How to Do Nothing - Jenny Odell
Essential reading for pandemic and pre-metaverse survival.
How’s that pandemic going? Have you been doom scrolling for 2+ years? Do you feel like your legs have atrophied? Are you sure that certain parts of your city still exist? How to Do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy by Jenny Odell is the antidote to all that.
Let’s get the obvious out of the way- the title. I have received so many different reactions upon texting a cover photo to friends that the title could be accurately used as a Roschach test for people’s current mental state. Here are some of the reactions:
“Get to work!”
“You already know everything in that book.”
“I already know everything in that book.”
“I don’t have the energy to read that but let me know what I need to know.”
“Sorry, I’m taking a technology break.”
“… has notifications silenced.”
Clearly Ms. Odell or her publishers know how to write a clickbait title that gets a response. Given the content therein, it’s a bit of a shame that the sub and main titles weren’t reversed to do honour to the comprehensive and compelling message of not-falling-for-the-bait.
From the bio on the back, Jenny Odell is “an artist and writer who teaches at Stanford University” and immediately her writing reminded me of the way that artists talk, especially those in, or teaching at, art school. There’s a talk-out-loud character which supposes many hypotheses, often in real time, begging for a listener and ultimately a response so that the speaker can confirm or deny their theory. You are the listener and she is the positer. In many ways this also reminds me of Socratic dialogue style. Your part is inferred or completed inside your head but you can clearly imagine her listening.
The route of the conversation is circuitous, ranging from striking dock workers, to birds, to a rose garden, to the success or failure of communes, to hidden rivers, and Spotify algorithms. Cupertino, the home of Apple and Odell, serves as a prescient backdrop for the progession of her argument and of tech addiction. Her meandering conversation brings images of how Steve Jobs famously walked and talked in nature for his most important meetings.
She begins by calling out our pervasive culture of “usefulness.” Essentially every micro moment is now tracked, either by third parties or ourselves, to determine their value vs. the time they take. Should I do this or that? Will this get likes? Should I say it like that? Should I click this or that?
To illustrate this pervasive predilection she tells of how Greek philosopher Diogenes flipped off Alexander the Great (the greatest accomplisher of all time) for standing in his sunshine when he is working so hard at doing nothing. There’s also the fabulous performance art piece by Pilvi Takala who ended up at Deloitte as a trainee and caused a major internal panic by simply sitting at her desk unmoving for entire days. The reaction of coworkers was the piece. They found it so unsettling to not work or to work in such a different focus that it began to dismantle their own absolute work bias.
These examples serve to outline Odell’s main thesis— there is a “third space” between total disconnection and total compliance. That space is continued attention to something more valuable.
I underlined this passage as the key passage in the book. She spends the remainder of the book building a holistic case study to achieve each point of the sentence.
The first part is “standing apart”, which brings her personal affinity for getting out into nature alone. Her frequent trips to the Rose Garden in Oakland or various cabins in the woods illustrate the need for perspective. You can’t see what you’re in, if you’re in it. So get out. Furthermore, technology aims to keep us in. From its addictive nature, to the fact it needs readily accessible power, all these things keep us locked in to devices and inside our homes and offices. Our attention doesn’t even have a chance to focus on something external. Nature, she argues is the only force that can truly provide a depth of possibility large enough to compete with the engineered dopamine that devices give. This seems obvious written in summary form, but her masterful way of talking around the point forces us to follow and be subsumed into her argument naturally. It resonates much more personally because of her method.
The next part of the sentence is the maturing. It is key to realize that only we can actively decided to remove ourselves. There is no hope of the technology itself or companies ever being magnanimous or Godly enough to provide us the “correct” freedom we need. There are some terrifying Mark Zuckerberg quotes to illustrate how they certainly do not have our interest at heart and likely have no conception of what they’re doing. Another insightful story of the hypothetical Walden II utopian commune further reinforces that no central planner can ever provide the optimum environment to live.
Simply, the optimum environment for humans to live in is only created by the continual “attention” we individually pay to our immediate surroundings, people and actions. Freedom requires attention. The further research possibilities into each of the many examples she provides are endlessly fascinating in themselves. Clearly she has developed a comprehensive teaching curriculum.
The last part of the thesis is that we must meet other people in the space we are already in. Technology’s main power is the ability for it to simulate connection while providing the exact opposite outcome. The antidote is to engage in physicality and seeking intimacy from people in real life. Again, this seems trite when written in summary, but when read in long form with the copious examples and parables she uses, it is profound and experiential.
At one point she directs her writing directly to YOU and breaks the fourth wall so-to-speak, bringing attention that she knows you are reading her words and she lives on forever as a listener and converser with you. I think this is one of the most beautiful parts of the book. It is at once training and also exactly the reward that she hopes we will all shift our attention to getting. How many books can ever reach the level where we feel a genuine connection to the author as a person, not as a story?
CONCLUSION
I could go on and on about the wonderful examples she uses and how each of them could spawn endless further inquiry, but the review would be equal or longer to the book itself. I think that’s a testament to how good the book is. It’s one that I want to talk about endlessly to all my friends.
While it’s somewhat dense, the conversational style makes it an easy read and whether you have any art or activist background knowledge only serves to make the point clear sooner. It’s approachable enough that anyone who is not completely dead inside will eventually come to the same conclusion by the end— your attention is finite and if you want society to reach certain ideals, you can’t use the default settings.
PRICE
$17.99 USD
AVAILABILITY
THE RATING
8/10 Absolute
10/10 Relative
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