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How to Do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy
When the technologies we use every day collapse our experiences into 24/7 availability, platforms for personal branding, and products to be monetized, nothing can be quite so radical as… doing nothing. Here, Jenny Odell sends up a flare from the heart of Silicon Valley, delivering an action plan to resist capitalist narratives of productivity and techno-determinism, and to become more meaningfully connected in the process.
232 pages, Hardcover
First published April 9, 2019
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April 26, 2019
First, I understand the negative reviews of this book. The title is misleading as this is not at all a how-to on unplugging or leaving social media (for that, maybe read Cal Newport’s Digital Minimalism or Catherine Price’s How to Break Up With Your Phone). Instead it’s a really well-researched book on some abstract and sometimes seemingly esoteric concepts: the self, attention, bioregionalism, what it means to refuse/resist in place, and the effects of late stage capitalism on all of the above.
There is really no how-to in this book, and I don’t think Odell’s work here can be even halfway summarized with buzzwords like “mindfulness” or “digital detox” or whatever. The bulk of this book is about the things that we are unable to do when our attention is tied up in social media or the news cycle. Yes, at the most basic level, social media and the news cycle take away our ability to reflect and think deeply about what’s actually happening underneath the status updates and headlines. But beyond that, it can erode our relationships with other people, with time, and with the environment around us. What parts of our identities get lost when we boil all of our ideas down to 280-character tweets that offend no one? When we think of people as brands and corporations as people, how does that effect our ability to actually connect with others or even with ourselves?
Odell first asks us to rethink the idea of “usefulness” and to really challenge this tendency to think of time and attention as commodities, something we’ve mostly taken for granted in the gig economy. She uses an example of an old-growth redwood tree in Oakland that is useless for human consumption — ironically it is its “uselessness” that saves it from being cut down for timber, making it the only tree of its generation to survive. They even call it “Old Survivor.”
Yes, there are parts of the book that were near-inaccessible. Many of her descriptions of art exhibits were difficult to grasp, and her focus on bioregionalism was sometimes challenging to get through. I imagine there are a lot of us who just don’t see ourselves giving up our phones for a life of birdwatching or going to symphonies where a pianist plays nothing for three movements. But I thought of those parts as stretching my limits of understanding — this book was kind of a key to get me to try to pay attention to something different. I did, admittedly, download the iNaturalist app after reading this book.
What I appreciate about Odell’s approach is that she earnestly considers race and class in the how and why of resisting the attention economy. When reading Digital Minimalism, I found Newport had some stark blind spots — he says little of race and class, and women were conspicuously absent from his book. In contrast, Odell’s references are wonderfully diverse; yes, she references Thoreau a lot, but she also draws wisdom from Audre Lorde, labor movements, and environmental justice, among many other things. She provides historical context to all this, as an antidote to social media’s tendency to keep us forever anxious about the present.
Also, while other books about the same topic tend to treat the hijacking of our attention and the tyranny of algorithms as foregone conclusions, thereby making digital detoxing seem like a life or death situation, Odell manages to avoid sensationalizing and instead invites us to another way.
What had me screaming “YAS QUEEN” at my Kindle was the stuff she had to say about the right to not express oneself. I am a writer, but in the past two years I rather counterintuitively deleted my Twitter and Facebook accounts (my whole platform!) because I was so f*cking tired of reading everyone’s hot takes and of the pressure of having to constantly post hot takes myself. I wanted silence, the time and space to actually think my own thoughts about a situation or event or thing. I also really wanted to consider the question of what makes an opinion worth expressing and why. I truly thought I stood alone on this, that maybe I was just bitter because I haven’t been able to quit my day job for “a job in social media that I’m passionate about” that seemingly everyone on Twitter has. It was comforting and refreshing to know that someone out there felt the same way and was able to articulate those feelings much better than I ever could.
There is really no how-to in this book, and I don’t think Odell’s work here can be even halfway summarized with buzzwords like “mindfulness” or “digital detox” or whatever. The bulk of this book is about the things that we are unable to do when our attention is tied up in social media or the news cycle. Yes, at the most basic level, social media and the news cycle take away our ability to reflect and think deeply about what’s actually happening underneath the status updates and headlines. But beyond that, it can erode our relationships with other people, with time, and with the environment around us. What parts of our identities get lost when we boil all of our ideas down to 280-character tweets that offend no one? When we think of people as brands and corporations as people, how does that effect our ability to actually connect with others or even with ourselves?
Odell first asks us to rethink the idea of “usefulness” and to really challenge this tendency to think of time and attention as commodities, something we’ve mostly taken for granted in the gig economy. She uses an example of an old-growth redwood tree in Oakland that is useless for human consumption — ironically it is its “uselessness” that saves it from being cut down for timber, making it the only tree of its generation to survive. They even call it “Old Survivor.”
Yes, there are parts of the book that were near-inaccessible. Many of her descriptions of art exhibits were difficult to grasp, and her focus on bioregionalism was sometimes challenging to get through. I imagine there are a lot of us who just don’t see ourselves giving up our phones for a life of birdwatching or going to symphonies where a pianist plays nothing for three movements. But I thought of those parts as stretching my limits of understanding — this book was kind of a key to get me to try to pay attention to something different. I did, admittedly, download the iNaturalist app after reading this book.
What I appreciate about Odell’s approach is that she earnestly considers race and class in the how and why of resisting the attention economy. When reading Digital Minimalism, I found Newport had some stark blind spots — he says little of race and class, and women were conspicuously absent from his book. In contrast, Odell’s references are wonderfully diverse; yes, she references Thoreau a lot, but she also draws wisdom from Audre Lorde, labor movements, and environmental justice, among many other things. She provides historical context to all this, as an antidote to social media’s tendency to keep us forever anxious about the present.
Also, while other books about the same topic tend to treat the hijacking of our attention and the tyranny of algorithms as foregone conclusions, thereby making digital detoxing seem like a life or death situation, Odell manages to avoid sensationalizing and instead invites us to another way.
What had me screaming “YAS QUEEN” at my Kindle was the stuff she had to say about the right to not express oneself. I am a writer, but in the past two years I rather counterintuitively deleted my Twitter and Facebook accounts (my whole platform!) because I was so f*cking tired of reading everyone’s hot takes and of the pressure of having to constantly post hot takes myself. I wanted silence, the time and space to actually think my own thoughts about a situation or event or thing. I also really wanted to consider the question of what makes an opinion worth expressing and why. I truly thought I stood alone on this, that maybe I was just bitter because I haven’t been able to quit my day job for “a job in social media that I’m passionate about” that seemingly everyone on Twitter has. It was comforting and refreshing to know that someone out there felt the same way and was able to articulate those feelings much better than I ever could.
June 6, 2019
Collective self-help for middle-class leftist intelligentsia. Has the feeling of taking a leisurely stroll with your loony hippie friend who is at once an overeducated ecosocialist and a crackpot Zen mind-hacker. You have no idea why she loves birdwatching so much (to her it's a proto-spiritual experience, to you it seems superficially like playing Pokémon Go) nor can you figure out how she affords to live on the Oakland-Piedmont border without a full-time job. The slick meta-takeaway is that the very act of reading this book is an exercise in the kind of deliberate anti-productivity that Odell is urging. Can't decide if this is 2 or 4 stars so I'll give it a 3.
July 11, 2019
full disclosure i literally only had one page left to read in this book but i left my backpack with it inside a chipotle, anyways it still changed my life
July 10, 2019
It's hard for me to reconcile that the fundamental things the author talks about in this book: the attention economy, its link to capitalism, how we all need to slow down and think about what we're doing, are all true, and yet the tone is just so smug, lecturing, and talking down at the reader from the lofty heights of liberal academia, as opposed to rooted in the real world where the reader is, with the problem at hand.
To give you an idea of one of the sentences: "If we think about what it means to 'concentrate' or 'pay attention' at an individual level, it implies alignment: different parts of the mind and even the body acting in concert and oriented towards the same thing."
Why not just say, "Concentrating means the body and the mind working together"?
The whole book is like this, very hard to get through, meandering through the author's personal journey and a checklist of philosophers who are too much to take in at times.
It's a real shame, because the message, at its core, is very good.
To give you an idea of one of the sentences: "If we think about what it means to 'concentrate' or 'pay attention' at an individual level, it implies alignment: different parts of the mind and even the body acting in concert and oriented towards the same thing."
Why not just say, "Concentrating means the body and the mind working together"?
The whole book is like this, very hard to get through, meandering through the author's personal journey and a checklist of philosophers who are too much to take in at times.
It's a real shame, because the message, at its core, is very good.
November 30, 2020
Woman discovers trees and then shares the experience in a language that the rest of us use to write grant proposals.
October 14, 2021
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While reading this book, I kept thinking about this article I read once while crammed onto the packed and sweaty train. In one of many social media influencer scandals, a raw vegan lifestyle influencer was coming under fire because she was caught eating a meat dish while out at a restaurant with friends. Needless to say, it was the internet and people were MAD. And yes, you might say that she had every right to eat that meat-- it is her life. But when you are manufacturing your entire brand around the idea that eating meat is bad, and raw vegan is better, the message starts to ring a little false if you don't walk the walk (or veg the veg). You know what they say-- talk is cheap. Her life was her brand and she went off-brand, and people felt duped.
Jenny Odell doesn't do anything so deceptive in her book, HOW TO DO NOTHING, but the message rings similarly false for a wide variety of reasons. It isn't that I don't believe she isn't living her brand: it's that her brand comes at a cost that is really not affordable for a very large number of people.
First, a caveat: on Goodreads this is shelved as self-help and psychology-- it is neither. This is a philosophical treatise on how the author feels that we can live in a better world by disengaging from the attention economy and finding authentic, meaningful things to focus on instead of spending all our time on social media (more on that to come). It reads a lot like the lifestyle influencer's hot take on THE SUBTLE ART OF NOT GIVING A F*CK, another book that cherry picked its way into an argument and really annoyed me. (Maybe I just shouldn't be reading philosophy self-helps.)
✨ The author is an artist and an art teacher at Stanford (which she will mention several times). One of the things she suggests focusing on instead of social media is art (as well as nature). There are many passages where she waxes on the transformative nature of art and the many museums she's had the pleasure of exploring in the Bay Area. There is a sort of intellectual snobbery placed here in the subtext: things like social media are reduced to "shouting into the void," and one can't help but feel like one is down in the stands while the author sneers from the sky box in her high tower. "Oh the rabble!" one can't help but feel she is projecting with this mindset, "Mired in their Facebooks and their Pinterests like the opiates of the masses!" as she waters an artisinal fern. Art and nature are wonderful, but those are things that are not readily consumed by all, and often require privilege to access, and I think it's offensive to deduce that there are no meaningful conversations or discoveries occurring on the internet, where discourse and art are shared freely. Plus, not everyone is going to get something out of nature and art, and they will not enjoy it to the same degree. The internet offers many opportunities to those who might otherwise have none, and even though social media is by no means a perfect democracy, it has helped democratize information and resources, and help others be seen who might not otherwise have been seen.
✨ The author is a proponent of bioregionalism, which I had to look up and is apparently, according to the Oxford dictionary, "belief that human activity should be largely restricted to distinct ecological and geographical regions." Which again, smacks of privilege because this is coming from someone who lives in the Bay Area and freely consumes the fresh produce, natural parks, abundant artworks, and cultural diversity that thrives here. But what if you live somewhere where there's a food desert in a low-income region of a big city where getting fresh food, let alone local food, might be difficult or even impossible? What if you live in a climate with frequent poor weather conditions, or where resources to better oneself are few? Bioregionalism only really works in regions that thrive already: regions, in other words, with privilege.
✨ The author seems to place a very high premium on authenticity and unique experiences (hence the nature and art). She frowns on algorithms for being too comfortable and for preventing those outlier experiences that may prove to be transformative (the example here is that Spotify gives her a "chill" mix, but she finds enjoyable songs from other genres on the radio). She bemoans how Burning Man has essentially become a glamping corporate retreat, and yearns for those rustic days of illicit bonfires and bare bones exchanges of gifts and resources. But this too is a sort of privilege; it implies that one has the time and resources to risk a purchase or experience that isn't familiar, comfortable, or safe. Not everyone can afford such a luxury, and while algorithms have their problems-- I'm thinking of that article that showed how watching right-wing videos on YouTube gradually takes you down a rabbit hole of extremism that results in racist, fascist rhetoric-- they are not completely evil. I actually found this author's book through Goodreads's recommendation algorithm: it was suggested reading for Marie Kondo's Life Changing Magic of Tidying Up, which is hilarious, because that is another book that also fails to check its own privilege, and probably appeals to the same demographic as this one.
✨ To her credit, the author does make a last-ditch effort in the conclusion to say that she understands that nature and art are not readily accessible everywhere, and that one should not finish this book leaving with just one conclusion. So it's clear she does have some degree of self-awareness when it comes to the accessibility of her message. But when the entire book is built on condemning everything that makes social media easy and addictive, and building up luxuries as necessities, it's hard to swallow that message and not grimace. At the end of the day, social media is like medicine or a tool: something that can be abused and become dangerous in the wrong hands, but that serves a purpose and is essential for carrying out certain functions or making things run well. I recently received a digital detox workbook which I ended up discarding because I found it too frustrating. With the work that I do, I can't afford to just step away from email for the day.
With Black Lives Matter happening right now, there's been a lot of controversy about creators, influencers, and social media presences who have chosen to step away from social media rather than get involved. And I get that refusing to get involved in protests against civil rights violations is a VERY different matter from turning off Spotify or not using email for the day, but both scenarios carry with the the same basic fundamental elements of privilege: the only people who can afford to step away from the conversations are the people who already know that they won't be negatively impacted by the outcome. Black individuals can't step away from the Black Lives Matter movement. They don't get to block and curate their way to a "safe space" where the unpleasant discourse goes away: Black Lives Matter is their reality, their conversation, and it's one that they are fighting to change. Similarly, people who don't have land lines, or who might not live near a library, and rely on Facebook and the web for their important day to day communications and essential information can't afford to "go dark" for their own mental health, and the transformative experiences that await them in the wilderness or the financial or artisinal districts of their nearest cities might be too far to drive to. Those living in rural or low-income places, devoid of natural or physical resources, can't step away from the conversation that keeps everything running.
There's a chart in psychology called Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs that basically states that you can't really focus on self-actualization until all of your basic needs are met. This book would have you skip right to the top, and while it's nice if you're at that point and things are working so well for you, a lot of people aren't at that place and some of them never will be. HOW TO DO NOTHING is a book that only appeals to a very niche demographic, and it appeals to a demographic with a very specific range of hobbies and interests which might not be shared by all. I found it incredibly frustrating and irritating by turns, and only finished out of a sense of stunned awe. I'm sure this author is not advocating a total cessation of social media, and maybe if she had framed her points better, and focused on points that were more relatable, this would have been a much better book. But in the beginning, she issues a caveat essentially saying that this book wouldn't be linear and doesn't take you to any specific conclusion, and that she changes her mind several times (paraphrased). Which, okay. That sounds like a cop out to me, and if you're not sure what the message is of the conversation that you'd rather we'd have instead, why should we bother to listen?
Of course, this is my reading of this book and your own opinion may vary drastically from mine. I write this as someone who loves art and culture, eats locally, and tries to enjoy nature whenever she can, but also as someone who understands that it is my privilege that enables me to enjoy these things. I also write this as a blogger and creator who heavily relies on social media to do my work and has perfected the art of "shouting into the void" to achieve meaningful discourse. I can see why HOW TO DO NOTHING appeals to so many, but I also completely sympathize with every negative review where the writer found the book too pretentious or too privileged to relate to.
For many, it will be.
1 star
June 16, 2020
This was a strange, meandering, prone-to-tangents, quirky book but I really enjoyed it. I think a lot of people would feel that it was too meandering but as an audiobook I liked hearing Odell's thoughts on how the attention economy and hustle culture is affecting our lives!
September 4, 2019
Odell has some interesting points but good lord does it seem like she would be exhausting to talk to at a party
May 2, 2019
I found Odell to be a great writer, truly. She has an airy, atmospheric and journalistic tone to her prose, while also imbuing her ideas with an impressive amount of supporting research.
However, this book doesn't know what it wants to be - a guide for others, or her personal journaling/thesis on how the author lives her life. The basis on which it was written, at first, is to demonstrate resisting a constant state of capitalist productivity - so the idea presented here is for those of us who have drunk the Kool Aid from the Digital Detox movement, realized that it has its own agenda (making sure your time is well spent...in productivity, of course), and are looking for alternate philosophies to navigating today's murky waters, while insisting fishies pulling us in all possible directions...
If Cal Newport's Deep Work/Digital Minimalism is at one end of the spectrum, telling you how to free up space in your life for what is important (with the focus, however, being on economically important work/craft), How to Do Nothing is at the other end - this doesn't discuss actually doing nothing at all with your life, but making space for the the ephemeral, soul-growing-type things which make us human, that aren't, and can never be, quantified by an economy as ''useful''. Things such as this can include: communing with nature (sitting in parks, walks, hikes, gardening, the like), connecting with strangers/your community, art (in all contextual mediums), personal activities such as making your own autonomous choices about what to read/watch/enjoy, and others.
However, the bulk of Odells' book spends too much of its time explaining the cultural, historical, and empirical evidence for how the author herself ''does nothing'' via birdwatching (bird ''listening'', rather), creating/speaking about art, trying to reconnect with her Bay Area land/neighborhoods...which is all great for her, but doesn't necessarily connect with the reader, and it didn't connect with me at all. Even her final chapter bit about social media provided no new insights other than what you'd probably discuss with your own friends/family or overhear at a coffee shop.
While I do appreciate her own insights, I didn't feel that this book accomplished what it sought out to do - ''how'' to do nothing implies a methodology, an organized way of thinking through a process - even if the process is more philosophical than material - which was lacking here. Perhaps this had better been called ''I did Nothing: And Resisted the Attention Economy''.
However, this book doesn't know what it wants to be - a guide for others, or her personal journaling/thesis on how the author lives her life. The basis on which it was written, at first, is to demonstrate resisting a constant state of capitalist productivity - so the idea presented here is for those of us who have drunk the Kool Aid from the Digital Detox movement, realized that it has its own agenda (making sure your time is well spent...in productivity, of course), and are looking for alternate philosophies to navigating today's murky waters, while insisting fishies pulling us in all possible directions...
If Cal Newport's Deep Work/Digital Minimalism is at one end of the spectrum, telling you how to free up space in your life for what is important (with the focus, however, being on economically important work/craft), How to Do Nothing is at the other end - this doesn't discuss actually doing nothing at all with your life, but making space for the the ephemeral, soul-growing-type things which make us human, that aren't, and can never be, quantified by an economy as ''useful''. Things such as this can include: communing with nature (sitting in parks, walks, hikes, gardening, the like), connecting with strangers/your community, art (in all contextual mediums), personal activities such as making your own autonomous choices about what to read/watch/enjoy, and others.
However, the bulk of Odells' book spends too much of its time explaining the cultural, historical, and empirical evidence for how the author herself ''does nothing'' via birdwatching (bird ''listening'', rather), creating/speaking about art, trying to reconnect with her Bay Area land/neighborhoods...which is all great for her, but doesn't necessarily connect with the reader, and it didn't connect with me at all. Even her final chapter bit about social media provided no new insights other than what you'd probably discuss with your own friends/family or overhear at a coffee shop.
While I do appreciate her own insights, I didn't feel that this book accomplished what it sought out to do - ''how'' to do nothing implies a methodology, an organized way of thinking through a process - even if the process is more philosophical than material - which was lacking here. Perhaps this had better been called ''I did Nothing: And Resisted the Attention Economy''.
August 11, 2019
This book is so vital for our generation — we who are more connected than ever before but still more lonely + alienated than ever. Social media / digitization of everyone and everything has fundamentally shifted our understandings of time/space/labor/identity/body and works like this are beginning to account for that and theorize accordingly. Odell takes social media companies to task for competing for our attentiveness + making us invest in the construction of digital worlds all the while the physical world around us falls apart. She is thinking through what it means to reclaim intimacy, connectivity, and resistance amidst the over-saturation of stimulation the Internet age has proliferated (re: think-piece economy). For Odell “silence” and “nothing,” are not absences, they are presences pregnant with possibility. their stillness kindles another way to relate to ourselves and the world around us, one that allows us to both relish and relax more. “Doing nothing,” isn’t about a total digital detox, it’s about excavating a third space that is of the digital world + outside of it. It’s about being able to reclaim our attentiveness and redirect it into the things that matter to us.
I didn’t agree with all of Odell’s arguments and thought that more attention could have been paid to creators who redeploy social media technologies for meaningful change + found that the romanticism of the “offline” and “nature” often rehashed reductive binaries between the digital/real. This prevented an honest engagement withhow for many marginalized people the Internet is the closest to the real we might have access to. But besides that, reading this was an absolute delight because Odell, an artist herself, uplifts performance + visual art as a form of scholarship that teaches us other ways to exist, she curates + presents such an exquisite + compelling archive of philosophies, movement histories, + creative works that offer so much promise + possibility, and she models a form of writing that is situated in the social + ecological worlds she inhabits. The text is both personal + political, emotional + structural, + that intimate holding of the micro/micro and earnest ambition for an otherwise was so precious and engaging. Thank you Jenny!
I didn’t agree with all of Odell’s arguments and thought that more attention could have been paid to creators who redeploy social media technologies for meaningful change + found that the romanticism of the “offline” and “nature” often rehashed reductive binaries between the digital/real. This prevented an honest engagement withhow for many marginalized people the Internet is the closest to the real we might have access to. But besides that, reading this was an absolute delight because Odell, an artist herself, uplifts performance + visual art as a form of scholarship that teaches us other ways to exist, she curates + presents such an exquisite + compelling archive of philosophies, movement histories, + creative works that offer so much promise + possibility, and she models a form of writing that is situated in the social + ecological worlds she inhabits. The text is both personal + political, emotional + structural, + that intimate holding of the micro/micro and earnest ambition for an otherwise was so precious and engaging. Thank you Jenny!
April 17, 2020
A thoughtful, steadying book about the importance of doing nothing in a capitalist culture that always encourages productivity. Instead of providing hard and fast strategies to disengage from work and social media, Jenny Odell offers more of a smart, flowing reflection on the importance of separating ourselves from feeling like we have to work, feeling like we have to broadcast our lives on social media 24/7. She makes lots of astute observations about the monetization of time and the value of our attention, as well as the privilege that comes with the capacity to disconnect from our jobs and from forums like Facebook. She channels her energy into bioregionalism and encourages us to attune ourselves to our direct physical environments.
Reading this book felt like going on a serene walk with a smart yet unpretentious friend. Odell’s ideas, while calmly expressed, carry great implications for redirecting our focus into our relationships and our environment instead of performing busyness and subsuming our identities in our productivity. At times I wanted just a bit more oomph, like a more directive stance on how we can actually fuel a shift to more often do nothing, either on the individual level or the societal level. Yet, Odell does provide small yet significant examples of that, both through what she shares of her own life and the artists she alludes to.
Reading this book felt like going on a serene walk with a smart yet unpretentious friend. Odell’s ideas, while calmly expressed, carry great implications for redirecting our focus into our relationships and our environment instead of performing busyness and subsuming our identities in our productivity. At times I wanted just a bit more oomph, like a more directive stance on how we can actually fuel a shift to more often do nothing, either on the individual level or the societal level. Yet, Odell does provide small yet significant examples of that, both through what she shares of her own life and the artists she alludes to.
November 21, 2019
Reading How to Do Nothing was an odd experience, mostly because I was intensely interested in some sections and was utterly bored through others. It didn't feel coherent, which is weird and unfortunate because Odell obviously put a lot of thought into each chapter.
She starts by pointing out that social media and apps that increasingly demand our attention have changed the way we think, work, and spend our time. We aim for productivity, work in a gig economy, and scroll through addictive feeds while simultaneously feeling more worried about and separate from the world around us. After explaining the impossibility of running away completely she touches on ways we can refuse the attention economy, how to open ourselves to new ways of seeing, and the importance of connecting with where we live - its history, ecology, and the fellow humans living there.
Odell discusses some amazing concepts, and some will stick with me. There's the idea that we can different people in different real-life groups - a happy drunk with college friends, a hard-working professional with coworkers, an erudite conversationalist at a dinner party. Once you put yourself on social media, however, you're the same person to everyone from childhood friends to potential employers. As a result you have to water yourself down to the most innocuous version, else risk offending someone today or years down the line. You go from many identities to just one.
There's the thought that algorithms on Facebook and Spotify do such an amazing job of predicting what you'll like that it's unlikely you'll try something new or find a favorite song in a genre you usually don't listen to. That we're constantly pressured to be more productive... but who does that productivity serve?
They're fascinating ideas to think about. Some chapters, though, are duds for me. I did not need to read dozens of pages about why various communes failed in the 1960s. I also didn't like the long descriptions of paintings and performance art. I flashed back to reading Sara Baume's A Line Made by Walking, but this is nonfiction and the writing isn't as strong.
As a result I'm a fan of the concepts but not of the telling, and the dead boring sections prevent me from giving it anything more than three stars.
She starts by pointing out that social media and apps that increasingly demand our attention have changed the way we think, work, and spend our time. We aim for productivity, work in a gig economy, and scroll through addictive feeds while simultaneously feeling more worried about and separate from the world around us. After explaining the impossibility of running away completely she touches on ways we can refuse the attention economy, how to open ourselves to new ways of seeing, and the importance of connecting with where we live - its history, ecology, and the fellow humans living there.
Odell discusses some amazing concepts, and some will stick with me. There's the idea that we can different people in different real-life groups - a happy drunk with college friends, a hard-working professional with coworkers, an erudite conversationalist at a dinner party. Once you put yourself on social media, however, you're the same person to everyone from childhood friends to potential employers. As a result you have to water yourself down to the most innocuous version, else risk offending someone today or years down the line. You go from many identities to just one.
There's the thought that algorithms on Facebook and Spotify do such an amazing job of predicting what you'll like that it's unlikely you'll try something new or find a favorite song in a genre you usually don't listen to. That we're constantly pressured to be more productive... but who does that productivity serve?
They're fascinating ideas to think about. Some chapters, though, are duds for me. I did not need to read dozens of pages about why various communes failed in the 1960s. I also didn't like the long descriptions of paintings and performance art. I flashed back to reading Sara Baume's A Line Made by Walking, but this is nonfiction and the writing isn't as strong.
As a result I'm a fan of the concepts but not of the telling, and the dead boring sections prevent me from giving it anything more than three stars.
August 10, 2019
I probably should have sat in silence and watched birds instead of reading this book. There is no thesis here and no new insights. We need to know how to do nothing. Maybe it's for a different generation, but my generation grew up being terribly bored and I honestly do not miss it.
November 30, 2019
So how could it happen that even not within a generation all humans have been transformed into smombies and what happens when someone stops getting permanent outer input and listening to all inner voices and soliloquies? Cleaning silence, awareness for each moment or, ta-da, mindfulness.
One must imagine what the extremely slight context to other topics of all this information dump does to brain, logic and mind. The focus that originates from reading a book, working, writing, thinking, etc. doesn´t come in these cases at the cost of real effort, but with easy and sweet intermittent positive reinforcement. Emotional, funny, shocking and, most important, frightening news flashes, tweets, burning hot latest news, kitten and food porn. And similar kind of as I heard a friend of a friend recently talk about.
There is pretty much capacity for getting lost in the social network dragnets controlled by ominous spiders and the desire to acquire some of those precious, pretty products and to fear some of those gritty, evil immigrant communist terrorist leftist,... grows. Again, a huge real-life experiment in how messed up brains get in as less time as possible, especially including VR, AR and more and more realistic video game graphics.
This book has a more philosophical approach than "Digital Minimalism, How to break up with your phone, etc." It´s about digging deeper, probably asking: "Hm, who could benefit from this development of tailored filter bubbles and news brought to each device." Even people who know that newspapers, TV news channels, etc. aren´t really trustworthy, tend to believe their personalized newsfeed. I mean, it comes from friends, family and is related to hobbies and all such feel-good stuff, so it can´t be that bad. Except for turning one in a permanent passive, easy to manipulate recipient of permanent mind spam that eats away lifetime.
As a solution, the author presents bioregionalism, less consumerism, more decentralization and the average suspects for a better world, but as long as humans don´t realize the grade and sophistication of media and news manipulation, those noble ideas and ideals are chanceless against glittering, glamorous gamification and shopaholism. An untrained mind is not just like a monkey, it is an easy to trick one that; OMG, I need that product I didn´t even know about now!; eats each shiny banana given by a stranger, no matter how poisonous and filled with psychoactive indoctrination drugs it might be. Now please go and click the banana like button under this objective and true review if you want more yellow enjoyment.
A wiki walk can be as refreshing to the mind as a walk through nature in this, yuck, ugh, boo, completely overrated real-life outside books:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bioregi...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deep_ec...
One must imagine what the extremely slight context to other topics of all this information dump does to brain, logic and mind. The focus that originates from reading a book, working, writing, thinking, etc. doesn´t come in these cases at the cost of real effort, but with easy and sweet intermittent positive reinforcement. Emotional, funny, shocking and, most important, frightening news flashes, tweets, burning hot latest news, kitten and food porn. And similar kind of as I heard a friend of a friend recently talk about.
There is pretty much capacity for getting lost in the social network dragnets controlled by ominous spiders and the desire to acquire some of those precious, pretty products and to fear some of those gritty, evil immigrant communist terrorist leftist,... grows. Again, a huge real-life experiment in how messed up brains get in as less time as possible, especially including VR, AR and more and more realistic video game graphics.
This book has a more philosophical approach than "Digital Minimalism, How to break up with your phone, etc." It´s about digging deeper, probably asking: "Hm, who could benefit from this development of tailored filter bubbles and news brought to each device." Even people who know that newspapers, TV news channels, etc. aren´t really trustworthy, tend to believe their personalized newsfeed. I mean, it comes from friends, family and is related to hobbies and all such feel-good stuff, so it can´t be that bad. Except for turning one in a permanent passive, easy to manipulate recipient of permanent mind spam that eats away lifetime.
As a solution, the author presents bioregionalism, less consumerism, more decentralization and the average suspects for a better world, but as long as humans don´t realize the grade and sophistication of media and news manipulation, those noble ideas and ideals are chanceless against glittering, glamorous gamification and shopaholism. An untrained mind is not just like a monkey, it is an easy to trick one that; OMG, I need that product I didn´t even know about now!; eats each shiny banana given by a stranger, no matter how poisonous and filled with psychoactive indoctrination drugs it might be. Now please go and click the banana like button under this objective and true review if you want more yellow enjoyment.
A wiki walk can be as refreshing to the mind as a walk through nature in this, yuck, ugh, boo, completely overrated real-life outside books:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bioregi...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deep_ec...
June 16, 2021
Cómo no hacer nada me ha sorprendido hasta el final. Viendo el título recuerda a un libro de autoayuda sobre «desconectar» pero dista mucho de eso. Tampoco es el típico manual para hacer un «detox» de las redes sociales o para abandonarlas por completo. De hecho ni lo intenta, y recalca cómo los retiros de desintoxicación digital ya se venden como una especie de truco para aumentar nuestra productividad al regreso. Hasta al término «autocuidado» le da una vuelta de tuerca poniendo énfasis en el peligro que corre en convertirse en algo con fines comerciales.
Este libro ni siquiera es una guía para «no hacer nada». Es un excelente ensayo que pasea por la filosofía y la política, citando y creando referencias de prácticamente todo. Una reflexión marcadamente anticapitalista (la propia autora se denomina de esa forma), que nos hace pensar sobre el concepto de productividad. «¿Productivo para qué? ¿Y para quién?».
Jenny Odell remarca la importancia de la atención («[…] la atención puede ser el último recurso por retirar que nos queda». ), y a quién o a qué se lo damos. También habla de los contextos y de los privilegios (hasta «desaparecer» de las redes sociales es un privilegio, el trabajo de muchas personas les exige estar presentes todos los días si quieren que el algoritmo les tenga en cuenta. Incluso activistas deben adaptarse a la sobrecarga de información y generar contenido continuamente, no hay tiempo para reflexionar). Cómo no hacer nada ha cambiado mi perspectiva y según Jenny Odell, esos cambios pueden ser irreversibles.
Este libro ni siquiera es una guía para «no hacer nada». Es un excelente ensayo que pasea por la filosofía y la política, citando y creando referencias de prácticamente todo. Una reflexión marcadamente anticapitalista (la propia autora se denomina de esa forma), que nos hace pensar sobre el concepto de productividad. «¿Productivo para qué? ¿Y para quién?».
Jenny Odell remarca la importancia de la atención («[…] la atención puede ser el último recurso por retirar que nos queda». ), y a quién o a qué se lo damos. También habla de los contextos y de los privilegios (hasta «desaparecer» de las redes sociales es un privilegio, el trabajo de muchas personas les exige estar presentes todos los días si quieren que el algoritmo les tenga en cuenta. Incluso activistas deben adaptarse a la sobrecarga de información y generar contenido continuamente, no hay tiempo para reflexionar). Cómo no hacer nada ha cambiado mi perspectiva y según Jenny Odell, esos cambios pueden ser irreversibles.
August 3, 2019
I do not understand how this book is so highly rated. The authors argument is impossible to follow. The book all over the place using historical references with long excerpts of quoted text. I gave up.
March 21, 2019
I found an Advanced Reader's Copy of this book at the library where I work, so I was able to read this before the public gets to it this April. None of the other librarians had taken it, and I usually don't end up reading ARCs, but after looking at the cover a couple times, I found myself genuinely intrigued. As I finished the first chapter, I knew that I was going to read the entire thing. I am personally in a state of constant love and hate as well as inspiration and anxiety in terms of my relationship to social media (particularly Instagram), and this book spoke volumes to me about a term that is curiously not found anywhere within these pages: mindfulness.
Odell probably omitted that word intentionally, as her goal in her personal and business life does not want to seduce readers into "hot" and "trending" terminology, as we know mindfulness has become over the past few years. Instead, she clearly explains her goals with the book right away, determined to tell us that How To Do Nothing: Resisting The Attention Economy is not about convincing anyone to delete their social media accounts or to optimize their life via a mindset based on positivity or to learn how to focus on what it is *you* really want rather than caring about what others are telling you to want. Nor is it a scathing critique of the political and/or libidinal economy. Rather, what Odell is talking about in her book is this: simply, a contemporary understanding of time and space. But instead of these terms becoming vague philosophical abstractions, she roots the concepts of time and space in a sensible context: that of the here and now.
Odell does not hide behind a mask of non-identity. She talks about where she grew up in California, her half-Filipino identity (despite never being to the Philippines), her experiences in the fast-paced corporate world of Silicone Valley, her boyfriend, her father, her friends, her home life and hobbies (bird watching), her affinity for the art-world, and more... she uses all of her experiences to draw out a fascinating map of history, geography, and present socio-political circumstance that surprisingly - at least for the next few years - will be able to speak to everyone that grew up with the proliferation of technology. Taking this personal vantage point, Odell traces back to the communes of the 1960s - explains what worked about them and what didn't (prepare yourself for a brilliant deconstruction of social design versus social activism). She goes back to Ancient Greece and reminds us of the cynic Diogenes, who lived life of resistance among the very community he denounced. She describes something that happened not too long ago in California: the strike of longshoremen who were over-worked by manual labor and the string of problems they encountered and how they began to work to solve them.
How does this work into her title: *How To Do Nothing?* Well, her argument is that (and I agree), sometimes when you "do" nothing, you actually begin to pay attention to what's actually happening outside of yourself and consequently begin to engage with the world in a new, more nuanced, and intentional way, a way that understands context (which can be horrifyingly forgotten in the virtual realm), and a way that understands the self in relation to everything else. In a word, doing nothing enables us to interact with the environment *intelligently*. Using herself as an example, she explains her love for art via a review of her fascination with the art of David Hockney, via her interpretations of Thoreau, via her analysis of writers native to this land. She comes up with the concept of bioregionalism: an acknowledgement of the natural world that is understood as both specific to geography yet contingent on all other geographies within the world.
You will find much about the expected (or not) topic of exploitative algorithms of current internet platforms. A topic always due for a reiteration. Keep in mind that this information is coming from first hand accounts of someone who worked in the industry for a time. Most importantly, you will find much about a form of presence that is inherently organic and ecological, something I think humanity is dire need of as we go through an almost traumatic, and actually traumatic for many, loss of natural resources.
"...we inhabit a culture that privileges novelty and growth over the cyclical and regenerative. Our very idea of productivity is premised on the idea of producing something new, whereas we do not tend to see maintenance and care as productive in the same way."
This book is a product of the 21st century, and it by no means intends to bring you something innovative and new. Odell's writing is a reiteration and underlining of stuff we have all heard before: stuff that Odell writes with enough attention, intention, and care that is becomes authentic. Now hurry up and read the book before authenticity becomes the newest commodity. Just kidding. But read the book before it's too late. Voluntate, studio, disciplina!
Odell probably omitted that word intentionally, as her goal in her personal and business life does not want to seduce readers into "hot" and "trending" terminology, as we know mindfulness has become over the past few years. Instead, she clearly explains her goals with the book right away, determined to tell us that How To Do Nothing: Resisting The Attention Economy is not about convincing anyone to delete their social media accounts or to optimize their life via a mindset based on positivity or to learn how to focus on what it is *you* really want rather than caring about what others are telling you to want. Nor is it a scathing critique of the political and/or libidinal economy. Rather, what Odell is talking about in her book is this: simply, a contemporary understanding of time and space. But instead of these terms becoming vague philosophical abstractions, she roots the concepts of time and space in a sensible context: that of the here and now.
Odell does not hide behind a mask of non-identity. She talks about where she grew up in California, her half-Filipino identity (despite never being to the Philippines), her experiences in the fast-paced corporate world of Silicone Valley, her boyfriend, her father, her friends, her home life and hobbies (bird watching), her affinity for the art-world, and more... she uses all of her experiences to draw out a fascinating map of history, geography, and present socio-political circumstance that surprisingly - at least for the next few years - will be able to speak to everyone that grew up with the proliferation of technology. Taking this personal vantage point, Odell traces back to the communes of the 1960s - explains what worked about them and what didn't (prepare yourself for a brilliant deconstruction of social design versus social activism). She goes back to Ancient Greece and reminds us of the cynic Diogenes, who lived life of resistance among the very community he denounced. She describes something that happened not too long ago in California: the strike of longshoremen who were over-worked by manual labor and the string of problems they encountered and how they began to work to solve them.
How does this work into her title: *How To Do Nothing?* Well, her argument is that (and I agree), sometimes when you "do" nothing, you actually begin to pay attention to what's actually happening outside of yourself and consequently begin to engage with the world in a new, more nuanced, and intentional way, a way that understands context (which can be horrifyingly forgotten in the virtual realm), and a way that understands the self in relation to everything else. In a word, doing nothing enables us to interact with the environment *intelligently*. Using herself as an example, she explains her love for art via a review of her fascination with the art of David Hockney, via her interpretations of Thoreau, via her analysis of writers native to this land. She comes up with the concept of bioregionalism: an acknowledgement of the natural world that is understood as both specific to geography yet contingent on all other geographies within the world.
You will find much about the expected (or not) topic of exploitative algorithms of current internet platforms. A topic always due for a reiteration. Keep in mind that this information is coming from first hand accounts of someone who worked in the industry for a time. Most importantly, you will find much about a form of presence that is inherently organic and ecological, something I think humanity is dire need of as we go through an almost traumatic, and actually traumatic for many, loss of natural resources.
"...we inhabit a culture that privileges novelty and growth over the cyclical and regenerative. Our very idea of productivity is premised on the idea of producing something new, whereas we do not tend to see maintenance and care as productive in the same way."
This book is a product of the 21st century, and it by no means intends to bring you something innovative and new. Odell's writing is a reiteration and underlining of stuff we have all heard before: stuff that Odell writes with enough attention, intention, and care that is becomes authentic. Now hurry up and read the book before authenticity becomes the newest commodity. Just kidding. But read the book before it's too late. Voluntate, studio, disciplina!
May 3, 2019
Anyone who has run a public event where you show people other organisms has fielded the horrible, soul-crushing question, "But what does it do?" or worse, "What's it good for?" They're not unreasonable questions, perfectly understandable, human questions really, and at the same time completely maddening to an ardent naturalist, as if you'd just introduced your beloved mother to someone who then asked, "Nice to meet you, but what are you good for?" If I'm feeling forthright, I'll reply, "Nothing, really. What are you good for?" but maybe what I should start doing instead is kidnap the questioner and force them to listen to me read this entire book aloud.
On the day last week when this book was published (or the media campaign began) a co-worker linked to it, an online colleague notified me about it, and my partner brought home a copy from one of our favorite bookstores, all totally independent of each other. It quickly became apparent that the author
* lives in my town
* lives in my old in neighborhood in my town
* likes looking at birds and plants
* cites Ursula K. LeGuin, Wendell Berry, Westworld, "Bartleby, the Scrivener," East Bay Yesterday, and countless other authors and works that have also passed through my brain at one time or another
* uses the natural history recording tool and social network I help maintain
Given this overwhelming karmic necessity of at least trying it, I'm happy to report the book hit home. It's awkward trying to summarize a work so concerned with holism, so maybe I won't and just dance around it like I usually do anyway. Odell describes something I have always found particularly compelling about natural history, namely that it is not about you, or not exclusively about you and your species and their concerns, but about all the other things around you, and what a profound relief it is to direct your attention wholly beyond your concerns, culture, economy, religion, etc., and focus on other beings. To Odell it's one manifestation of a mindset of selective attention, the titular "doing nothing" which really means doing anything other than creating value in capitalist terms, an entryway to an attentiveness that leads away from distraction and optimization and toward connections with land, with other organisms, and with other people, but it's also her chosen way to enact that mindset.
Despite the fact that Odell cites iNaturalist as an example of tech that can assist with cultivating such attentiveness, it is kind of complicated. She writes,
This is something I've thought about a bunch over the years, and I don't think iNat is unambiguously on one side of this dichotomy or the other. I think everyone who finds it rewarding has a bit of that itemizing instinct, and the itemizing mindset *can* be somewhat alienating. Mastery over taxonomy and nomenclature is satisfying in and of itself, and there is a temptation to just name things and move on, to catalog without understanding and observing more about each individual being you behold. Take it too far and you get Pokemon, a mindless leveling-up that is meaningless outside of the game. The camera is also alienating. In addition to physically separating you from your subject, taking a picture often means disturbing your subject, or at least depicting it in an atypical situation (every picture of a wrentit has the bird perching on a twig, in the open, in bright sunlight, while a more typical viewing would be a microsecond glance of that dolefully pale iris peering at you from deep inside the dark center of a coyotebush).
I should also point out that we employ many of the distracting devices Odell warns against, from red notifications in the header of our site to annoying emails, and even gamification in certain contexts (largely despite my misgivings; I still maintain the green "Research Grade" label was a bad move, despite people's attachment to it). And, let's face it, the time you spend looking at your phone using iNat in the field is time you're not witnessing the thing you're ostensibly observing.
That said, it's also true that I've learned a lot from iNat (as a user, not just as staff). I've used it in the way Odell describes, as a crutch in situations where I was ignorant, particularly while traveling. It has also elaborated on my interests and attentiveness in ways I would never have guessed: I pay attention to butterflies almost entirely because of the infectious interest of someone I met on iNat; I often recognize and appreciate creatures in the field *because* I saw them on iNat; I can't count the number of times I've noticed some novel detail or creature simply because I slowed down to take a picture of something else entirely.
Even our computer vision system, which provides the "magical" automatic identifications our software is becoming known for and which could be described as a very shallow way to understand nature, is really the distillation of the sort of attentive focus Odell describes, applied by many thousands of people and delivered quickly by an algorithm. The technical processing is, of course, impressive, but the real value comes from all those people focusing their attention. And the hope is that even if the interaction is shallow, people will want to keep wading toward the depths.
Ach, enough about iNat. While this is not really a self-help book, I think one lesson for me is to apply my naturalist's attentiveness more generally. I also share the author's interest in human history, but I haven't really made the leap to engaging in human community (like, actually getting to know different people), let alone to activism. The connection between attentiveness to the natural world and attentiveness to other people doesn't strike me as naturally as it does Odell, but perhaps it would if I was more self-conscious about my attention.
Ok, there you go, Goodreads. Monetize my thoughts!
On the day last week when this book was published (or the media campaign began) a co-worker linked to it, an online colleague notified me about it, and my partner brought home a copy from one of our favorite bookstores, all totally independent of each other. It quickly became apparent that the author
* lives in my town
* lives in my old in neighborhood in my town
* likes looking at birds and plants
* cites Ursula K. LeGuin, Wendell Berry, Westworld, "Bartleby, the Scrivener," East Bay Yesterday, and countless other authors and works that have also passed through my brain at one time or another
* uses the natural history recording tool and social network I help maintain
Given this overwhelming karmic necessity of at least trying it, I'm happy to report the book hit home. It's awkward trying to summarize a work so concerned with holism, so maybe I won't and just dance around it like I usually do anyway. Odell describes something I have always found particularly compelling about natural history, namely that it is not about you, or not exclusively about you and your species and their concerns, but about all the other things around you, and what a profound relief it is to direct your attention wholly beyond your concerns, culture, economy, religion, etc., and focus on other beings. To Odell it's one manifestation of a mindset of selective attention, the titular "doing nothing" which really means doing anything other than creating value in capitalist terms, an entryway to an attentiveness that leads away from distraction and optimization and toward connections with land, with other organisms, and with other people, but it's also her chosen way to enact that mindset.
Despite the fact that Odell cites iNaturalist as an example of tech that can assist with cultivating such attentiveness, it is kind of complicated. She writes,
Once, when I was giving a talk on my research for this book at a Stanford urban studies working group, somebody asked whether using iNaturalist wasn't alienating me from the landscape, since it represented an itemizing, scientific view. I answered that while I had to admit it looked that way, the app was a necessary step in the remediation of my ignorance, a temporary crutch.
This is something I've thought about a bunch over the years, and I don't think iNat is unambiguously on one side of this dichotomy or the other. I think everyone who finds it rewarding has a bit of that itemizing instinct, and the itemizing mindset *can* be somewhat alienating. Mastery over taxonomy and nomenclature is satisfying in and of itself, and there is a temptation to just name things and move on, to catalog without understanding and observing more about each individual being you behold. Take it too far and you get Pokemon, a mindless leveling-up that is meaningless outside of the game. The camera is also alienating. In addition to physically separating you from your subject, taking a picture often means disturbing your subject, or at least depicting it in an atypical situation (every picture of a wrentit has the bird perching on a twig, in the open, in bright sunlight, while a more typical viewing would be a microsecond glance of that dolefully pale iris peering at you from deep inside the dark center of a coyotebush).
I should also point out that we employ many of the distracting devices Odell warns against, from red notifications in the header of our site to annoying emails, and even gamification in certain contexts (largely despite my misgivings; I still maintain the green "Research Grade" label was a bad move, despite people's attachment to it). And, let's face it, the time you spend looking at your phone using iNat in the field is time you're not witnessing the thing you're ostensibly observing.
That said, it's also true that I've learned a lot from iNat (as a user, not just as staff). I've used it in the way Odell describes, as a crutch in situations where I was ignorant, particularly while traveling. It has also elaborated on my interests and attentiveness in ways I would never have guessed: I pay attention to butterflies almost entirely because of the infectious interest of someone I met on iNat; I often recognize and appreciate creatures in the field *because* I saw them on iNat; I can't count the number of times I've noticed some novel detail or creature simply because I slowed down to take a picture of something else entirely.
Even our computer vision system, which provides the "magical" automatic identifications our software is becoming known for and which could be described as a very shallow way to understand nature, is really the distillation of the sort of attentive focus Odell describes, applied by many thousands of people and delivered quickly by an algorithm. The technical processing is, of course, impressive, but the real value comes from all those people focusing their attention. And the hope is that even if the interaction is shallow, people will want to keep wading toward the depths.
Ach, enough about iNat. While this is not really a self-help book, I think one lesson for me is to apply my naturalist's attentiveness more generally. I also share the author's interest in human history, but I haven't really made the leap to engaging in human community (like, actually getting to know different people), let alone to activism. The connection between attentiveness to the natural world and attentiveness to other people doesn't strike me as naturally as it does Odell, but perhaps it would if I was more self-conscious about my attention.
Ok, there you go, Goodreads. Monetize my thoughts!
January 13, 2022
There are more ideas in these essays than in dozens of books I've read in the last year or two. I'm generally not big on non-fiction, but every once in a while you get hold of a book about ideas which seems to complete the sentences which other books have started and yet didn't really tear into. The economy aspect of the attention economy--late stage capitalism and the 24/7 demands of the gig system, the rise and fall of unionization and collective action, the hairs-breadth tenuousness of economic security for this generation--plus the attention aspect of the attention economy, using such artists as Hockney and John Cage, to make another kind of argument.
Some people have complained about the 'meandering' quality of the essays, but I can't help but wonder if that complaint is a feature of our bite-sized, time-is-money, tech addicted attention spans, to be impatient while a subtler, more complex argument is being laid out. I happen to like Montaigne as a philosopher, I like my cultural/social criticism in the form of a wide-flung net like Thank You For Not Reading by Dubravka Ugresic and The Future of Nostalgia by Svetlana Boym, and I can see this book is going to go onto the shelf with those books.
I do agree that the title How to Do Nothing was misleading--because the book doesn't advocate anything as simplistic as "digital detox" to better prepare us to be good workers, or simple refusal a la Bartleby--although both are discussed. But they're discussed alongside the failed experiments of the communes and the totalitarian utopias of Walden 2, as well as Epicurus' Garden School and the Cynics, the San Francisco longshoreman's strike of 1934, the Cupertino mall, Hockney's Pearblossom Highway photo collages and Cubism, Marten Buber. I don't always agree with Odell, but the point is, her essays help me focus my own take on the issues. It's exactly what I love so much, and miss so often in my own life, a wide ranging conversation with a curious, informed person that returns and returns to certain central points as they're examined from various angles. I just feel like I've got an injection of intelligence and perspective.
Some people have complained about the 'meandering' quality of the essays, but I can't help but wonder if that complaint is a feature of our bite-sized, time-is-money, tech addicted attention spans, to be impatient while a subtler, more complex argument is being laid out. I happen to like Montaigne as a philosopher, I like my cultural/social criticism in the form of a wide-flung net like Thank You For Not Reading by Dubravka Ugresic and The Future of Nostalgia by Svetlana Boym, and I can see this book is going to go onto the shelf with those books.
I do agree that the title How to Do Nothing was misleading--because the book doesn't advocate anything as simplistic as "digital detox" to better prepare us to be good workers, or simple refusal a la Bartleby--although both are discussed. But they're discussed alongside the failed experiments of the communes and the totalitarian utopias of Walden 2, as well as Epicurus' Garden School and the Cynics, the San Francisco longshoreman's strike of 1934, the Cupertino mall, Hockney's Pearblossom Highway photo collages and Cubism, Marten Buber. I don't always agree with Odell, but the point is, her essays help me focus my own take on the issues. It's exactly what I love so much, and miss so often in my own life, a wide ranging conversation with a curious, informed person that returns and returns to certain central points as they're examined from various angles. I just feel like I've got an injection of intelligence and perspective.
July 5, 2019
The title and cover had me intrigued. So many things take up our attention. Our phones. Social media. The show on the streaming service. Work. Etc. I thought this would be a great self-help book that would talk about how and why we should take the time to "do nothing." And since the author is in the middle of an area where a lot of this was born (or has strong connections to), I thought she might have more interesting insights.
This...wasn't that. This was a lot of "academic-speak" on a topic that didn't really need all of that that also couldn't quite decide what it wanted to be. A thesis? A memoir of her own experiences? Self-help and tips? A history of how we got here? No idea.
It reads like one of those books that somehow got past an editor or the author wouldn't allow major changes, to, etc. Which is a pity because there were bits and pieces that were interesting, if underdeveloped.
Borrowed from the library. Depending on what you're looking for, this might be a skip it.
This...wasn't that. This was a lot of "academic-speak" on a topic that didn't really need all of that that also couldn't quite decide what it wanted to be. A thesis? A memoir of her own experiences? Self-help and tips? A history of how we got here? No idea.
It reads like one of those books that somehow got past an editor or the author wouldn't allow major changes, to, etc. Which is a pity because there were bits and pieces that were interesting, if underdeveloped.
Borrowed from the library. Depending on what you're looking for, this might be a skip it.
June 27, 2020
Wow I'm so glad this book is over. My main problem is that she's not a writer. She's an artist. She thinks that a long-winded narration of every park she's been in, every bird she's seen, and every time she didn't have her phone in her hand is worth describing. Her thesis- if I'm being generous- is that people should connect with nature and people (outside of social media). This is not a novel idea nor is it interesting.
What makes it worse is that she only superficially acknowledges her privilege in doing all of this. You're telling me you're an artist... in Oakland... who just takes days or weeks off to go to cabins in the woods? Oh, you teach twice a week at Stanford. Right. Okay, well let's talk about how the America you live in isn't the country for most of us. Most people need an escape from their daily living because they work hard all day. They escape via social media because they don't have a forest cabin retreat option or they watch a movie or read a book on their Kindle. Technology isn't the enemy; capitalism is. Rather than tell the victim how to be better, why not try and change the system?
Any concessions she gives to these points feel shallow when compared to the literal hours wasted from listening to paragraphs regarding her birdwatching app.
What makes it worse is that she only superficially acknowledges her privilege in doing all of this. You're telling me you're an artist... in Oakland... who just takes days or weeks off to go to cabins in the woods? Oh, you teach twice a week at Stanford. Right. Okay, well let's talk about how the America you live in isn't the country for most of us. Most people need an escape from their daily living because they work hard all day. They escape via social media because they don't have a forest cabin retreat option or they watch a movie or read a book on their Kindle. Technology isn't the enemy; capitalism is. Rather than tell the victim how to be better, why not try and change the system?
Any concessions she gives to these points feel shallow when compared to the literal hours wasted from listening to paragraphs regarding her birdwatching app.
February 15, 2022
3.5 8 hours for work, 8 hours to rest and 8 hours to do as you will, was the rallying cry of the labor movement in the 1920s. Now, however with the advent of cell phones and internet, this no look over applies. We are always on, reachable and for many jobs, able to work anywhere. There is no longer a strict division between work and play. This book takes us through how much we are giving up by becoming slaves to technology. The author sits in the Rose garden in Oakland and takes to bird watching. There is so much to be discovered, learned by just disconnecting and looking around us.
"Solitude, observation and simple conviviality should be recognized not only as ends in and of itself, but inalienable rights belonging to anyone lucky enough to be alive."
"The point of doing nothing, as I define it, isn't to return to work refreshed and ready to be more productive, but rather to question what we currently perceive as productive."
"Attention is a state of openness that assumes there is something new to be seen, it is also true that this state must resist our tendency to declare our observations finished-to be done with it."
"Solitude, observation and simple conviviality should be recognized not only as ends in and of itself, but inalienable rights belonging to anyone lucky enough to be alive."
"The point of doing nothing, as I define it, isn't to return to work refreshed and ready to be more productive, but rather to question what we currently perceive as productive."
"Attention is a state of openness that assumes there is something new to be seen, it is also true that this state must resist our tendency to declare our observations finished-to be done with it."
April 17, 2021
This was my first one star review. I am in awe that such a directionless, condescending, out of touch book was published. The author’s big idea is that we should all reject capitalist, productivity-driven ideals and take up a life of smelling our own farts and bird-watching (or as the author calls it, “bird-noticing”.) Her most unique (and nauseating) thesis is asserting the value of bioregionalism, which when touted by a Bay Area resident, rings as privileged and out of touch as the politicians she reviles. And although the content was soporific, the writing style was even worse. The book read as though Odell’s publisher had asked her to double the word count; but instead of incorporating new ideas, she expanded each elitist thought into a meaningless jumble of words. Truly, this book was the most off-putting item I’ve ever consumed. For an author who wants to to save the environment, it’s ironic she wasted so many trees on such meandering (arguably worthless) musings.
June 10, 2019
Taste: strawberry-flavored hard candy
I confess that one of the reasons for picking up this book was the cover art *lol* And I confess that I didn't know what this nothing meant - perhaps for laziness? Four-day work week? But I'm just joking here.
The main point is this: stop giving so easily attention to what the media chaos-god is asking from you (and it asks for all), for there is a big source for anxiety, fear, and despair, if things get out of control. Instead take time back: go to places of nature - inside-gardens, parks, bigger parks outside town. Go make contact with people, take part in your community, learn of the history of the place you're living in. It is understandable that not all have the financies, time, or supportive people to do many things here, but merely refusing attention from some forms of media can be just the right little things, even if the time doing so it little too.
The author is an artist, writer, and teaches at Stanford University. I loved her enthusiasm about nature, her dedication to her city. I loved encountering familiar things: Epicurus, Thomas Merton, Diogenes, Melville's "Bartleby The Scrivener", Thoreau, David Hockney, John Cage, Martin Buber, Emily Dickinson, DF Wallace, Audre Lorde, radio stations (I miss good radio stations).
The book is laid out like this:
1.Chapter (the original text (from spring 2017) from which things were expanded into the book): a case for nothing, the basic message of the book
2.Chapter: why it is better to stay and try where you live, instead of "escaping the world" into the countryside communes (there's a large point of criticism against libertarians here)
3.Chapter: refusal-in-place, some history, why only some can afford this and what one can do instead
4.Chapter: a look into art, some personal reflections in new forms of attention
5.Chapter: what her ideal online network would be, why progress isn't always the word, but doing instead repair for progress's damage
Mention of a book I need to read J.Ackerman's "The Genius Of Birds". Mention of what the word 'relatives' used to mean (page 28 of my book). The interesting thing of suddenly being able to see something of your interest everywhere (fe. birds, certain number, pregnant women...) Checking out what Paul Klee's "Angelus Novus" painting looks like.
What I got out of it:
I thought this would be a light book on some philosophical ramblings, not necessarily a book I would end up keeping. I was wrong: I got numerous ideas, numerous realizations from reading this book. The author didn't sum up her points at the end, so making notes of them while reading was a good idea (see some above). Surpsing and very worth it.
I confess that one of the reasons for picking up this book was the cover art *lol* And I confess that I didn't know what this nothing meant - perhaps for laziness? Four-day work week? But I'm just joking here.
The main point is this: stop giving so easily attention to what the media chaos-god is asking from you (and it asks for all), for there is a big source for anxiety, fear, and despair, if things get out of control. Instead take time back: go to places of nature - inside-gardens, parks, bigger parks outside town. Go make contact with people, take part in your community, learn of the history of the place you're living in. It is understandable that not all have the financies, time, or supportive people to do many things here, but merely refusing attention from some forms of media can be just the right little things, even if the time doing so it little too.
The author is an artist, writer, and teaches at Stanford University. I loved her enthusiasm about nature, her dedication to her city. I loved encountering familiar things: Epicurus, Thomas Merton, Diogenes, Melville's "Bartleby The Scrivener", Thoreau, David Hockney, John Cage, Martin Buber, Emily Dickinson, DF Wallace, Audre Lorde, radio stations (I miss good radio stations).
The book is laid out like this:
1.Chapter (the original text (from spring 2017) from which things were expanded into the book): a case for nothing, the basic message of the book
2.Chapter: why it is better to stay and try where you live, instead of "escaping the world" into the countryside communes (there's a large point of criticism against libertarians here)
3.Chapter: refusal-in-place, some history, why only some can afford this and what one can do instead
4.Chapter: a look into art, some personal reflections in new forms of attention
5.Chapter: what her ideal online network would be, why progress isn't always the word, but doing instead repair for progress's damage
Mention of a book I need to read J.Ackerman's "The Genius Of Birds". Mention of what the word 'relatives' used to mean (page 28 of my book). The interesting thing of suddenly being able to see something of your interest everywhere (fe. birds, certain number, pregnant women...) Checking out what Paul Klee's "Angelus Novus" painting looks like.
What I got out of it:
I thought this would be a light book on some philosophical ramblings, not necessarily a book I would end up keeping. I was wrong: I got numerous ideas, numerous realizations from reading this book. The author didn't sum up her points at the end, so making notes of them while reading was a good idea (see some above). Surpsing and very worth it.
March 18, 2020
While our lives stew in the panic brought about by the Coronavirus pandemic, I find it incredibly frustrating that people are more concerned about their loss of productivity than the idea of possible death. Especially in a country like India, where the sheer population makes everything competitive, productivity is a term connoting quantity rather than quality. In the midst of this literal scramble to market everything, including one's self, for money, all I want to do is nothing.
Jenny Odell's How To Do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy articulates exactly how I have been feeling, and irrigates my ideas with some brilliant examples from art, nature, and science.
This is not a self-help book. It is not a book about taking downtime from work or social media, nor is it a book aiming at making us spend our time better. Rather, this is a reminder of our power to pay attention to all the things we tune out because of the mindless traffic of information around us today.
How To Do Nothing has a more contemplative approach (in response) to the issues of our age: our obsession with measuring everything with the yardstick of its usefulness, with optimising everything tangible or otherwise, and with associating progress with newness while dismissing regeneration even as it is what sustains life. It also touches upon how the deadly cocktail of capitalism, social media and persuasive design sells us a way of living bereft of context with an unnatural need to maintain consistent selves ("a personal brand), and forces us into (productive, but often futile) action (or mere engagement) by inducing an aestheticised anxiety.
True to its tone, this book does not offer tailor-made solutions. What I found highly enjoyable about it is that it illustrates its points by looking at life — be it in art, bioregionalism, or the author's own experiences (it is precisely this blend of partly autobiographical narrative and observation that makes Olivia Laing's The Lonely City so rewarding)
If one has to give into productive parlance, I'd say that some of the most essential "takeaways" from this book are the facts that
(i) I am not the center of the world (where I = me, humankind)
(ii) it isn't humans but the institutions we have created (and lately, reinforced) that undo us; the power to think and the urge to observe can undo these institutions.
This may be the last productive thing I do, ready as I am to live in a permanent state of refusal.
As for you, if you haven't given these issues a thought (especially if you haven't given going beyond a "social detox" a thought), this book may change your life.
Jenny Odell's How To Do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy articulates exactly how I have been feeling, and irrigates my ideas with some brilliant examples from art, nature, and science.
This is not a self-help book. It is not a book about taking downtime from work or social media, nor is it a book aiming at making us spend our time better. Rather, this is a reminder of our power to pay attention to all the things we tune out because of the mindless traffic of information around us today.
How To Do Nothing has a more contemplative approach (in response) to the issues of our age: our obsession with measuring everything with the yardstick of its usefulness, with optimising everything tangible or otherwise, and with associating progress with newness while dismissing regeneration even as it is what sustains life. It also touches upon how the deadly cocktail of capitalism, social media and persuasive design sells us a way of living bereft of context with an unnatural need to maintain consistent selves ("a personal brand), and forces us into (productive, but often futile) action (or mere engagement) by inducing an aestheticised anxiety.
True to its tone, this book does not offer tailor-made solutions. What I found highly enjoyable about it is that it illustrates its points by looking at life — be it in art, bioregionalism, or the author's own experiences (it is precisely this blend of partly autobiographical narrative and observation that makes Olivia Laing's The Lonely City so rewarding)
If one has to give into productive parlance, I'd say that some of the most essential "takeaways" from this book are the facts that
(i) I am not the center of the world (where I = me, humankind)
(ii) it isn't humans but the institutions we have created (and lately, reinforced) that undo us; the power to think and the urge to observe can undo these institutions.
This may be the last productive thing I do, ready as I am to live in a permanent state of refusal.
As for you, if you haven't given these issues a thought (especially if you haven't given going beyond a "social detox" a thought), this book may change your life.
February 25, 2020
I started out a bit frustrated with this - it felt a bit academic, a bit too keen to wear its intelligence on its sleeve (I think I just get annoyed when people refer to Greek philosophers too much). But once I settled into Odell's style, I really warmed to it - this is so much more than a self-help guide to ditching twitter, it's an argument about modern life more broadly and the value of paying sustained attention to things (both the inherent value and the value in terms of achieving any meaningful political progress). Odell draws together discussion of art, ecology, sociology and science in thoughtful and surprising ways and her emphasis on the joys of birdwatching obviously found a sympathetic reader in me. Lots to chew over here - would love to hear what others' thought.
June 4, 2019
Like others, this book is not what I was expecting. I was expecting more of a how-to, self-help book but instead this is a very heady, very academic and well-researched treatise on attention, culture, and our society at large. I didn’t get to finish because of a slew of family events, but what I read I did...respect? I never was excited to pick the book back up, but once I did I always found the author’s arguments original and well-founded - I found myself wanting to highlight a LOT. This book is for deep thinkers, armchair philosophers, and those interested in peeling back the layers of our constructed reality.
November 8, 2019
I am not clever enough to appreciate this book. Odell would occasionally write something spot-on and worthwhile but mainly I found the book long-winded and pretentious.
The gist of the book is this - people need to step back and pause and think about how they are communicating online. They need to learn to pull back & experience solitude and silence so they can deeply ponder what they think instead of automatically responding to what tech designers want them to respond to. "To do nothing is to hold yourself still so that you can perceive what is actually there."
My skin crawled with irritation when she spoke about art. Odell is a modern artist. That is, she doesn't actually create art by painting or sculpting or photography but she is an artist that thinks up ideas. Insert huge eyeroll here. One of her "art" pieces was taking items from the dump and putting them on shelves. She mentions another "art" piece where folding chairs were set up on a cliff and people sat in them and watched the sun set. I cannot make this stuff up. It's all so Emperor's New Clothes. Stanford hired her to teach art. The mind reels.
I found the book rambling and incoherent at times. There is really only so much one can say about her thesis. You could summarize it in one page so she needed to pad the book with digressions about books she has read, vacations she has taken, bird watching she has done, music she enjoys (She loves John Cage. Of course she does. Who wouldn't love a musician who squeezes a rubber ducky, waters plants, bangs on a piano and calls it music?) Her long digression on David Hockney is eye-wateringly dull. She has read a lot of books - props to her for that.
The book is 200 pages long but feels about 800 pages long.
The gist of the book is this - people need to step back and pause and think about how they are communicating online. They need to learn to pull back & experience solitude and silence so they can deeply ponder what they think instead of automatically responding to what tech designers want them to respond to. "To do nothing is to hold yourself still so that you can perceive what is actually there."
My skin crawled with irritation when she spoke about art. Odell is a modern artist. That is, she doesn't actually create art by painting or sculpting or photography but she is an artist that thinks up ideas. Insert huge eyeroll here. One of her "art" pieces was taking items from the dump and putting them on shelves. She mentions another "art" piece where folding chairs were set up on a cliff and people sat in them and watched the sun set. I cannot make this stuff up. It's all so Emperor's New Clothes. Stanford hired her to teach art. The mind reels.
I found the book rambling and incoherent at times. There is really only so much one can say about her thesis. You could summarize it in one page so she needed to pad the book with digressions about books she has read, vacations she has taken, bird watching she has done, music she enjoys (She loves John Cage. Of course she does. Who wouldn't love a musician who squeezes a rubber ducky, waters plants, bangs on a piano and calls it music?) Her long digression on David Hockney is eye-wateringly dull. She has read a lot of books - props to her for that.
The book is 200 pages long but feels about 800 pages long.
January 18, 2023
HOW TO DO NOTHING by Jenny Odell is a surprising book. It is only in small part about what I thought, given the title. Odell covers a great number of subjects in her pursuit of discussion about her purported topic of leisure. Or perhaps leisure isn't actually the topic.
Yes, that's it. Odell means something very specific when she writes the words, "do nothing," and leisure isnt it. Unfortunately she never explains her idea of "do nothing" very clearly. This lack of clarity made her argument a struggle to follow as she weaves through a string of seemingly unrelated subtopics.
I still enjoyed this discussion, as I thought that much of what she discussed was both interesting and capable of being consumed outside the whole of her main argument. I look forward to more from Odell, as I enjoyed her perspective as an artist, and her critical voice.
A quick note about the narrator, Rebecca Gibel, whose read was pleasant and unobtrusive, which is what I want for nonfiction.
Rating: 🌹🌹🌹.5 / 5 roses for smelling
Recommend? Yes.
Finished: January 7 2023
Read this if you like:
👩🎓 Academic nonfiction
💻 Technology
🏘 Sociology
🦉 Wildlife
👤 Psychology
Yes, that's it. Odell means something very specific when she writes the words, "do nothing," and leisure isnt it. Unfortunately she never explains her idea of "do nothing" very clearly. This lack of clarity made her argument a struggle to follow as she weaves through a string of seemingly unrelated subtopics.
I still enjoyed this discussion, as I thought that much of what she discussed was both interesting and capable of being consumed outside the whole of her main argument. I look forward to more from Odell, as I enjoyed her perspective as an artist, and her critical voice.
A quick note about the narrator, Rebecca Gibel, whose read was pleasant and unobtrusive, which is what I want for nonfiction.
Rating: 🌹🌹🌹.5 / 5 roses for smelling
Recommend? Yes.
Finished: January 7 2023
Read this if you like:
👩🎓 Academic nonfiction
💻 Technology
🏘 Sociology
🦉 Wildlife
👤 Psychology
January 1, 2024
I loved this activist, anti-capitalist book wrapped in a disarming, self-help floral cover. It's consolidating a lot of what I've been reading lately that's been a reaction to our always online hustle culture.
Time is money and it's gone well beyond #girlbossing, the grind, and side hustles — expanding the boundaries of our work life. It's the fact that for many of us, every waking moment sees us building our personal brands, submitting our leisure time for numerical evaluation via likes, comments and views. We're constantly checking in on our performance and monitoring the value of our personal brand. Even self-care is framed in terms of returning to work replenished, to optimize ourselves to do more.
It's not like stepping away is going to be easy. History is scattered with the remains of those that felt they could escape the grind. Turn on, tune in, and drop out. Odell has us consider the work of maintenance, disrupting the attention economy and escaping its pervasive framework. To listen, reflect, heal, and repair ourselves. Stupidity is never blind or mute. Maybe holster that hot take, touch grass, and do the work of doing nothing.
Time is money and it's gone well beyond #girlbossing, the grind, and side hustles — expanding the boundaries of our work life. It's the fact that for many of us, every waking moment sees us building our personal brands, submitting our leisure time for numerical evaluation via likes, comments and views. We're constantly checking in on our performance and monitoring the value of our personal brand. Even self-care is framed in terms of returning to work replenished, to optimize ourselves to do more.
It's not like stepping away is going to be easy. History is scattered with the remains of those that felt they could escape the grind. Turn on, tune in, and drop out. Odell has us consider the work of maintenance, disrupting the attention economy and escaping its pervasive framework. To listen, reflect, heal, and repair ourselves. Stupidity is never blind or mute. Maybe holster that hot take, touch grass, and do the work of doing nothing.
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