Can not working help us do more?

If you're my boss and you catch me in the middle of the working day, sitting at my desk, staring at the wall blankly, not having moved a mouse - let alone an extra-ocular muscle - for up to 20 minutes straight, don't mind me.

- 

I'm practising niksen- and Dr Joseph Jebelli recommended it for the benefit of my mental health and overall productivity levels.

Yes, this treatment is necessary to ease my "overgeneralised guilt disorder" - that's OGD for short and yes I will be getting a badge printed, but please for the love of God don't give up your seat on the Tube for me.

I got my new diagnosis midway through Jebelli's book, The Brain at Rest: Why Doing Nothing Can Change Your Life - and the bad news is that you may well have this affliction too.

Cynicism aside, it's hard not to agree with the central premise of this book: we are overworked, overstimulated and generally find it hard to switch off. A myriad health conditions follow, from the credible, like heart disease, to the incredible, like blindness in one eye. This is not a new observation but neither is it an issue we have solved, so you can't fault the man for trying to address it.

This he does in 190 pages of science, diary entries and practical tips which will slide neatly onto your self-help shelf - though I suspect it will become more common as a "gift" from the pleading partner to their overworked spouse.

If so, it may activate the overworker's contrarian tendencies. Jebelli's pro-rest thesis is heavily annotated via a litany of scientific surveys - some more convincing than others.

That nine per cent of the world overworks feels quite meaningless without context. In sweatshops?