Tired of expending all your spare energy on self-improvement programs and repeatedly having your hopes dashed when you fail? You are a candidate for becoming a sloth. In this funny and satirical volume in The Seven Deadly Sins series published by Oxford University Press, Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Wendy Wasserstein (The Heidi Chronicles) presents her regimen for slowing down, dropping out, and letting go. She admits: "I have followed endless self-improvement regimens. I have spent thousands of dollars on diet books, exercise books, cooking books, and spiritual guidance books. They always seem to be the answer for around three weeks and then the system starts to unravel. . . . Having failed at improving my external life, I decided to focus on inner peace. If I couldn't learn to communicate, or eat only protein, then perhaps I could become singularly still. The more I concentrated on tranquility, however, the more nervous I became. The longer I visualized a stress-free life and the harmony of one, the harder it was for me to get to sleep at night. I couldn't align my chakras. I couldn't even maintain the downward dog!"

Then Wasserstein discovered a new lifestyle that redefines human potential. It used to be called acedia, the sluggish sin, by the monastic Christians in the desert during the third century. Today, according to the author, it is the fastest growing lifestyle movement in the world, and that's because it is totally doable. "Sloth is guaranteed to keep you well-rounded." Check out the sloth mantra:

S - Sit instead of stand.
L - Let yourself go.
O - Open your mouth.
T - Toil no more
H - Happiness is within me.

Wasserstein exposes the ten lies about sloth including that it is an anticapitalist conspiracy and that it causes bad breath. She salutes the ten rules of sloth — such proclamations as "nothing is urgent," "stop competing," "food is no longer an issue," and "do not clean up." All of this is part of the process of lethargiosis — eliminating energy and drive from you life. At the end of the book, you will find extensive charts on an "Activity Gram Counter." Fifty grams of activity a day to qualify as a true sloth. For example, putting down The New York Times in exchange for In Style magazine is 20 grams.

Sloth is a hoot and nicely satirizes the extent to which so many self-improvement programs bring nothing but unhappiness and self-disgust to so many people.