How to Do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy
Jenny Odell
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Jessica says:
Read this book if the internet, social media, and even working virtually/remotely have pushed you to feel as though you are constantly going without stopping to take a break; and correspondingly, to learn the value of genuine connection with nature and community.
This book is a great reminder of the fact that our productivity is not our worth.
You can get it at Amazon or at Women & Children First – 5233 N Clark St, Chicago, IL 60640
From the Publisher
One of President Barack Obama’s “Favorite Books of 2019”
Porchlight’s Personal Development & Human Behavior Book of the Year
In a world where addictive technology is designed to buy and sell our attention, and our value is determined by our 24/7 data productivity, it can seem impossible to escape. But in this inspiring field guide to dropping out of the attention economy, artist and critic Jenny Odell shows us how we can still win back our lives.
Odell sees our attention as the most precious—and overdrawn—resource we have. And we must actively and continuously choose how we use it. We might not spend it on things that capitalism has deemed important … but once we can start paying a new kind of attention, she writes, we can undertake bolder forms of political action, reimagine humankind’s role in the environment, and arrive at more meaningful understandings of happiness and progress.
Far from the simple anti-technology screed, or the back-to-nature meditation we read so often, How to do Nothing is an action plan for thinking outside of capitalist narratives of efficiency and techno-determinism. Provocative, timely, and utterly persuasive, this book will change how you see your place in our world.
The Author
Jenny Odell is an artist and writer who teaches at Stanford and has been an artist-in-residence at places like the San Francisco dump, Facebook, the Internet Archive, and the San Francisco Planning Department. Her writing has appeared in the New York Times, New York Magazine, The Atlantic, The Believer, The Paris Review, and McSweeney’s, among others. She lives in Oakland.
About Jessica Zaehringer
Jessica is a psychotherapist based in Chicago Illinois. Her therapeutic approach is collaborative and relaxed. I believe firmly in the power of connection – especially when it comes to healing. Her clinical expertise fosters the therapeutic relationship as well as self-forgiveness and creates a safe, empathic, trauma-informed space to work together with her clients.
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