When the day comes, I remember how much I loathe flying. I seethe at the humiliation of airport security checks.

My hope is that flexible working and varying shift patterns will give workers a taste for idling and that they will gradually demand greater reductions in the length of the working week.

Although I played a lot of computer games in my 20s, now I have children of my own I hate them with a passion.

Often, the things that a lot of work has gone into have been incredibly bad because they're over-worked.

There are a lot of little tricks you can do to inject a bit more time into the day. Most important is limiting yourself to a 40 hour week, not working 50 hours or 60 or 70. It's just crazy. It's actually irresponsible to you and irresponsible to your family and friends. Why should your employer's profits be more important than your own family? You're not even going to get any of the profits - all you get is not losing your job. It's a very negative system.

Paradoxically, to be truly idle, you also have to be efficient.

The best thing that can happen to anybody is to be sacked or made redundant because often that's when you think, "I don't want to become one of the living dead. I haven't got anything to lose, now I can start to follow my own dreams."