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.