How to Do Nothing

Reading this book encouraged me to use my attention and even personhood as a form of resistance against our fitter, happier, more productive society. A ‘why’ book more than a ‘how’ book, Odell shaped and squeezed my brain the whole time I was reading it and showed me how to find happiness that wasn't tied to doing ever more things.

If you have ever felt alienated by our capitalist society which tells us we do not deserve any sort of freedom or any sort of safety net, and which encourages us to use all of our time laboring and being “productive” – Jenny Odell’s book is for you.

I had already quit my job and started planning my road trip the week before How To Do Nothing came out, but if I hadn’t, I would have! The way Odell writes about paying attention to nature – she calls herself not a bird watcher but a “bird noticer” – has shaped… show more.

Our attention is a precious - and overdrawn - resource. This counterpoint to the appeal of attention economics helped me think about how to allocate my attention with intention. Partly self-help guide, part political manifesto, Jenny rails against the hustle culture of modern capitalism and provides a way of thinking beyond productivity, efficiency, and the supremacy of technology. As advertisers and media companies continue to find new and better ways to harvest attention it behooves us to consider what we want to do ours, and remind corporations that it is a rare and valuable thing. What you pay attention to… show more.

What do the California wildfires and our addictions to smartphones have to do with each other? How to Do Nothing spells it out. The book isn’t really about doing nothing, but like a zen koan, it offers a paradox: we live in a society that treats productivity in a particular (capitalist) way, and this kind of productivity is both damaging to ourselves and to the world. Against that grain, “doing nothing” is a kind of resistance. And in the process, we might actually “do” something really great for the world, like for starters, notice it in the first place. Where… show more.