Recent reads: How To Do Nothing

Recently I finished reading How To Do Nothing by Jenny Odell. I was first introduced to Jenny at a conference in 2018 (In/Visible, coming up on year 3!) where she delivered possibly the most memorable talk of the event. The talk she gave then — and I was delighted to learn that it’s now online—turned into the first chapter or two of the book, which is no less enjoyable.

Maybe enjoyable isn’t quite the right word to sum up the book; it’s thought-provoking, which I guess in turn I find enjoyable. Jenny’s primary focus is on the way we use our powers of attention—what we tune into (the internet, mostly, or entertainment) versus what we ignore as noise (the actual world around us) on a regular basis. She manages to do this without shaming anyone for being a phone addict; rather, she shares the genuine awe and appreciation she gained for a new way of seeing and interpreting her environment.

She also articulates just how damaging the modern “attention economy” can be to the psyche, in ways that I think will resonate with a lot of people. This is a theme that came up during her talk as well, and on rewatching it just now I found this gem (around 24:15):

When every waking moment has become pertinent to making a living, and we submit even our leisure to numerical evaluation on Facebook and Instagram, constantly checking on its performance like you check 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.

Her talk had some applause throughout as people identified with what she was saying; I don’t think I was the only one to feel relief at having a number of vague existential qualms spelled out with such clarity and empathy.

I appreciate her sources, too, for both book and talk — lots of philosophical works that I personally would struggle through, and she has a knack for infusing their ideas with modern relevance.

After getting sucked back into watching the talk again, I forgot if I had anything else to add about the book, which I already returned to the library. There’s surely some ironic joke in there about attention, but I’ll let it go. There are a few hours of daylight left today and San Francisco is having one of its classic September warm spells — a relief to me after the dreary fog of summer, and I plan to make the most of it.