📚 How to Do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy

Finished reading How to Do Nothing: Resisting The Attention Economy by Jenny Odell.

Early in the book the author herself says that:

…you’ll find that this book is a bit oddly shaped. The arguments and observations I’ll make here are not neat, interlocking parts in a logical whole. Rather, I saw and experienced many things during the course of writing it—things that changed my mind and then changed it again, and which I folded in as I went. I came out of this book different than I went in. So, consider this not a closed transmission of information, but instead an open and extended essay, in the original sense of the word (a journey, an essaying forth). It’s less a lecture than an invitation to take a walk.

And that’s how it felt as I read it. ‘Doing nothing’ is defined by the author as disengaging from the attention economy, and there are some profound reflections here. As I read the book, I found myself consciously trying to be more aware of my surroundings, and particularly the people within them. I had the feeling that I had stopped noticing everyday things, and just through reading about the author’s experiences I felt more tuned into them. Which is exactly what she described happening to herself on a number of occasions as she wrote the book:

Last week, after a meeting, I took the F streetcar from Civic Center to the Ferry Building in San Francisco. It’s a notoriously slow, crowded, and halting route, especially in the middle of the day. This pace, added to my window seat, gave me a chance to look at the many faces of the people on Market Street with the same alienation as the slow scroll of Hockney’s Yorkshire Landscapes. Once I accepted the fact that each face I looked at (and I tried to look at each of them) was associated with an entire life—of birth, of childhood, of dreams and disappointments, of a universe of anxieties, hopes, grudges, and regrets totally distinct from mine—this slow scene became almost impossibly absorbing. As Hockney said: “There’s a lot to look at.” Even though I’ve lived in a city most of my adult life, in that moment I was floored by the density of life experience folded into a single city street.

Odell has also got me thinking about the crazy level of context-switching within a social media feed. It keeps things trivial and without any depth:

For example, let’s take a look at my Twitter feed right now, as I’m sitting inside my studio in Oakland in the summer of 2018. Pressed up against each other in neat rectangles, I see the following:

An article on Al Jazeera by a woman whose cousin was killed at school by ISIL

An article about the Rohingya Muslims fleeing Myanmar last year

An announcement that @dasharezøne (a joke account) is selling new T-shirts

Someone arguing for congestion pricing in Santa Monica, California

Someone wishing happy birthday to former NASA worker Katherine Johnson

A video of NBC announcing the death of Senator McCain and shortly afterward cutting to people dressed as dolphins appearing to masturbate onstage

Photos of Yogi Bear mascot statues dumped in a forest

A job alert for director of the landscape architecture program at Morgan State University

An article on protests as the Pope visits Dublin

A photo of a yet another fire erupting, this time in the Santa Ana Mountains

Someone’s data visualization of his daughter’s sleeping habits during her first year

A plug for someone’s upcoming book about the anarchist scene in Chicago

An Apple ad for Music Lab, starring Florence Welch

Spatial and temporal context both have to do with the neighboring entities around something that help define it. Context also helps establish the order of events. Obviously, the bits of information we’re assailed with on Twitter and Facebook feeds are missing both of these kinds of context. Scrolling through the feed, I can’t help but wonder: What am I supposed to think of all this? How am I supposed to think of all this? I imagine different parts of my brain lighting up in a pattern that doesn’t make sense, that forecloses any possible understanding. Many things in there seem important, but the sum total is nonsense, and it produces not understanding but a dull and stupefying dread.

I can’t remember the last time that a book had such an impact on my everyday existence, making me take stock of my approach to the things I consume and how I behave as I go throughout my day. I am not sure how much I want to radically change — I’m not about to stop listing to podcasts as I wander — but it has made me more aware of what I’m doing.

Serendipitously, as I read the book I also came across Derek Sivers’ About page where he writes about his approach to how he spends his time, which felt as though it made a connection Odell’s writing. He says:

I hate to waste a single hour. I feel the precious value of time, most of the time. I imagine my time as worth $1000 an hour, and ask myself what’s worth $1000. Watching a TV show? Absolutely not. (“Game of Thrones” was 70 hours, so would have cost $70,000 to watch.) Social media? Absolutely not. Focused learning or creating? Yep! Being with my kid? Always.

I don’t think I will ever be able to take the same approach. I do like some downtime, where I am enjoying things just because I enjoy them, and seem to get a good balance between being productive and recharging my batteries. Watching TV with my wife is a thing we’ve grown into doing together and I love it, so I’m not going to give that up. But I do understand and agree with the sentiment. Life is too short to spend on things that don’t bring you joy or, in your own opinion, are a waste of time. And your time and attention are exactly what the modern ‘social media’ platforms are tuned to exploit.