Name: How to Do Nothing
ISBN: 9781612197494

Jenny Odell

"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"--

How to Do Nothing

Laura

Gregor Gross

Pola Schwöbel

Claudine

Look back in memory and consider… how many have robbed you of life when yo not aware of what you were losing, how much was taken up in useless sorrow, in foolish joy, in greedy desire, in the allurements of society, how little of yourself was left to you; you will perceive that you are dying before your season!

I am concerned about the effects of current social media on expression-including the right not to express oneself and its deliberately addictive features. 

It is furthermore the cult of individuality and personal branding that grow out of such platforms and affect the way we think about our offline selves and the places where we actually live. 

Living between the mountains and this hyper accelerated, entrepreneurial culture, I can't help but ask the question: What does it mean to construct digital worlds while the actual world is crumbling before our eyes?

Platforms such as Facebook and Instagram act like dams that capitalize on our natural interest in others and an ageless need for community, hijacking and frustrating our most innate desires, and profiting from them. Solitude, observation, and simple conviviality should be recognized not only as ends in and of themselves, but inalienable rights belonging to anyone lucky enough to be alive. 

From either a social or ecological perspective, the ultimate goal of “doing nothing” is to wrest our focus from the attention economy and replant it in the public, physical realm.

But the villain here is not necessarily the Internet, or even the idea of social media; it is the invasive logic of commercial social media and its financial incentive to keep us in a profitable state of anxiety, envy, and distraction. It is furthermore the cult of individuality and personal branding that grow out of such platforms and affect the way we think about our offline selves and the places where we actually live.

It means embracing and trying to inhabit somewhat fuzzier or blobbier ideas: of maintenance as productivity, of the importance of nonverbal communication, and of the mere experience of life as the highest goal. It means recognizing and celebrating a form of the self that changes over time, exceeds algorithmic description, and whose identity doesn’t always stop at the boundary of the individual.

fvrests

I hope that the figure of “doing nothing” in opposition to a productivity-obsessed environment can help restore individuals who can then help restore communities, human and beyond. And most of all, I hope it can help people find ways of connecting that are substantive, sustaining, and absolutely unprofitable to corporations, whose metrics and algorithms have never belonged in the conversations we have about our thoughts, our feelings, and our survival.

But most important, standing apart represents the moment in which the desperate desire to leave (forever!) matures into a commitment to live in permanent refusal, where one already is, and to meet others in the common space of that refusal. This kind of resistance still manifests as participating, but participating in the "wrong way": a way that undermines the authority of the hegemonic game and creates possibilities outside of it.

But successful collective refusals enact a second-order level of discipline and training, in which individuals align with each other to form flexible structures of agreement that can hold open the space of refusal. This collective alignment emerges as a product of intense individual self-discipline—like a crowd of Thoreaus refusing in tandem. In so doing, the "third space"—not of retreat, but of refusal, boycott, and sabotage—can become a spectacle of noncompliance that registers on the larger scale of the public.

When we take an instrumental or even algorithmic view of friendship and recognition, or fortify the imagined bastion of the self against change, or even just fail to see that we affect and are affected by others (even and especially those we do not see)—then we unnaturally corral our attention to others and to the places we inhabit together. It is with acts of attention that we decide who to hear, who to see, and who in our world has agency. In this way, attention forms the ground not just for love, but for ethics.

Annika

I recognized the feeling in a passage from Gilles Deleuze in Negotiations:

We’re riddled with pointless talk, insane quantities of words and images. Stupidity’s never blind or mute. So it’s not a problem of getting people to express themselves but of providing little gaps of solitude and silence in which they might eventually find something to say. Repressive forces don’t stop people expressing themselves but rather force them to express themselves; what a relief to have nothing to say, the right to say nothing, because only then is there a chance of framing the rare, and ever rarer, thing that might be worth saying.

In a situation where every waking moment has become the time in which we make our living, and when we submit even our leisure for numerical evaluation via likes on Facebook and Instagram, constantly checking on its performance like one checks a stock, monitoring the ongoing development of our personal brand, time becomes an economic resource that we can no longer justify spending on “nothing.” It provides no return on investment; it is simply too expensive. This is a cruel confluence of time and space: just as we lose noncommercial spaces, we also see all of our own time and our actions as potentially commercial.

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.

Grace McCarter

Even if one solved this puzzle, the question would remain for Ehrenreich: “If you hump away at menial jobs 360-plus days a year, does some kind of repetitive injury of the spirit set in?“

After the American presidental election of 2016, Jenny Odell felt so overstimunated and disoriented by information, misinformation, and the expressions of others, that reality itself seemed to slip away. How To Do Nothing is her action plan for resistance. Drawing on the ethos of tech culture, a background in the arts, and personal storytelling, Jenny Odell makes a powerful argument for refusal: refusal to believe that our lives are instruments to be optimised. She argues that nothing can be quite so radical as doing... nothing.

Resisting the Attention Economy

This book started off a little bit boring with the introduction. However, it got much better after that. The book is filled with rich references that makes you consider life, how to do nothing, and the grind that we live in. Numerous references to artists, art, books, and multiple things that make you take a step back and consider things for a moment. I love that the author claims that certain thoughts and emotions are for a certain time, like the thoughts and feelings you have on vacation compared with other emotions. She wishes to shun politics, but also realizes you cannot shun all things for all time and live in your own bubble. I also especially enjoyed the part about Pilvi Takala the artist that went to Deloitte and did nothing, as well as rode an elevator up and down the building, and her other performance art of taking a large translucent bag of euros around town. John Cage's 

4′33″ was also fascinating. I feel like I was just witnessing so much creativity in light of life, instead of work to spite life. 

- The Seven Storey Mountain - Thomas Merton 

- Bartelby the Scrivener - Herman Melville 

- References to the artists David Hockney and his explanation, "Photography is all right if you don't mind looking at the world from the point of view of a paralyzed Cyclops, but that's not what it's like to live in the world."

- The Exchange (film) I couldn't seem to find it though. 

BC Hark

This book started off a little bit boring with the introduction. However, it got much better after that. The book is filled with rich references that makes you consider life, how to do nothing, and the grind that we live in. Numerous references to artists, art, books, and multiple things that make you take a step back and consider things for a moment. I love that the author claims that certain thoughts and emotions are for a certain time, like the thoughts and feelings you have on vacation compared with other emotions. She wishes to shun politics, but also realizes you cannot shun all things for all time and live in your own bubble. I also especially enjoyed the part about Pilvi Takala the artist that went to Deloitte and did nothing, as well as rode an elevator up and down the building, and her other performance art of taking a large translucent bag of euros around town. John Cage's 4′33″ was also fascinating. I feel like I was just witnessing so much creativity in light of life, instead of work to spite life. 

Some of the references were: 
- The Seven Storey Mountain - Thomas Merton 
- Walden two - B.F. Skinner 
- Bartelby the Scrivener - Herman Melville 
- References to the artists David Hockney and his explanation, "Photography is all right if you don't mind looking at the world from the point of view of a paralyzed Cyclops, but that's not what it's like to live in the world."
- The Exchange (film) I couldn't seem to find it though. 

I really liked how this serves as a reminder to slow down. It really helped me put down my phone and put my attention elsewhere. 

soph 

** A New York Times Bestseller ** "A complex, smart and ambitious book that at first reads like a self-help manual, then blossoms into a wide-ranging political manifesto."—Jonah Engel Bromwich, The New York Times Book Review One of President Barack Obama's "Favorite Books of 2019" NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY: Time • The New Yorker • NPR • GQ • Elle • Vulture • Fortune • Boing Boing • The Irish Times • The New York Public Library • The Brooklyn Public Library Porchlight's Personal Development & Human Behavior Book of the Year In a world where addictive technology is designed to buy and sell our attention, and our value is determined by our 24/7 data productivity, it can seem impossible to escape. But in this inspiring field guide to dropping out of the attention economy, artist and critic Jenny Odell shows us how we can still win back our lives. Odell sees our attention as the most precious—and overdrawn—resource we have. And we must actively and continuously choose how we use it. We might not spend it on things that capitalism has deemed important … but once we can start paying a new kind of attention, she writes, we can undertake bolder forms of political action, reimagine humankind’s role in the environment, and arrive at more meaningful understandings of happiness and progress. Far from the simple anti-technology screed, or the back-to-nature meditation we read so often, How to do Nothing is an action plan for thinking outside of capitalist narratives of efficiency and techno-determinism. Provocative, timely, and utterly persuasive, this book will change how you see your place in our world.

Gelaine Trinidad

** spoiler alert **
           I honestly did not truly know what to expect from this book except for that fact that it’s about nature, social media, art, and philosophy. What surprised me the most is the author’s take on activism and its connection with the art of doing nothing. In a way, doing nothing can be an act of resistance, “To resist in place is to make oneself into a shape that cannot so easily be appropriated by a capitalist value system.” This book allowed me to re-evaluate how productivity and success are valued in our current society, especially through our social media platforms with the heavy influence of digital marketing, personal brands, and algorithms. We create a filter bubble based on our online actions. This book made me actively think of ways to go against this motion towards some sort of monolithic identity – a version of reality solely based on self-interests. We need to pop our filter bubbles and be open to change and not just revel in our sameness. 

Some parts reminded me of reading Jia Tolentino's Trick Mirror: Reflections on Self-Delusion. Both authors were in some level inspired by the 2016 US election and how that unravelled many issues America is facing today. I also felt comforted by Jenny Odell’s thoughts about #FOMO and how it’s okay to sometimes miss out and deflect overstimulation from the media. Social media makes it easy to feel connected with other people but at the cost of losing the need for sensitivity and deeper relationships. 

Going back to activism, the author states that  “instantaneous communication threatens visibility and comprehension because it creates an information overload whose pace is impossible to keep up with.”  It’s an interesting way of viewing online activism as lacking enough context in the effort to make things catchy and almost fear-based. In addition, she states how activists  “need physical space to articulate political reflections.” I wonder what she thinks of this concept now given what’s currently happening online regarding the rising voices on anti-black racism during a pandemic. I do think there might be a way to provide full context online, if done correctly. We should also take the initiative to learn and educate ourselves.

Moreover, there is something so intimate about reading one’s thoughts on nature and how deeply personal it can be. As Jenny Odell writes:  “I find something comfortingly anti-essentialist in the way ecology work.”  To me, this is a relatively new way of thinking about our role in relation to the physical world and the fluidity of all living things. 

By resisting the attention economy, we can pay deeper attention to other things that rely on physical time and space. This cannot be achieved through social media detox alone.  “Wherever we are, and whatever privileges we may or may not enjoy, there is probably some thread we can afford to be pulling on. Sometimes boycotting the attention economy by withholding attention is the only action we can afford to take. Other times, we can actively look for ways to impact things like the addictive design of technology, but also environmental politics, labor rights, women’s rights, indigenous rights, anti-racism initiatives, measures for parks and open spaces, and habitat restoration – understanding that pain comes not from one part of the body but from systemic imbalance. As in any ecology, the fruits of our efforts within any of these fields may well reach beyond to the others.” A great book that taught me how to be more mindful in a holistic way.

John Manoogian III

Overly academic ode to extremely woke navel gazing. My act of doing nothing will be to abstain from reading the final pages of this book, to my great relief. Luckily for me, I already know to do nothing. I am sincerely sorry to anyone who paid full price for this book and didn’t read it for free from the local library.

As Bartleby says, “I would prefer not to” (ever encounter this book again).

Purposefully not a step-by-step guide, but rather a broad strokes manifesto. Full of critical and thoughtful—if, at times, obvious—meditations on the war being waged on our attention, our warped human-centric societal viewpoint, and our history of destructive “progress.” In fact it’s the examination of our history—and the power imbalances and injustices that have persisted throughout—that struck me me most, having expected a much narrower focus on modern topics like the 24-hour news cycle and social media addiction. This, refreshingly, is so much more than that. 

Even as it points out just how much we as a species have managed to destroy and tarnish, 

somehow stays beautifully hopeful. It really does have me looking at the world and my place in it differently—I only hope that I can resist distraction and actively allow the invigoration to last. 

Michael Klepacki

Purposefully not a step-by-step guide, but rather a broad strokes manifesto. Full of critical and thoughtful—if, at times, obvious—meditations on the war being waged on our attention, our warped human-centric societal viewpoint, and our history of destructive “progress.” In fact it’s the examination of our history—and the power imbalances and injustices that have persisted throughout—that struck me me most, having expected a much narrower focus on modern topics like the 24-hour news cycle and social media addiction. This, refreshingly, is so much more than that. 

Even as it points out just how much we as a species have managed to destroy and tarnish, How To Do Nothing somehow stays beautifully hopeful. It really does have me looking at the world and my place in it differently—I only hope that I can resist distraction and actively allow the invigoration to last. 

0xADADA

Enlightening, discursive, both broad and light. Optimistic.

vanessa

This is not so much a book on unplugging, but rather a manifesto and essay on how we can and should navigate life in a world that increasingly seeks to capture our life and commoditize our attention. This is a must-read.

erin

Read this immediately after [b:Trick Mirror: Reflections on Self-Delusion|43126457|Trick Mirror  Reflections on Self-Delusion|Jia Tolentino|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1544069605l/43126457._SY75_.jpg|66925717], and boy, what a contrast. Jenny writes with actual substance, and while her prognosis of the world is still (imo realistically) grim, her musings include some cause for hope and action. 

I thought this book threaded the needle of being both academic-adjacent and accessible rather well. At each moment where I began to roll my eyes at Odell's privilege, she headed me off at the pass and addressed it.  

A good read, recommend.

Hannah Yang

perhaps it's ironic to review this book immediately after finishing instead of taking the time to process my many thoughts about it, but here i am! how to do nothing is an absolute gift. while definitely not a straightforward how-to book with principles for how to live life mindfully and productively, this book provides the kind of 'self help' i didn't really expect, and didn't know that i needed. 

jenny odell flutters between her premise of resisting context-less, attention-abusing technologies and social media platforms and broader topics like sense of self, place and time, ecologies, relationships with others and nature, inequality and politics, and restoration of many kinds. refreshingly, she draws not only from research but also art and philosophy -- describing how specific exhibits influenced her thinking and how buber (<3)'s concept of i-thou relationships can become a framework for how we choose to interact with the world.

for me, odell's articulation of her frustrations with social media (demanding immediate response and engagement rather than slower, more thought-out and fulfilling interactions), the connections she drew between attention and willpower (and how this has larger implications on how we act and make tangible changes to the communities we are a part of), and her re-definition of productivity and progress and creativity with particular attention to ecology and symbiotic relationships were the most helpful concepts to consider.

but there is a lot to think about here!! every chapter introduces a multitude of ideas, and i felt that many of the points made were more resonant or comprehensible when i knew about the text or artwork odell was referencing. this is understandable unappealing if you aren't familiar with those texts or artworks. still, i think the book feels like a safe space to return for reflection and rumination -- so if you chose to allot more attention to this book by looking into odell's sources and inspirations, i'm sure it would become more meaningful with each reread.

i'm doubtful that redirecting our attention in the ways that odell suggests would be sufficient for fixing the many issues that odell discusses -- besides reclaiming our use of technology, attention still feels somewhat tangentially related. to be fair, i think that odell would only claim that attention is a useful first step in a web of interconnected steps (with adjacent steps like restoring physical habitats, creating spaces for genuine discourse, generally accepting that humanity need not be the center of the universe). but while i may not have ended this book in clarity, i definitely finished this book with a renewed sense of hope. i think that if everyone were to live with odell's ideas in mind, we could be well on our way towards a more balanced, thoughtful, equitable, enriching, and happy universe. a must read (and must re-read)!

i appreciate what this book what trying to do and while I appreciate and agree with the core message, I think the book was a bit too long and meandering, failing to find a focus, and seeming to lack a clear compelling argument. I can't help but feel like it fell short because of that.

rumbledethumps

Another book spawned by the shock of the 2016 US Presidential election, and the “personal crisis” it caused for the author. 

Obvious observations treated as revelations. The author never neglects to remind us that she is “an artist” as if that is supposed to add credibility.

Well-researched, with interesting historical perspectives on the merits of publicly and conscientiously objecting to the harmful aspects of our society versus the innate urge to escape and abstain. Odell makes a contemplative and compelling argument for breaking the patterns of distraction upheld by the attention economy in order to boldly practice care for the natural world and the others in our communities.

Keven Wang

Very strong start of the book. But the later portions lost me

Alli

40% descriptions of art, 40% lengthy quotes from other people’s papers/books, 15% birds and 5% relevant conclusions

Gisela Ayala 

A galvanising critique of the forces vying for our attention - and our personal information - that redefines what we think of as productivity and reveals what we've been too distracted to see about ourselves and our world. Nothing is harder to do these days than nothing. But in a world where our value is determined by our data productivity, doing nothing may be our most important form of resistance. So argues artist and critic Jenny Odell in this field guide to slowing down. Odell sees our attention as the most precious - and overdrawn - resource we have. Once we can start paying a new kind of attention, we can undertake bolder forms of political action, reimagine humanity's role in the environment, and arrive at a more meaningful understanding of happiness and fulfilment. Far from a simple anti-technology screed, or a pointless back-to-nature meditation, How to Do Nothing is an action plan for thinking beyond capitalist narratives of efficiency and value. Provocative, timely and utterly persuasive, it shows us how to preserve our inner lives and bring about change in a world that needs this more than ever. 'A manifesto for the internet age.'-The A.V. Club 'An invigorating meditation on ways of seeing and being more present ... It's a book that could change you for the better.'-LitHub

How to Do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy

one of the best essays i have read so far. if you are curious about how our attention is commodified and how we can bring it back to the things that really count - while digging into beautiful curated and described artworks: this is your book. 

antonia maria wagner she/they

Ashley Johnson

If you are a human in 2019, I implore you to read this book.

2022: I really enjoyed this book which is a perfect one to read on holiday.  Would have liked some non-US examples of what the author was discussing (hence 4 stars) but overall a good read which made me reflect on my own use of technology - and relationship with my environment.

2026: I've just nudged this up half a star as this is even more relevant to me in my mid-forties than it was first time around. Truly excellent.

Doug Belshaw

2022: I really enjoyed this book which is a perfect one to read on holiday.  Would have liked some non-US examples of what the author was discussing (hence 4 stars) but overall a good read which made me reflect on my own use of technology - and relationship with my environment.

2026: I've just nudged this up half a star as this is even more relevant to me in my mid-forties than it was first time around. Truly excellent.

Angel Martinez

Most conflicting book I've ever read!!! Some chapters I adored and highlighted the hell out of, while others just made me want to chuck the whole thing out the window... Still would recommend to anyone though because reviews are just so polarizing, you'll really have to figure out what you feel about this for yourself

Queena Li

Read if you like: Going "hmmmm" at all of the tiny placards in museums, regenerative agriculture, trying to name as many species of salmon as you can, community gardens, "the good life"

Emma Friedheim

There were some interesting nuggets in here but overall I wasn’t blown away. Certainly a thought-provoking thesis and interesting approach, but it didn’t fully connect for me. I almost feel like it would work better as a long form essay rather than necessitating an entire book? 🤷🏻‍♀️

Dora Tominic

Disclaimer: this is not a review.

Intuition brings these topics to me often and as often I am unable to articulate them. It's beautiful that someone reflected them back to me in actual words that can be used to communicate. 

In the middle of the book, I was in Paris. And it goes with this book to write it down. The light captured on the canvases in d'Orsay, bluish gold, the one so familiar and otherwordly every time it appears, giving us an idea of more and hope and all those cringy ideas I'm desperate for..., so that light coming to life, and my friends. You know how when you're young and you experience stuff but you are too I don't know what to realize how happy you are or that you are even there and then the only way you actually experience those things is nostalgia? This was the opposite.  

Udit Desai

It was difficult to read a lot of the book, I think the author's writing just didn't match my vibe. It was also a lot more ecological than I thought it would be.

Some quotes from it were amazing though: "what a relief to have nothing to say"

Kelly Kim

I picked up this book with hopes to absolve myself from the guilt of spending 12+ hours doing 'work' on my phone/computer, feeling dissatisfied with myself and still having to count sheep to go to sleep.
Through a comforting balance of anecdotes and philosophical foundations, Odell injects vibrancy into the notion of 'work' itself. Not least because of the current attention economy, the modern day notion of 'productivity' is perhaps, closer to futility. By going outside, and listening to the wind rustle the trees - you might optimise methods of communication. The same goes for contextualising the role of 'space' in our 'productive endeavours'. It's not the volume of work we do, it's the way we direct the effort we do put in - with intention and consideration for the parties involved - that will create meaningful change.