how to do nothing resisting the attention economy review

Women use Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn more than men, for networking and job-seeking as much as for social connections.

In 2005, just 5 percent of American adults used at least one social media platform, according to the Pew Research Center today, it’s 72 percent. “In a situation where every waking moment has become the time in which we make our living,” she writes, “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.’” Odell, an artist and writer from Silicon Valley, argues that our attention has become a commodity within our capitalist society, something that she argues is ultimately harmful to our well-being. How to Do Nothing isn’t a book about being comfortable with absolute nothingness rather, it’s about how divesting your attention from the ever-growing list of things that demand it can be the most radical form of resistance.

So I picked up Jenny Odell’s How to Do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economyin part to contextualize my own experience, and to see if I could shed this work-related anxiety. And then I felt even worse for not appreciating the fact I had free time. Like many other marginalized people I know, I found myself feeling guilty for doing something frivolous when I could be hustling instead. But I realized almost immediately after I left my social-media job to freelance that, for me, free time feels suffocating. To work was be worthy, so I busted my ass juggling jobs, part-time retail gigs, and research opportunities to the point of extreme burnout. Doing nothing meant being lazy, useless, and a waste of space. I viewed moments of stillness as inefficiency. Like Mama Gorda and so many other brown women in my life, I also suffered from the constant need to work. Mama Gorda (our affectionate nickname for her) answered incredulously: “No! I have to be productive. On a recent trip home to Florida, I asked my 72-year-old grandma if, throughout her long life, she has ever stopped to just do nothing. Author Jenny Odell (Photo credit: Ryan Meyer)

How to do nothing resisting the attention economy review