By carving out time for stillness, Odell says, we can then turn our attention to engaging more deeply in the care of ourselves, others and the environment. Over six interweaving chapters, Odell argues that engaging in deliberate inactivity is a political imperative during a time when our value is measured by productivity and our attention is mercilessly mined for profit. This impulse seems to drive Odell’s book too, a twisty tapestry made up of references to artists, writers, unionists, farmers and philosophers, stitched together to map out her own compelling thesis. At the start of her speech, Odell classified her art practice as “observational eros”, meaning an “emotional fascination with your subject that is so strong that it overpowers the desire to make anything new”. Odell is a multidisciplinary artist, writer and teacher at Stanford University, and her book is an adaptation of a talk she gave at art and technology conference EYEO in 2017, which went viral after the transcript was posted to Medium.

Rather, her intricate, sprawling essays construct a thoughtful and convincing case for what we could gain if we directed our attention away from our screens, and towards our local communities and surrounding ecology. Odell’s book doesn’t offer concrete steps to combat our digital compulsions, nor does it (thankfully) proselytise Luddism. In the book’s introduction, Odell labels it an “activist book disguised as a self-help book” only to then refute her description: “I’m not sure it’s that fully either”.

How do you untangle yourself from something that’s so deep-rooted? You can’t completely, but you can minimise the internet’s pull by embracing idleness, argues Jenny Odell in her enthralling, searching new book How To Do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy (Black Inc.). I’m well-versed in the overwhelming anxiety that the internet can induce, but the experience of blankness, or pure boredom, is something I can only identify with in the abstract. A temporary digital cleanse – extolled in endless articles and books – feels useless when most jobs and services require almost constant connectivity. I should be horrified that corporations have accrued so much personal data about me that I’m compelled to click on their eerily tailored ads on Instagram, but they’ve become so banal all I feel is indifference. I use Apple’s Screen Time to curtail my use, only to break the self-imposed limit every day, which fills me with guilt, like I’m a toddler with no impulse control. Jenny Odell makes a convincing case for moving beyond the ruthless logic of useĪs someone who has spent the majority of my life attached to technology, I have developed an unhealthy dependency upon my phone, and all attempts to wean myself off it have been fruitless.

How to do nothing resisting