How to do Nothing by Jenny Odell – Book Review

Publisher’s write-up:

‘Nothing is harder to do these days than nothing. But in a world where our value is determined by our 24/7 data productivity . . . doing nothing may be our most important form of resistance.

So argues artist and critic Jenny Odell in this field guide to doing nothing (at least as capitalism defines it). Odell sees our attention as the most precious—and overdrawn—resource we have. Once we can start paying a new kind of attention, she writes, we can undertake bolder forms of political action, reimagine humankind’s role in the environment, and arrive at more meaningful understandings of happiness and progress.

Far from the simple anti-technology screed, or the back-to-nature meditation we read so often, How to do Nothing is an action plan for thinking outside of capitalist narratives of efficiency and techno-determinism. Provocative, timely, and utterly persuasive, this book is a four-course meal in the age of Soylent.’

How to do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy is a book by the artist Jenny Odell – where she focuses on how to do ‘nothing’, and avoiding the aspects of the modern world that highly demand your attention such as the social media apps and the corporate world that we have built.

She starts with describing her neighbourhood in Oakland, California and her visits to the rose garden to observe the nature around her and watch the birds. She goes on to describe the joy of eventually beginning to identify different kinds of birds in her neighbourhood by the sounds that they make. However, volunteering in the rose garden or admiring the nature in today’s world would be considered as ‘doing nothing’ as it does not generate any value to the economy.

From thereon, she moves on to explaining the manner in which social media applications work – that their primary measure is user engagement and thus, do everything possible to grab your attention. She also has segments on social and political movements of the past, ranging from Thoreau to the workers movement in San Francisco in 1940s. There are also a lot of anecdotes to works of art throughout the book.

As you can observe from above, in a 200 page book, she talks about social media, nature and bird watching, building neighbourhood networks, political movements of the past and also works of art – most of it with a fair amount of detail. This is the reason why I felt the book was lacking focus – where her broad message was conveyed– which is to engage more with the local community and enjoy small things around you rather than being stuck in the ‘attention economy’; but her anecdotes seemed unnecessary.

The title was misleading too, to add a bit of context, I read this book during the lockdown enforced by the coronavirus pandemic. Therefore, the title seemed rather intriguing and even useful during this period. However, this book was far from a ‘how to do’ than presenting her own opinions and her very definition of negative was vague. To quote her:

‘For me, doing nothing means disengaging from one framework (the attention economy) not only to give myself time to think, but to do something else in another framework.’ – page 179

To her, nothing merely means what is not deemed ‘productive’ by the capitalist society such as bird watching or enjoying the rose garden. She goes on to urge us to come out of such perceptions to avoid the attention economy and enjoy the nature around us. While that is a very good suggestion, investigating the varieties of plants and birds in a locality is unlikely to be the interest of every person; for instance, my very act of reading her book was not ‘productive’ because that does not contribute to the economy in anyway (yes, I did pay for the book but then, that is where the ‘economic value’ of the transaction ended). Thus, her definition of the word nothing was vague and what she largely seems to mean is doing something not deemed productive (which frankly should cover even watching a free to air television channel).

To conclude, I appreciate the broad message of the book and based on my discussions on the book with local book clubs around (by video!), a lot of us agree that we may have a new perspective while meeting neighbours or looking at birds in the sky. That small change in our lives could be attributed as a success of the writer. However, presentation is very important in a non-fiction work and this book was neither easy to read nor was it worth the arduous reading effort.

On that note, I would award the book a rating four on ten.

Rating – 4/10

Have a nice day,
Andy