“How to do Nothing” Book Review
While reading “How to do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy” by Jenny Odell, I found myself highlighting many quotes. The whole book made me think deeper on questions I had been having around consumerism and technology, particularly social media. This is a topic I think about often, but I had never read about it from the perspective of “Resisting the attention economy.” She writes about having a “view of the self and of identity that is the opposite of the personal brand: an unstable, shapeshifting thing determined by interactions with others and with different kinds of places.” I think it is true that whether someone is an influencer with thousands or millions of followers or a high schooler with a hundred followers, many of us think about our “personal brand,” and how we appear to the world that exists online. We think about social media often, even when we aren’t on our phones. What I’ve realised over the past few years, and have understood further while reading Odell’s book, is that it is true that commercial social media affects us, but there are many truths that can exist simultaneously. There is space for other forms of art, expression, and connection online that is inspiring. I think it is important that social media is only a part of our lives, and doesn’t take over our lives. Being able to live offline and feel fulfilled is important.
When we went into multiple lockdowns during the pandemic, many people spent more time online, and particularly on social media. Schools and universities taught fully online, and people socialised on the internet. I personally came to understand my relationship with the internet and “attention economy” and have a desire to change certain things. I felt grateful for the internet because we were able to innovate and adapt with it in helpful ways. However, I also found myself online more than before, and was thinking deeper about internet boundaries. When Odell’s book came along, it spoke to these questions of how to live in a more balanced and healthy way with technology.
Odell writes, “From either a social or ecological perspective, the ultimate goal of ‘doing nothing is to wrest our focus from the attention economy and replant it in the public, physical realm.” She says that it is not the internet that is the problem, but “the invasive logic of commercial social media and its financial incentive to keep us in a profitable state of anxiety, envy, and distraction. It is furthermore the cult of individuality and personal branding that grow out of such platforms and affect the way we think about our offline selves and the places we actually live.”
Odell’s book connects to celebrity culture because the way we connect to celebrities is mostly through the internet. We watch YouTube videos and interviews, scroll through their social media feeds, but we don’t really know them. Also, the internet propels many people to celebrity status as influencers or through being discovered for their talents. This in some ways makes person strive for stardom more than ever before seeing how within grasp it could be. The opportunity of the internet is partly why personal brands have become so popular.
Odell writes; “Among my students and in many of the people I know, I see so much energy, so much intensity, and so much anxiety, I see people caught up not just in notifications but in a mythology of productivity and progress, unable not only to rest but simply to see where they are.” I think about this often, and have conversations with family and friends about social media a lot. We share the sense of not feeling fulfilled by scrolling through celebrity posts on instagram, there is a lot of anxiety that arises not only from celebrities online but from the curated quality of personal brands. However, we also talk about feeling inspired by the creativity, innovation, and activism that we see online. I think the internet has many facets, it is very complex, and I am still discovering my own relationship to it.
I have always been so happy that I am part of probably the last generation to grow up as a child without as much social media as we have now. I remember getting Instagram at 14 when it was fun, but it has become more complicated to me as I grow older. So I like to take digital detox breaks in different ways. When I was 17, I took a huge digital detox for a year off of social media. Now, I often leave my phone in another room for whole days and I don’t usually miss it. My Mother has always had a rule of no phones at the table, and I’m grateful for this boundary I’ve had growing up.
I often find it difficult to take full digital detoxes because I study on my laptop, so I spend a lot of time online. When I’m on holiday I usually spend less time online. During the pandemic, I spent even more time online, studying, doing internships, socialising, and watching movies and YouTube. The way the internet makes me feel depends on how I use it, and the boundaries I have around it. In the pandemic, it was easy to be online for too long, falling into a rabbit hole of scrolling. However, the internet provided so many resources for education and socialisation which made me feel more connected to people in an isolated time. In 2019, I was in a theatre company and we made an original production about social media, technology, and mental health, we called the play “Present/Absent,” because there is this duality to the internet.
I do not use my phone in my bedroom. I sometimes use it for an alarm clock, but if I do, I have it on airplane mode, so that the EMF doesn’t affect me while I sleep. I don’t like to scroll on social media in bed. I don’t want that to be the first thing I do and see in the morning and the last at night. I’d rather read a book, journal, or just have space in my mind.
The way Odell writes about nature created a visceral and embodied experience for me while reading her book. She writes about growing up in the redwood forests and Silicon Valley tech world, and said; “Sometimes it’s good to be stuck in the in-between, even if it’s uncomfortable,” (p.12). From old survivor to the rose garden, and the birds, there are so many moments where Odell dives into nature in her book. When I read that she wrote this book not as a lecture but as an invitation to go on a walk, I was able to understand her writing on another level.
I found the way Odell talked about how through bird-watching her reception of the world around her became more finely tuned. “What amazed and humbled me about bird-watching was the way it changed the granularity of my perception, which had been pretty ‘low-res.’ At first, I just noticed birdsong more. Of course it had been there all along, but now that I was paying attention to it, I realized that is was almost everywhere, all day, all the time,” (p.28). This is such a beautiful realisation, and I could relate to her idea of how “With effort, we can become attuned to things, able to pick up and then hopefully differentiate finer and finer frequencies each time,” (p.28). I haven’t gone bird-watching before, but I could relate to this sense of how when we go out in nature away from the online world, and immersed in the world around us, we can be so much more aware, perceptive, and mindful. When I go for walks on the beach, for example, all my senses come to life, having my bare feet in the sand, hearing the loud rhythm of the waves, breathing the salty air, and feeling the sun warming my shoulders.
When I go on a walk, I usually bring my phone in case I need to contact someone, but I never scroll through social media while I’m on a walk. Sometimes I might take photos, but I mostly don’t open my phone. While walking without a phone, even if I had the desire to take a photo of the sunset, I couldn’t so I could only appreciate and take in the beauty with my eyes in real life. I love taking photos and having memories stored in images, but I also realise the importance of being grounded in the present without a screen. And I try to keep this balance.
Odell writes; “The point of doing nothing, as I define it, isn’t to return to work refreshed and ready to be more productive, but rather to question what we currently perceive as productive.” At first while reading her book, I wasn’t sure if I agreed with the term “nothing,” but after I read her definition and context I understood and connected to the meaning. When we do “nothing,” instead of always chasing productivity or busyness, we are able to tune into other aspects of our world and our selves. I remember when I was a child and I said I was “bored,” my Mother told me that I could never be bored because I always have my imagination. When we are constantly focused on content and consumerism, we can lose that connection to our own inner world.
Odell writes about spending time offline and finding that “perhaps the granularity of attention we achieve outward also extends inward, so that as the perceptual details of our environment unfold in surprising ways, so too do our own intricacies and contradictions.” This was one of my favourite findings in the book that I really connected to. In this world, I know I am going to spend time online but this book reminds me how important it is to make sure I have boundaries around my time. Being able to live offline and spend time in nature and with your own thoughts is vitally important. I think over the past fews years, I’m still earning how to balance the duality of connection.