What I learned from this book is that the world needs more Jenny Odell and I’d like to be friends with her.
This sneaky title did not in fact advocate for doing nothing, but invited me to remember who I am, where I am in space and time, and whatever it is I think I’m doing. To act not just with intention, but with a sense of real context that amounts to a kind of rebellion.
It made an argument for a life grounded in literal, physical reality as an act of resistance. Not idle enjoyment, but activism. Rejecting capitalism as a driving force and replacing it with something more curious, intuitive, and in touch with very real contexts rather than the virtual ones we’ve come to accept.
I appreciate the many frames she offered for society and attention from art, sociology, and philosophy. Classical ways of thinking, a dive into experimental U.S. communes in the 1960’s and why they didn’t work out very well, a description of John Cage’s 4’33” and how it permanently recalibrated her ability to hear, and my first introduction to the concept of bioregionalism—among other things.
There’s so much in here, but it felt like a casual and upbeat walk with a friend who had all sorts of gems like this quote from Gordon Hempton I can’t stop thinking about:
Silence is not the absence of something but the presence of everything.
Odell loves birds, regularly spends time on walks and in parks, curious and attentive and constantly immersed in ideas. It’s clear that she’s a voracious reader, and her work here is gentle, inspiring, and good-humored. She strikes me as a witty, thoughtful friend that’s always interested in something new and who you just want to keep talking.
For me, doing nothing means disengaging from one framework (the attention economy) not only to give myself time to think, but to do something else in another framework.
The entire book is not prescriptive or heavy-handed, but personal. It’s less Jenny Odell telling you how to live, but sharing a rich, nuanced point of view and inviting you to a sort of discussion. If you can’t already tell, I loved it.