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3.73 AVERAGE
3.73 AVERAGE
THIS IS NOT A SELF-HELP BOOK. And I’m so glad it’s not. It’s a smart, in-depth analysis of the notion of attention, and how we can apply it to our digital and physical environments. It’s everything mindfulness meditation is not - a call to action. It cites Greek philosophers and bright essays published a few months ago, while smoothly interweaving science and art - all of which to understand how to look and be in the world. So yeah, it might change your perception of yourself and your surroundings, but certainly not with the help of a celery smoothie.
I think some people would be disappointed by how dense and academic this book is, considering how it is marketed. A cover with pretty pink flowers and a simple "how to" title don't really prepare readers for what [b:How to Do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy|42771901|How to Do Nothing Resisting the Attention Economy|Jenny Odell|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1550724373l/42771901._SY75_.jpg|66525499] really tackles. It's not a narrative on "how to do nothing" or to "log off," but instead an exploration of what our attention really is and how commodified and fragmented it is in our modern world. Odell has an art background, and that's where she sources a lot of her insights. She talks about the value in really "seeing" something, such as a piece of art or a rose in a garden, and how attention defines how we exist in our communities. I particularly liked her points about the importance of public space (libraries, parks, really anywhere that you're not forced to pay to be allowed in), and how those spaces can be resting grounds in a world trying to commercialize the average person's time and attention.
Don't expect a how-to book, but it's an admirable bit of non-fiction nonetheless :)
Don't expect a how-to book, but it's an admirable bit of non-fiction nonetheless :)
reflective
slow-paced
As if by a conscious plan, the next book I resumed after finishing the digital minimalism was ‘How to Do Nothing’ by Jenny Odell. This must have been subconscious kick that made me go in this line, and I am utterly happy it did.
How to do Nothing is more than an encouragement to do nothing. In fact, it is almost the exact opposite of what the title indicates. It, as the sub title suggests, proposes a thorough detoxification approach in the fight to attention economy. Doing nothing, here does not refer to stay idle, rather it asks the readers to look away from the screens and focus on the real life that is happening around you. As simple as that.
How to do nothing basically advocates how to do things that matter, that require your full thought and your entire being.
One theme that continuously emerges and re-emerges in the book is the longing to submerge ourselves into nature. As cliché as it sounds, nature provides the perfect concoction for a person to savor the visual elements and satisfy our need to observe, movements for our eyes to attune, and rhythms for our senses to settle.
The book, which gets quite stretched, monotonous and academic at times, becomes a highly relatable reflection all of a sudden. I have a lot of highlights from the book in my Kindle, which might indicate how I ended up agreeing with what she was saying, but the same text might get completely distorted if placed out of context.
The context and pretext, I want to add here before moving further is the sense of privilege this text entails. The privilege to allow yourself to take a step back, to take a pause, or say: to go bird watching.
I specially liked the section where the author reminds us to think beyond digital detoxification or often called digital minimalism. The stark reminder to return back to make a change, the author advocates, is more important than just staying disconnected from the grid. She suggests that some form of hybrid reaction is needed. We have to be able to do both: to contemplate and participate, to leave and always come back, where we are needed (1304-1305).
This is not, may I remind you, a chronologically flowing and interesting read. You might like it if you share some of the quirks with the author. She talks about a lot of subjects, such as the importance of public spaces, clear demarcation between work and personal time, collapse of context in social media, bioregionalism, among others - that add supporting vertical columns to the overall idea she wants to propose.
Owing to my laziness to recall and analyze things in detail, I hereby share some of the sections I highlighted during my read.
On quantified representation of human interaction:
The urge to think:
On gatekeeping the bodily time, in the age of fast paced online interaction:
One of the sections that stuck with me was how she distinguishes between a picture and a painting, indicating that they manifest in two different dimensions:
I was intrigued once, when someone commented and outrightly produced a list of solutions to someone else’s problems. This reminded me of engineer-thinking, taking everything as a technical problem and their need to ‘solve them’. The essence, however is to understand the politics within the personal space, to understand the holistic environment which caused the problem in the first place.
Randomly this too:
And finally, about the ideation of self:
How to do Nothing is more than an encouragement to do nothing. In fact, it is almost the exact opposite of what the title indicates. It, as the sub title suggests, proposes a thorough detoxification approach in the fight to attention economy. Doing nothing, here does not refer to stay idle, rather it asks the readers to look away from the screens and focus on the real life that is happening around you. As simple as that.
How to do nothing basically advocates how to do things that matter, that require your full thought and your entire being.
One theme that continuously emerges and re-emerges in the book is the longing to submerge ourselves into nature. As cliché as it sounds, nature provides the perfect concoction for a person to savor the visual elements and satisfy our need to observe, movements for our eyes to attune, and rhythms for our senses to settle.
“I WANT TO be clear that I’m not actually encouraging anyone to stop doing things completely. In fact, I think that “doing nothing”—in the sense of refusing productivity and stopping to listen—entails an active process of listening that seeks out the effects of racial, environmental, and economic injustice and brings about real change. I consider “doing nothing” both as a kind of deprogramming device and as sustenance for those feeling too disassembled to act meaningfully. On this level, the practice of doing nothing has several tools to offer us when it comes to resisting the attention economy (621-625).”
The book, which gets quite stretched, monotonous and academic at times, becomes a highly relatable reflection all of a sudden. I have a lot of highlights from the book in my Kindle, which might indicate how I ended up agreeing with what she was saying, but the same text might get completely distorted if placed out of context.
The context and pretext, I want to add here before moving further is the sense of privilege this text entails. The privilege to allow yourself to take a step back, to take a pause, or say: to go bird watching.
I specially liked the section where the author reminds us to think beyond digital detoxification or often called digital minimalism. The stark reminder to return back to make a change, the author advocates, is more important than just staying disconnected from the grid. She suggests that some form of hybrid reaction is needed. We have to be able to do both: to contemplate and participate, to leave and always come back, where we are needed (1304-1305).
If doing nothing requires space and time away from the unforgiving landscape of productivity, we might be tempted to conclude that the answer is to turn our backs to the world, temporarily or for good. But this response would be shortsighted. (756-761).
This is not, may I remind you, a chronologically flowing and interesting read. You might like it if you share some of the quirks with the author. She talks about a lot of subjects, such as the importance of public spaces, clear demarcation between work and personal time, collapse of context in social media, bioregionalism, among others - that add supporting vertical columns to the overall idea she wants to propose.
Owing to my laziness to recall and analyze things in detail, I hereby share some of the sections I highlighted during my read.
On quantified representation of human interaction:
“In a situation where every waking moment has become the time in which we make our living, and when we submit even our leisure for numerical evaluation via likes on Facebook and Instagram, constantly checking on its performance like one checks 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. (Location 507-510)”.
The urge to think:
“Obviously the solution is not to stop reading the news, or even what other people have to say about that news, but we could use a moment to examine the relationship between attention span and the speed of information exchange (552-554)”.
On gatekeeping the bodily time, in the age of fast paced online interaction:
It is this financially incentivized proliferation of chatter, and the utter speed at which waves of hysteria now happen online, that has so deeply horrified me and offended my senses and cognition as a human who dwells in human, bodily time (560-562).
One of the sections that stuck with me was how she distinguishes between a picture and a painting, indicating that they manifest in two different dimensions:
Paintings are objects in their own right. A picture represented something other than itself; a painting represents itself. A picture mediates between a viewer and an object in pictorial space; a painting is an object to which the viewer relates without mediation…It is on the surface and in the same space as we are. Painting and viewer coexist in the same reality (2121-2123).
I was intrigued once, when someone commented and outrightly produced a list of solutions to someone else’s problems. This reminded me of engineer-thinking, taking everything as a technical problem and their need to ‘solve them’. The essence, however is to understand the politics within the personal space, to understand the holistic environment which caused the problem in the first place.
Like Frazier’s pastoral scene with which he wordlessly answers the accusation of fascism, Thiel’s “escape from politics” could never be anything more than an image that existed outside of time and reality. Preemptively calling it a “peaceful project” avoids the fact that regardless of how high-tech your society might be, “peace” is an endless negotiation among free-acting agents whose wills cannot be engineered. Politics necessarily exist between even two individuals with free will; any attempt to reduce politics to design (Thiel’s “machinery of freedom”) is also an attempt to reduce people to machines or mechanical beings. So when Thiel writes of “new technologies that may create a new space for freedom,” I hear only an echo of Frazier: “Their behavior is determined, yet they’re free.” (1146-1152).
Randomly this too:
Extrapolating this into the realm of strangers, I worry that if we let our real-life interactions be corralled by our filter bubbles and branded identities, we are also running the risk of never being surprised, challenged, or changed—never seeing anything outside of ourselves, including our own privilege. That’s not to say we have nothing to gain from those we have many things in common with (on paper). But if we don’t expand our attention outside of that sliver, we live in an “I-It” world where nothing has meaning outside of its value and relation to us (2613-2617).
And finally, about the ideation of self:
Although I can understand it as the logical outcome of a very human craving for stability and categories, I also see this desire as, ironically, the intersection of many forces inside and outside this imagined “self”: fear of change, capitalist ideas of time and value, and an inability to accept mortality. It’s also about control, since if we recognize that what we experience as the self is completely bound to others, determined not by essential qualities but by relationships, then we must further relinquish the ideas of a controllable identity and of a neutral, apolitical existence (the mythology that attends gentrification). But whether we are the fluid product of our interactions with others is not our choice to make. The only choice is whether to recognize this reality or not… (2636-2642).
informative
sad
medium-paced
Maybe 2.5? I had a hard time following this book. I don't know that I can list any bullet points or write a summary of this book. I like the idea of the book, but for myself, how I learn and comprehend things, I felt that I had a hard time following things.
I was ready to argue with this book for the first half, because I assumed it was an actual guide on how to do nothing. As that book it is a failure; it does not engage with any of the financial or social or psychological imperatives that convince people to do something instead of nothing.
But the author never meant to provide a step-by-step path on how do nothing. It's an affirmation that 1. doing nothing is important 2. doing nothing is possible.
2. comes from the fact that doing nothing happens when you choose to direct your attention to nonproductive activities (like staring at birds, staring at birds is her main example, Jenny Odell is such a birder), and attention is malleable over time. On a moment-to-moment basis it is difficult to decide what to pay attention to, but in the long run you pay attention to what you choose.
It reminds me of Pilgrim at Tinker Creek:
But the author never meant to provide a step-by-step path on how do nothing. It's an affirmation that 1. doing nothing is important 2. doing nothing is possible.
2. comes from the fact that doing nothing happens when you choose to direct your attention to nonproductive activities (like staring at birds, staring at birds is her main example, Jenny Odell is such a birder), and attention is malleable over time. On a moment-to-moment basis it is difficult to decide what to pay attention to, but in the long run you pay attention to what you choose.
It reminds me of Pilgrim at Tinker Creek:
But there is another kind of seeing that involves a letting go. When I see this way I sway transfixed and emptied. The difference between the two ways of seeing is the difference between walking with and without a camera. When I walk with a camera I walk from shot to shot, reading the light on a calibrated meter. When I walk without a camera, my own shutter opens, and the mo- ment’s light prints on my own silver gut. When I see this second way I am above all an unscrupulous observer
challenging
emotional
hopeful
informative
inspiring
reflective
slow-paced
informative
reflective
medium-paced