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Michael Johnson
5.0 out of 5 starsWhy and how you should regain your attention from our out of control society
April 28, 2019
Format: HardcoverVerified Purchase
It seems like some of the negative reviews have an agenda to push, especially the one that only quotes from the first and last paragraphs of the book. I would guess that person did not even read the book. I enjoyed the thoughts from the author. It made me think of things differently. I appreciated the argument about valuing things that aren’t valued in money or measured in the economy. It argues that we need time to process our thoughts and not just thoughtlessly react to social media posts. It argues we need the ability to direct our conversations differently to different audiences rather than the one size fits all post of Facebook. It argues to get to know your neighborhood and local place. If you are sick of the continued outrage machines we have created in our national discussions, you may wish to read this. It is true the author is viewing life from inside a San Francisco cultural bubble but I still found resonance with main points while living in the Midwest U.S.
Not a self-help guide, but rather a fascinating collection of essays that critique the modern “attention economy,” where our time and attention is deemed useless if not spent in the pursuit of profit and “progress.” Odell deftly weaves historical, literary, and artistic references together (from Diogenes to Herman Melville to Tehching Hsieh) and covers a whole lot of ground in a book that in a lesser author’s hand could seem inconsistent. Instead, it’s like having a meandering conversation with a brilliant friend.
If you’re looking for a digital detox guide, go elsewhere (though she does spend time dismantling the very concept). If a capitalist critique (by a woman in academia, no less) gets your knickers in a twist, avoid. If you want some genuine inspiration as to how to exist, resist, and survive in the world as it is today, you won’t be disappointed.
Excellent and thoughtful book, probably the best I’ve read on the topic of the attention economy precisely because Odell resists facile prescriptions and instead critiques the roots of the problems we are currently facing and which social media is exacerbating. In brief, these are alienation from our surroundings, alienation from our selves, and alienation from one another, brought about by capitalism and neoliberalism generally. But in detail she discusses and thinks about much more in these pages, and it stays close to lived experience. As well as demonstrating various ways of resisting without opting out. The fact that all this is lost on Sam the Eagle up there in his supposedly scathing review, I think, is another sign of its quality. Reading this book kept reminding me of no author more than Rebecca Solnit. I read it over a couple days and I’ll be reading it again, I think.
5.0 out of 5 starsGenuinely— and not tritely—life changing
April 12, 2019
Format: Hardcover
Read this book and I dare you not to want Jenny Odell to become your new BFF.
How to Do Nothing is an amazing exploration of our current attention-competing, dizzying world of information overload—and it would be a fabulous book if it just stopped there. But Odell actually offers insights into how to fight this modern cacophony of too-muchedness, leaving us with an improbably optimistic and refreshing view on a decidedly 21st-century problem.
I'm anxiously awaiting my nieces' and nephews' transitions into adulthood, so I an share this work with them. Because it's just that necessary.
How To Do Nothing by Jenny Odell feels like the right book at the right time for me. I spend enough time online to worry about what it’s doing to my sense of self. “My experience,” as Odell writes, “is what I agree to attend to". So, when I scroll through my news and social media feeds, I not only get a nonsensical view of the world, but I further alienate myself from myself. Maybe this is why I feel so alone and depressed after spending too much time online. “Expression on social media so often feels like firecrackers setting off other firecrackers in a very small room that soon gets filled with smoke.” Odell’s solution isn’t to call for a digital detox, but rather to shift and deepen our attention to where it matters most: our actual (rather than online) communities. By paying deeper attention to the context of the people and places of our world, we can move from connectivity (something Facebook holds sacrosanct) to sensitivity, which “involves a difficult, awkward, ambiguous encounter between two differently shaped bodies that are themselves ambiguous.”
This is a wonderful, thoughtful, well-researched book. Jenny Odell has managed to both deconstruct the tide of frantic agitation currently boiling around us and lead us out with sympathy and determination. Her work here is academically rigorous and easily accessible. This is far more than a "put down your phone" guide; it reveals the fractal pathway for self-directed attention to enrich our lives and resist commodification of our selves and our environment. Highly recommended.
1.0 out of 5 starsDo nothing stay by staying away from this book
April 24, 2019
Format: Kindle EditionVerified Purchase
Disappointed I thought this book will help me learn how to do nothing it is a philosophical book trying to explain why doing nothing is good for you Most people already know that I know that I do not know how to do it Do not waste your time and money if you want to learn how to do nothing this book do not teach that
The first paragraph was obviously not professionally edited and very choppy. I stopped there. Would rather do nothing than make my way through this mess.
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