Learn How to Resist the Attention Economy: A Guide to Doing Nothing

Susan Stepney: This isn’t actually about how to do “nothing”: it’s about how to do something meaningful, rather than the nothing that results from being trapped in the shallows of social media and "the attention economy”, of consumerism and incessant productivity. It’s about how to disengage from that time-suck, and how to use the resulting time beneficially.

The argument goes something like this. The attention economy is bad for us: it grabs our attention but doesn’t give anything in return; it’s like junk food engineered for craving more rather than providing nutrition. However, we can’t just walk away from the world and become a hermit: we need some contact with it to function, to keep in touch, to do our work; we are social beings. So we need to “resist in place”: do what is needed, but no more. This is of course difficult, because the digital world is engineered to make it hard to ignore; consumerism is the way our world current runs; not everyone has the resources to just stop.

Odell suggests that one way to resist is to pay “deep attention”, to go down rabbit holes. Rather than skimming over the surface glitter, dig down in one place, and notice,...

United Kingdom on Jan 01, 2024

Gretchen: I found this to be the perfect palette-cleansing read in these demanding times, when I each of us has to decide where we want to spend our precious time and attention - and how we want to live.

United States on Nov 01, 2023

J. Martens: After reading about 50% of this book, I decided to put it down and not finish it. Why? Because I don't think the author wrote it to be a book that is read seriously and learned from.

This "book" is performance art. Before I tell you what I think this book really is, what I believe the author intended, let me tell you more about why I don't think it is a serious book like you might think it is meant to be.

First, the author is an artist, and not a traditional one in the sense that they are not a painter, photographer, etc. Their art is super creative and boundary pushing. Pretty interesting, in my opinion.

Second, the author spends a lot of time in this book referring to performance art, and other non-traditional art. To the point that I started thinking, "I get it, no need for more and more and more examples of performance art. Yes, there is a connection to "doing nothing" but its not that important to be shared over and over and over again."

Finally, the book is really, really light on substance. In the time I was reading it, sure, there were a few things that made me think or otherwise feel like I learned something, but few and far between. This is...

United States on Oct 16, 2023

Katherine Cameron: This book's most unusual and significant message is that repair and nurture (traditional purview of women) are needed far more than innovation and productivity (traditional male values) - for the planet to survive. To repair and restore, we have to pay attention to the world around us, not the constant demands of media and social media.

In exploring this suggestion, the author grounds many of her examples in the Bay Area, and East-Bay in particular: Oakland's oldest tree, the Oakland Rose Garden, etc. If you, like I, live in the East Bay, this makes the book particularly interesting. Another very unique chapter looks back at Utopian communities from the Greeks to the l960s communes - and concludes that withdrawal from the world around us does not lead to well-being any better than full-tilt focus on the world's problems , as found in media and social media.

This book has a lot of points to make, but a thread that runs throughout is to find balance, and to be careful what we spend our attention on. We should take our gaze away from the constant lure of media and social media, but also refrain from withdrawal to focus on self. Find BALANCE that involves helping build...

United States on Sep 15, 2022

eric27: Moyen car pas vraiment conforme à ce qui est annoncé dans le titre

France on Nov 08, 2021

Lomaharshana: This is a beautiful book.

There has been a lot of discussion in recent times of the fragmentation of our attention, a destruction of our attention spans, by the internet and smartphones. The effect of these technologies on children and knowledge workers has been well-documented. But it is more wide-spread than that. Walk anywhere in India and you will find everyone with their faces stuck in their smartphones. I have seen shopkeepers service me without even turning to face me, while watching videos on their phone. I have been in taxies in which the driver had a smartphone on their car’s dashboard. I have witnessed carpenters do their work semi-distracted by their phones.

The default response to this situation has been things like the digital detox or digital minimalism. Proponents of these ideas say that you should move away from your phone in order to do what matters: develop your careers, produce meaningful results, live a productive life. Jenny Odell, the author of “How to Do Nothing”, and an American artist, takes this a few steps farther and a few fathoms deeper. She argues, very compellingly, we should save our attention not because that would save our...

India on Sep 18, 2021

Ty K: I’m three chapters into this book and reading it feels like taking a deep breath. It’s accessible for those without a philosophy background but sophisticated enough to engage those unfortunate enough to have one. Also, the prose is lovely; there are truly some beautiful turns of phrase and excellent uses of imagery in this book. All in all, a pleasure to read if you need a break from reading complicated texts. In the spirit of Gilles Deleuze (who’s thought makes a few appearances in the book) Odell is truly attempting to set out a practical guide for thinking difference by sparking off a joyful rebellion to the attention economy.

Canada on Mar 19, 2021

Higuel Noroes: O livro possui muitas frentes. São vários assuntos em aberto, tentando se encaixar um com o outro. A linguagem é difícil e travada, principalmente pela quantidade de citações. A autora não sabe exatamente que mensagem ela quer passar - mas deixa avisado desde o início. No final, após todos os ramblings e informações desconexas, há um tentativa de recorte-e-cole para elaborar alguma conclusão coerente.

De certa forma há essa coerência. Mas não espere um livro de auto-ajuda com frases feitas e passo a passos. A coerência vem com esforço, eu não sei se me esforcei o suficiente. Muitas ideias se sobressaem: biorregionalismo e o problema da economia da atenção, principalmente - para mim. O Brasil é muito, muito rico culturalmente. Moro no Rio de Janeiro, e o tanto de facetas do povo, da história, da ecologia, da cidade... É desesperador pensar que ainda me pego fixado em questões alienígenas do que focar no meu próprio berço. "Como não fazer nada" é na verdade um convite a como boicotar as tecnologias viciantes e perceber o espaço em que vive, e no tempo que seja necessário para que se perceba essa espaço.

O mundo físico, o contato olho...

Brazil on Oct 11, 2020

Venkataraman G: A week ago I found myself in a two day free-to-attend ‘festival’ hosted by the Malaysian Ministry of Finance and organized in collaboration with the Central Bank of the country – Bank Negara Malaysia. Titled LIFT, an acronym whose expansion stood for Literacy in Financial Technology and Living in Future Times, the event purported to showcase the burgeoning developments in the digital world of finance and technology. In between the short time before one speaker concluded her talk and the next one was preparing to take the podium, the emcee, with a view to eliciting participation from an otherwise reticent but polite crowd, asked as to how many people upon waking up every morning reached out for their smartphones instead of turning towards their spouse. More than 75% of the hands instinctively shot up prompting a burst of spontaneous laughter.

While I am yet to share my bed with a spouse, this question by the Emcee triggered a bout of introspection. I would be lying through my teeth if I was to deny the fact that the first thing grabbing my attention every morning is a rectangular instrument that furnishes me with an unending ticker tape of likes, notifications,...

United States on Aug 01, 2020