A review by air_traffic_controller
How to Do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy by Jenny Odell

4.0

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 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