, it's what I say, but basically this is a project to inspire more complex more inspiring more emotionally nuanced interactions between people. As they say on their site:

We are called the Muse because we bring together people who want inspiration to think more imaginatively, to cultivate their emotions through practice of the arts, to understand the past better and to have a clearer vision of the future. The Muses of mythology were not teachers or lawmakers but catalysts who brought excitement and a divine spark into everyday lives, enabling people to see and to say what normally they dared not; they asked not for worship but to be celebrated in festivity, banquets, song and dance. Our aim is to enable people to become muses to one another.

No I don't think it sounds super-dippy only a little dippy, and yes I do believe that if people relaxed a bit about work, and started trying for the above in their relationships at work and at home, we may actually get somewhere in terms of making the world a bit of a nicer place to live.

This of course does not apply to the people who sit next to you on airplanes and discuss annoying things while you are trying to watch a film. They shouldn't try to make conversation, they should let you watch your movie in peace and quiet ;)

Oh god the eyeballs I gotta get out of here.