Nichts tun – Die Kunst, sich der Auf­merk­sam­keits­öko­nomie zu entziehen by Jenny Odell

3.73 AVERAGE

stephenrobak's review against another edition

challenging informative reflective slow-paced

smprezioso's review against another edition

2.0
I just really did not enjoy this book. I thought Odell might have had a few good points, but they got drowned out in the sea of unnecessary prose. The book would have been better served if she had limited the amount of tangents she went off on - tangents way too specific to the SF Bay Area, too specific to her unique lifestyle, too inaccessible and lengthy for a wide audience. Overall it was a struggle to finish and I didn’t take much away from reading it. Two stars because the writing was technically competent.
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nada_elshabrawy's review against another edition

3.0
it exceeded my expectations. I thought it would be a lame self-help book. but it wasn't!
radicaledwardiv's profile picture

radicaledwardiv's review against another edition

1.75
reflective slow-paced

elizabethwillettmindell's review against another edition

2.25
challenging reflective slow-paced
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morganaverena's review against another edition

DID NOT FINISH
DNF - 30%.

I really wanted to like this book, but couldn't keep up with it - the way it's written makes it repetitive and stretches waaaay more than I could stand - the idea was good and that's what drove me to read it, but it just didn't deliver.

Also, I disliked the author conveniently omitting the why's of communal places in the US being a failure. Creating an equal and communal life inside a capitalist system will never work, and one of the good examples in the book is that someone has a better salary than others in their community, that would never happen in communism - as it didn't in the URSS, people had a margin and couldn't earn more than a simple farmer, making it possible to share the same style of life. It hurts me to see the author deciding to leave out the explanations of those and just waiting for the reader to make the easiest way out and simply thinking it wouldn't work because it's a failure and not because of the environment they live in.

leifalreadyexists's review against another edition

3.0
Not the ground-shaking manifesto that some have claimed, but a fairly decent set of similarly themed essays that respond in a reasonable way to societal pressures to be always "on" in the modern wash of information.

I suspect that the book is limited by its essential contention about social media and fundamentally unambitious set of alternatives. As Odell expresses late in the book,
What if we spent that energy instead on saying the right things to the right people (or person) at the right time? What if we spent less time shouting into the void and being washed over with shouting in return - and more time talking in rooms to those for whom our words are intended? Whether it's a real room or a group chat on Signal, I want to see a restoration of context, a kind of context collection in the face of context collapse. If we have only so much attention to give, and only so much time on this earth, we might want to think about reinfusing our attention and our communication with the intention that both deserve.

There are words for these concepts, of course, and it is "efficiency" and "intentionality". And yet the usual rejoinders to these neoliberal-associated terms are applicable. What Odell ignores is the actuality of communication and the reasons that not all communication can be "efficient", which is because there are an infinite plurality of persons and perspectives. Perfect communication is impossible, et cetera, et cetera. In the frame of social media, it does feel reasonable as a complaint about Twitter (now X), but it's hardly a revolutionary insight. In fact, the history of the platform may suggest that the thrill was exactly to break down the walls between people that enforced context - the joy of seeing a comedian's irreverent response to a politician, of seeing a blue collar response to a high-minded academic, and so on. Of course, that has all changed, but what I am trying to say is that I don't think this seemingly-reasonable complaint holds the water that Odell feels it does.

Anyway, the essays are good and provide a lot of thoughtful things for their reader. A popular book for a good reason.
ceallaighsbooks's profile picture

ceallaighsbooks's review against another edition

5.0
challenging informative inspiring reflective medium-paced
“To resist in place is to make oneself into a shape that cannot so easily be appropriated by a capitalist value system. To do this means refusing the frame of reference: in this case, a frame of reference in which value is determined by productivity, the strength of one’s career, and individual entrepreneurship. 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.
…to remain in this state takes commitment, discipline, and will. Doing nothing is hard.” 
 
author: Jenny Odell 
published: 2019 
publisher: Melville House 
 
genre/subgenre: nonfiction—“…an activist book disguised as a self-help book” 
setting: San Francisco 
main themes/subjects: attention economy, bioregionalism, resist/refuse-in-place, challenging ideas about productivity & worth, social media, individuality culture, personal brands, late stage capitalism, Epicurus, commune living, art, photography, painting, performance art, birds & bird watching, ecology, protest & resistance, community-first life ways, anti-individualism, anti-capitalism (& how capitalism is inherently anti-democratic), technocracy, debunking ideas about the “philosopher king” form of government (i.e. replacing politics with design) 
representation: unions, Audre Lorde, poor communities 
 
premise: “The point of doing nothing, as I define it, isn’t to return to work refreshed and ready to be more productive, but rather to question what we currently perceive as productive.” 
 
“…an ongoing distinction I’ll make between 1) escaping “the world” (or even just other people) entirely and 2) remaining in place while escaping the framework of the attention economy and an over-reliance on a filtered public opinion.” 
 
“To do nothing is to hold yourself still so that you can perceive what is actually there.” 
 
my thoughts: 
I think I understand why Odell & her publisher decided to go with the title “How to Do Nothing” & to disguise “an activist manual as a self-help book” but I’m a little worried about how it’s missed out on a larger cluster of potential readers. 
 
My therapist actually recommended this book to me a year ago & it’s taken me this long to get to it because I was under a misapprehension of what the book was going to entail. In fact, I had paired it with Price’s Laziness Does Not Exist because, as the title suggests, I expected it to be a manual on how to literally “do nothing.” How to decompress, relax, shut down so as to recharge & detox your mind & body. 
 
This book was in fact not Cal Newport's Digital Minimalism nor Catherine Price's How to Break Up With Your Phone (thank goodness) but rather a radical deconstruction of how we use our last remaining resource in a world that has been almost entirely conquered by billionaires, fascist governments, & their environment- & community-destroying corporate machines & military industry: our attention. In fact, this book makes a much better follow-up to Naomi Klein’s Doppelganger, which luckily I had also just recently read, than Price’s work. 
 
“What the tastes of neoliberal techno manifest–destiny and the culture of Trump have in common is impatience with anything nuanced, poetic, or less-than-obvious.” 
 
I listened to this book first on audiobook & then immediately reread it on ebook. At about the 80% mark through the audiobook I had already noticed a significant shift in the way I engage with my day to day life, my phone, nature, & the people around me. Even though my use of social media has always been very careful & intentionally curated, I was still noticing how much of my time it was taking up & began to think critically about the nature of my relationships that were facilitated primarily through social media channels & if perhaps there were other ways to nurture those relationships. As a disabled person this can be very difficult to do in person but at the very least I found myself engaging in longer, personal conversations with folks online & beginning to invest in these relationships as more than just temporary acquaintance-ships. I began to think about the kinds of people I engage with in person on a regular basis—neighbors, coworkers, etc—& thought about ways I could foster relationships that go beyond mere convenience of proximity. 
 
I also particularly enjoyed the conversation around the “I-It” vs “I-Thou” way of seeing & of conceiving community in terms of bioregionalist ways of thinking. I have always had a habit of speaking to animals, plants, & even inanimate objects like cars & buildings as if they were sentient & Odell’s observations about holistic communities & the importance of intentionally framing one’s perspective in terms of their relationship, position, & role within their web of communities really resonated with me. 
 
“…what happens when people regain control over their attention and begin to direct it again, together.
…individual attention forms the basis for collective attention and thus for meaningful refusal of all kinds. …in a time of shrinking margins, …attention may be the last resource we have left to withdraw.” 
 
I really enjoyed how much research Odell did for this book. She covered so many different subjects, pulling the essential information forward to illustrate her points & demonstrating how interconnected all areas of human experience really are. The bibliography is extensive & the reading list I put together based on my own personal interests (see “Further Reading” below) is chock full of so many great-sounding titles that I am really looking forward to checking out. 
 
I was also very impressed by the fact that even though this book was written & published before the pandemic, no part of it felt like it needed to be updated from that perspective but rather Odell communicates ideas about & a vision for human society & relationships that stood up even to the unimaginable experience of the following few years. The stability & strength of such a vision felt really hopeful & empowering. 
 
“When I worry about the birds, I am also worrying about watching all my possible selves go extinct. And when I worry that no one will see the value of these murky waters, it is also a worry that I will be stripped of my own unusable parts, my own mysteries, and my own depths.” 
 
i would recommend this book to readers who enjoy holistic nonfiction that dabbles in multiple genres along the spectrum from memoir to socio-cultural & -political history, from photography to painting & literature, from current events to philosophy & psychology. Odell demonstrates how important it is to be intentional with our attention in all aspects of our lives. this book is best read inquisitively. I read it first on audiobook & then went through my ebook copy to highlight & spend more time with some of the more complicated subjects. 
 
This book would make an incredible bookclub book selection! 
 
“To stand apart is to take the view of the outsider without leaving, always oriented toward what it is you would have left. It means not fleeing your enemy, but knowing your enemy, which turns out not to be the world—contemptus mundi—but the channels through which you encounter it day to day. …allowing yourself to believe in another world while living in this one. …this “other world” is not a rejection of the one we live in. Rather, it is a perfect image of this world when justice has been realized with and for everyone and everything that is already here. To stand apart is to look at the world (now) from the point of view of the world as it could be (the future), with all of the hope and sorrowful contemplation that this entails.” 
 
final note: If I hadn’t read Abolition Democracy this year I’d say this is my number one nonfiction rec for 2025 but AD is short so just pair ‘em together you’ll do great. 

Also click through to see this whole carousel from @abnormalize.being on IG: https://instagram.com/p/DNi3YjFUs3t 
 
CW // genocide, ecocide, systemic racism, cults 
season: Summer 
music pairing: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/3CoMVfrGEM4klga83LjQ1q?si=pibd5x0SS8qTRfAPk4Gt4A 
 
further reading: 

Click on the star ratings beside the titles I’ve read to read my reviews/thoughts about the book.

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“…simple awareness is the seed of responsibility.”
 
Check out my review on StopAndSmellTheBooks.com for more of my favorite quotes, notes, & annotations.

sara44g's review against another edition

4.0
3.5 stars. Some really excellent insights at various points but also a lot of the book felt meandering and overly intellectual.

megserg's review against another edition

absolutely essential reading