Odell, an artist and writer from Silicon Valley, argues that our attention has become a commodity within our capitalist society, something that she argues is ultimately harmful to our well-being. How to Do Nothing isn’t a book about being comfortable with absolute nothingness rather, it’s about how divesting your attention from the ever-growing list of things that demand it can be the most radical form of resistance. So I picked up Jenny Odell’s How to Do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economyin part to contextualize my own experience, and to see if I could shed this work-related anxiety. And then I felt even worse for not appreciating the fact I had free time. Like many other marginalized people I know, I found myself feeling guilty for doing something frivolous when I could be hustling instead. But I realized almost immediately after I left my social-media job to freelance that, for me, free time feels suffocating. To work was be worthy, so I busted my ass juggling jobs, part-time retail gigs, and research opportunities to the point of extreme burnout. Doing nothing meant being lazy, useless, and a waste of space. I viewed moments of stillness as inefficiency. Like Mama Gorda and so many other brown women in my life, I also suffered from the constant need to work. Mama Gorda (our affectionate nickname for her) answered incredulously: “No! I have to be productive.
On a recent trip home to Florida, I asked my 72-year-old grandma if, throughout her long life, she has ever stopped to just do nothing. Author Jenny Odell (Photo credit: Ryan Meyer)
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