Rees D.

How to Do Nothing by Jenny Odell

Notes • 994 Words • Books, 2024 • 05/09/2024 • View in graph

Media This Post References:

• 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.

There are 1041 words in this article, and it will probably take you less than 6 minutes to read it.

This article was published 2024-05-09 00:00:00 -0400, which makes this post and me old when I published it.

It took an estimated to develop this article from conception to publishing.

How to Do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy Jenny Odell · 2019

** A New York Times Bestseller ** 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 "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" 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.

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it isn’t strictly about doing nothing but it is against the capitalist conception of productivity and the historical gradual colonization of our minds and time: “refusing productivity and stopping to listen”

the author and many other creatives take problem with the idea that we must always be saying something performing or creating something because how will you have anything to give without periods of gathering things and reflecting on them?

she discusses attention a lot because thats what’s commodified by the attention economy but i think she really wants to focus on presence or being-in-the-world

in practicing and sharpening your attention you gain more awareness of the external and the internal: both of things unnoticed outside like birdsong or more about your emotions, wants, or needs in yourself

we tend to focus on growth and new things rather than valuing maintenance and regeneration in this we resist us giving up our time and focus instead of putting time into being human (human animality) in connecting with others and our world/Earth (spaces)

in focusing more on the present moment and being in our bodies we may stretch a single moment to feel longer as a way to live “longer” by experiencing more subjective time

retreat from society is irresponsible and impossible; politics/society necessarily emerge from the contact of multiple people with differing wills and combined with ideological baggage from a society communes are doomed to fail

we have responsibilities to others but also humans are social creatures so total retreat is not possible

removal and isolation is necessary for an outside perspective for contemplation to see the forest for the trees but that contemplation should bring you back to the world with a renewed sense of love and responsibility: to leave and always come back

one may feel the desire to escape more broadly but one has to tune into that feeling to truly understand what they want to run away from and they may find it’s not society in general but certain aspects of how they are participating or engaging in society this goes back to the authors point about reflection as necessary for art or anything meaningful

attention individually and alignment collectively is necessary for intentional action but the economy both attention and capitalistic robs us of this attention and we must participate in the rat race for fear of falling behind or out because we have little margin/safety net

there are many things to refuse but first is attention because it undergirds everything else

withdrawal from social media is potentially untenable but also not the point it’s going beyond the news cycle and fake news to focus and enlarge attention on what really matters

attention may be the last thing we own and can this withdrawal

attention = reality, so paying more and better attention can open new realities

in being shown something novel and unmooring our senses it allows us to notice the same inputs differently

James and von Helmholtz argue that voluntary sustained attention is impossible and instead is actually a series of successive efforts to bring attention back to the same thing by continually finding out new things about it, as this is what attention tends toward

attention has direction and magnitude

attention literally filters perception (renders) — attention maps/patterns of attention

if we choose to pay attention to people and graciously interpret their actions in reference to their depth as people and not objects, we are able to open up compassion and love to everyone thus transforming our everyday interactions and experiences a la david foster wallace

spatial proximity like your community or neighbors forces you to confront people and natures and realities different than yours that are somewhat in escapable and then doing so takes you out of your filter, bubble and forces you to explain things that you’ve taken for granted allowing you to see things from new angles as well things from other people

these are encounters that we can’t foresee and they may change us it allows you to disrupt your own self and identity and discover something new about yourself instead of staying within and honing your existing self and interests.

The inequality in which the attention economy affects people