Why It’s Okay to Do Nothing

Grayden Adams

“Nothing is harder to do than nothing.” -Jenny Odell

Jenny Odell is trying to convince her readers that you don’t have to be working to be productive. She wants to get rid of the notion or thought that if you are doing nothing that you are lazy, instead she wants her readers to know that the body needs some downtime. She connects this to a story that her dad told her when he quit his job. When he was about to go look for another job, he reveals to her that, “…he realized that a lot of his anger about his job and outside circumstances had more to do with him than he realized.” (11-12). If he never took this break, then he would have never realized this about himself and would have never allowed him to appreciate the work environment that he was in.

Odell uses a plethora of texts and experiences to elaborate her point that not working or being busy all of the time is being lazy. She also uses this vast number of different genres and experiences to not be limited in her pursuit to convince her audience that doing nothing isn’t such a bad thing that people are believing it to be. She seems drawn to books with real experiences that connect to her idea that productivity isn’t limited to the amount of time you spend doing a certain thing. She is also drawn to places that are free from external forces that enforce the ideology that you have to work or be occupied with something all the time in order to be productive. She shows this by her going to the rose garden and spending time bird watching.

She uses these examples to expand on her idea in many ways not just a few. For instance, when she mentions “The Writings of John Muir” and how Muir’s period of reflection convinced him of how life is too short after his accident which allowed him to recuperate and go back to work and be successful. This connects to her idea because if he didn’t take the time away, he wouldn’t have accomplished what he did. She includes a personal experience with how taking a break can benefit by when she was bird watching she realized that birds make different calls and make different unique noises. She does all of this and connects these examples to explain her idea in a wide range and not have a limited idea that cannot be applied to her entire audience.

Her ideology is an idea that is goes back to a long time ago. Henry Ford was the first person to implement a 5-day work week to give his workers a break and it actually increased the production of his workers. Ford once said in regard to the change in work week,” It is high time to rid ourselves of the notion that leisure for workmen is either lost time or a class privilege”. He is agreeing with her and the idea that people should not have to be working all day, every day.

There is a new ideology that is to move to 4-day work weeks and still keep highly productive days, proving that time off allows workers to remain motivated and productive. An example of this 4-day work week is the Microsoft experiment. Microsoft experimented with a 4-day work week in 2019 and the productivity of the workers jump by 40%, reassuring Odell’s idea that longer work weeks does not necessarily mean more productive work weeks. It also benefited the company because less resources were used as a result. This is proven by Microsoft being quoted on the business insider website in November 2019 stating, “the number of pages printed decreased by 58.7%, while electricity consumption was down by 23.1% compared with August 2018.”

Jenny Odell’s idea that doing nothing is not actually being lazy or unproductive is an older ideology. The idea that she is expressing is not a popular thought process in today’s society with more and more people working more hours and taking less time off. According to a 2017 post on the CNBC website, “A 2014 national Gallup poll put the average number at 47 hours per week, or 9.4 hours per day, with many saying they work 50 hours per week.” These numbers that came out of the national Gallup poll is concerning. These high weekly hours are against what Odell is stressing by employees not having the break from work that people’s bodies and minds need to remain productive while in a work environment. These numbers are also against Henry Ford’s 5-day work week and the Microsoft experiment.

Disconnecting from Media

Lauren Cooper

The title of Jenny Odell’s book, “How to do Nothing,” insinuates she is teaching the reader how to be lazy.  This book is truly a guide to switch the reader’s attention to think deeper, “in such times as these, having recourse to periods of and spaces for ‘doing nothing’ is of utmost importance, because without them we have no way to think, reflect, heal, and sustain ourselves– individually or collectively” (Odell 22). When Odell talks about “doing nothing” she is referring to the constant state of connectedness through the ever-changing production. The phrase seems contradictory, but the act of doing nothing is directing our attention away from the constant information overload that people are so easily hooked on through phones, computers, iPads, Apple watches, and the list goes on. A person can be distracted within a matter of seconds due to the easy access to the media. Once a person can resist the attention economy, “it leads to awareness, not only of how lucky I am to be alive but to ongoing patterns of cultural and ecological devastation around me […] In other words, simple awareness is the seed of responsibility” (xxii). The book can be categorized as an “activist” and “self-help book” because Odell is trying to start a social change by teaching one person at a time through changing their style of life. People are trapped in a bubble, but once they are able to poke through it they could find much of what their looking for is already there. 

Odell is seemingly trying to have the reader stop and smell the roses and she even alludes to this when she talks about the Rose Garden. She always refers to the Rose Garden because it is a complete disconnection from the fast pace city she lives in. The idea of disconnection is sometimes referred to as “removal” which for some people it “fundamentally changed their attitude to the world they returned too […] the pause in time is often the only thing that can precipitate change on a certain scale” (Odell 9/10).  By removing yourself from the world you are used to, you could be able to understand the world as a whole, not just the small fraction that you see every day. You will get to see the world in a different light racially, environmentally, and economically. Odell continually brings up the Rose Garden because it embodies her project clearly. It was almost turned into condos which symbolizes how the rest of the world has been modernized. The local residents represent what Odell is trying to do. She is trying to show people that is is an option to push away technology and live in the present.  

Odell often refers to different artists. One art piece that she explains is one by Eleanor Coppola which was a map with marked locations of windows that are landmarks. Odell likes this because it is not the typical art that someone would see in a gallery it “recognizes art that exists where it already is” (Odell 6). One experience that she shared was bird-watching which seems like an act of doing nothing, but during this, she made connections to wild animals and learned a lot in the process. She not only picked up on different bird songs unintentionally, but she started to realize that while actually paying attention “something you thought was one thing is actually two things, and each of those two things is actually ten things” (Odell 9). Every example she pulls from different books, pieces of art, and her own experiences reflect her desire to push people out of the technological world to the natural world. 

The world we live in it seems that the only goal is to make enhancements in technology and find success with money. Odell writes about the importance of stepping away from this because nothing can replace human contact and being in nature. 

Writing II: Unconventional Odell

            After reading the introduction and the Chapter One of How to Do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy, Jenny Odell’s method of thinking about the life is anything but conventional. However, it is not over the top. As a matter of fact, it is something relatable and inspirational. Her message is unlike most others in that it is a paradox. She turns the term “nothing” into doing something for yourself.

            Odell tends to make her claim, use other people’s writings/experiences as examples, and then sets up an example of her own. Her aim in all of this is to challenge the way that we look at the term “nothing”. For instance, Odell believes that having nothing to say is “a precursor of having something to say” (Odell 4). She writes this in 2016 and references an article from 1985 by Gilles Deleuze who says the same thing. This is how she came up with her topics that she would speak about at a keynote talk at EYEO. This is how she came up with her idea of “doing nothing”.  She spent most of her time at the Rose Garden in the Oakland doing nothing and came out with a New York Times Best Seller. Much like how Marine Flat Worms are gathered simply by placing a knife and letting the worm crawl on it (5), stories come to their own when people do “nothing”.

            Doing nothing can help you recover, listen, and grow. When people take a step back from things, they can take a break. People can “think, reflect, heal and sustain themselves” (22). Much like in a sport, a break here and there goes a long way. Two minutes can bring you back to full strength when the fourth quarter of a basketball game is coming up. “To do nothing is to hold yourself still so that you can perceive what is actually there” (23). Figuring out what, when, and where comes from doing nothing. When in a fight or in a stressful situation, taking a break and thinking opens the mind to a multitude of solutions. People grow in a way that is not measurable when they do nothing.

            The world can see these steps through the recent spike in social justice reform, especially in sports. To raise awareness to these issues, sports (basketball specifically) have stopped their play of games. This is the break they took and their way of “doing nothing”. That time was used to recover, listen, and grow. As the sports leagues took these breaks, they took the time to come up with ways to bring change to America’s social system, and in the end, growth was seen. Change is coming and Odell’s ideologies are being used to bring it.

            “Our very idea of productivity is premised on the idea of producing something new” (25). Jenny Odell challenges this idea, especially when talking about the growth aspect of doing nothing. Odell looks at the Rose Garden like it is her home, so when she sees people volunteering simply to maintain it, she sees that as productive. She does not use the term “productive” in a numbers or tangible way. The best example she uses of this is the Redwood Tree, known as Old Survivor. Old Survivor is an Old Growth Redwood that has survived over 500 years. He survived the logging era of the West Coast because he was simply not good enough. For that reason, he is still standing tall not only as a witness to the past 500 years of history, but also as a message to what is deemed useful and what is not. When the Redwoods were being cut down, Old Survivor was looked past for it was not deemed useful enough for the loggers. There it stands today as a testament to that. Odell asks: “Why is it that the modern idea of productivity is so often a frame for what is actually the destruction of the natural productivity of an ecosystem” (xix)?

Old Survivor was not deemed productive, but it stands today, and it is said that the Old Growth Redwood can provide shade for thousands of animals and bring life to that land. This would be a true example of productive. To continue that thought, Odell talks about her connection with the crows that live on her block. The crows are not attracted to people based on the “efficiency”, but instead are attracted to just the familiar face (21). She uses this argument to go against the ideas of capitalism. Rather than looking at a spreadsheet or “progress” to judge efficiency, Odell sees it as something deeper.

            Another aim that Odell possesses is the idea of defending her home and free time from being occupied by work. She argues against those that work from home or those that do not need to go into the office as long as they get their work done (16), because she sees that as turning her home into a permanent work zone. This is especially relatable to college students as they begin their online classes in their homes. From now on, students see their room as their office and cannot avoid that weight on their shoulders anymore.

            Odell challenges the obvious ways of thinking in her book and gives readers something they can relate to. Some of the writings that Odell brings up are older than our very own country and she still finds a way to use these readings to progress her train of thought. More importantly, Odell talks in a way that she is not trying to convince readers, but rather get readers to understand.

“Doing Nothing”, a new, popular proposal

Author, Jenny Odell, does an excellent job of painting a picture in the audience’s mind. In her book, How to Do Nothing, her main point is to express how to do less and enjoy your life more. She states that there is two lessons to be learned in this book. One is disengaging from from the attention economy and the other is reengaging with something else. The “something else” is nothing besides time and space, Odell explains. Jenny Odell says she tries to focus a lot on her surroundings. She argues that because the internet strips us of our sense of place and time, we can counter its force by placing ourselves within our physical environment, by becoming closer to the natural world. She goes onto say we are in a contemporary society, and what we can do to fix it and and fix ourselves. Ironically, the most effective tactic against our 24/7 culture of productivity might just be doing nothing. The author argues, when we stop, step back, and refocus our attention, we can begin to see the outline of a better, more meaningful existence. Odell states “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”. Jenny Odell asks her audience why the modern idea of productivity is often a frame for what is actually the destruction of the natural productivity in an ecosystem. In more in depth, she explains how her happiest times were when she was completely aware of being alive. She says “In those moments, the idea of success as a teleological would have made no sense; the moments were ends in themselves, not steps on a ladder”. Odell talks about art work being a huge part of her life. She used computers to make her art, so it was an art-and-technology category. She states that her only real interest in technology was how it gives us more access to physical reality. Jenny Odell, says she’s not quite fully against technology. “There are forms of technology, from tools that let us observe the natural world to decentralized, noncommercial social networks, that might situate us more fully in the present” (Odell xii). She connects her ideas from technology with social media. There is times where one cannot fully express themselves on social media. The most damaging idea is commercial social media, which is affecting the way we live and see ourselves. Jenny Odell hopes that, How to Do Nothing will become a new, popular proposal, instead of our productivity obsessed environment. Hopefully by doing nothing, people will find ways of connecting to self- meaningful things. Obviously, when doing nothing, it is not activism, but she explains activism very clear. She preaches how important it is to pay attention to the little things. Odell uses a personal example saying “One thing I have learned about attention is that certain forms of it are contagious. When you spend enough time with someone who pays close attention to something, you inevitably start to pay attention to some of the same things”. I can personally connect to the author with a pattern of attention. One thing I tend to pay a lot of attention to is uncommon kindness. I always choose to notice when someone makes someone else’s day.