Book Notes, Summary and Review: How to Do Nothing by Jenny Odell

Doing nothing sounds fun and easy. You throw your hands up in the air and stare into space. Your mind unyoked from the demands of your work-life, free to meander and to possibly chance across new ideas.

But how many of you would do that — to allow yourself to be bored and to do nothing?

Jenny Odell's How to Do Nothing isn't a run-of-the-mill digital detox self-help book. Instead this is more of an academic treatise on how and why we should take the time to do nothing (albeit, despite its title, the focus is more on why rather than how).

Structure of Summary

The book summary will be organized as such:

1. Productivity?: I'll share some of Jenny's views on how we can look at productivity differently. Because in the book, Jenny tries to reframe our way of thinking about productivity by challenging some widely-held assumptions that underpin it.
2. Fears and Anxieties About Time: Much of the reason we feel the need to be "productive" all the time is because of our fears and anxieties. We'll take a closer look at how our emotions mold our perception of time and consequently, our priorities in life.
3. Here in the Present: Doing nothing can help us to live in and to appreciate the present moment. This seems counter-intuitive but as Jenny later explains, this is a meaningful utilization of our time.
4. The Ecology of Identity: When we do nothing more often, we begin to realize how everything and everyone is interconnected. In turn, our attention is turned towards building a collective identity that effects positive change in our life.

Productivity?

"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."

What is it that we want to achieve by pursuing productivity? Productivity that produces what? Success? But success that manifests itself in what form, and for whom? These are a few questions that we need to consider before we embark on our journey towards becoming more productive.

There's nothing wrong with being more productive or efficient. The thing to note here, as Jenny emphasizes, is that productivity is only a mean that helps us to quickly climb up "steps on a ladder". You've to be deliberate about whether the ladder you're climbing onto is in fact leaning against the right wall, or whether you actually want to ascend any ladder at all in the first place.

Fears and Anxieties About Time

Time is no longer distinctly demarcated. The boundaries that once separated work, leisure and rest have converged. Now what we're left with is: twenty-four splintered and potentially monetizable hours each day.

Our time is now a precious commodity that everyone is vying for. Our employers, our teachers, our family, our friends and even our community. In our society, our time exists so that it can be exchanged for a salary.

As more people recognize the scarcity and hence value of their time, they're attacked by a sense of urgency to utilize their time in the most productive way. However, as discussed earlier, a common misconception is that we equate productivity as a schedule that's completely packed with work, hour-to-hour and minute-to-minute.

This erroneous mode of thinking can be observed since childhood. In Kids These Days: Human Capital and the Making of Millennials, Malcolm Harris points out an emerging trend where the childhood and education of our younger generations are being ruthlessly professionalized. Staying up late is no longer about pursuing an advantage, but not being left behind and being made vulnerable.

Clearly something needs to be done to remodel the way we look at our time. And Jenny's take on this is: that we need to develop our ability to do nothing.

Here in the Present

People increasingly want to spend time well, not spend more of it.

And one of the best ways to spend time well is to do nothing.

Looking back, some of my happiest, most fulfilled moments of my life have been moments when I was fully living in the present. These moments were ends in themselves, not means to an end. I was completely aware of their transient and fleeting nature, yet it didn't stop me from appreciating them.

To communicate this idea, Jenny employs two concepts coined by philosopher Martin Buber: I-It and I-Thou ways of seeing. In the former, the other is seen as a means to an end, an instrument appropriated by the "I". In the latter, the other's irreducibility and equality with the "I"' is recognized. So what happens instead is that the "I" meets the other in his or her or its fullness, neither projecting nor interpreting the other.

When we give our total attention to the other, we employ the I-Thou way of seeing the world. The world, as Jenny describes, suddenly "contracts into a moment of a magical exclusivity between you and me".

This is how we should do nothing.

The Ecology of Identity

Social media cultivates and encourages a culture of individualism. That an over-emphasis on our identity as individuals will engender a grave loss of meaning in our lives, because we as social creatures thrive best when we too have a collective identity.

Here in this book, Jenny shares with us about bioregionalism and its lessons of "emergence, interdependence, and the impossibility of absolute boundaries". As physical beings, all of us are literally connected by the same air we breathe; as social beings, our fates are similarly linked to each other by our contexts.

Our contexts only appear and expand, however, when we do nothing. Because by definition, context is what appears when we hold our attention open for long enough. In this time, we may discover how everyone and everything that lives in our world are interconnected, that you are no longer just your own.

Wrapping Up

"The only habit worth 'designing for' is the habit of questioning one's habitual ways of seeing, and that is what artists, writers, and musicians help us to do."

Reading this book has made me questioned my habitual ways of looking at my time.

Jenny Odell's How to Do Nothing is a well-researched book on toxic productivity. Throughout the book, Jenny lays out a persuasive set of arguments that underlines the importance of doing nothing in a capitalist culture.

Unlike other productivity self-help books, Jenny doesn't offer hard and fast tricks to disengage from work. Rather, she presents a list of astute observations of how our time, our attention and our capacity to disconnect from work have suffered tremendously in the wake of a society that celebrates unhealthy levels of "productivity".

Do note, however, that Jenny's writing style may take some time for you to adjust to. But once you settle into her writing style, you'll come to appreciate the ideas she calmly and somehow poetically expresses.

If you would like to reframe the way you look at productivity, and in more general terms your relationship with technology, I would highly recommend you to read this book.