CM 155: Jenny Odell on How to Do Nothing

As we increasingly equate human worth with productivity, what does it mean to do nothing?

That’s the question Jenny Odell explores in her book, How to Do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy. In it, she deftly draws on the work of artists, laborers, and writers, past and present, to discuss how others have grappled with this question.

In attempting to clarify what she means by doing nothing, Jenny asks, “What’s the difference between being allowed to be open…observant…reflective versus…constantly express[ing]…one’s rage and anger…what if there’s a part of you that deserves to remain unspoken, unarticulated in the moment?”

In this conversation, Jenny offers ways to resist the attention economy, but she’s careful to avoid easy answers. Though she acknowledges how privilege gives some of us more options to resist than others, she emphasizes how all of us, privileged or not, operate within this productivity-obsessed system.

The fallout from our always-on culture is often exhaustion and anxiety, both of which Jenny sees in her students. She explains, “I can tell my students, ‘Oh, just get better at time management.’ That might help in some ways, but it’s not going to help the…problem of this culture of productivity that was never humane to begin with.”

Jenny Odell is an artist, writer, and educator who teaches at Stanford University. She has been an artist-in-residence at the San Francisco dump, Facebook, the Internet Archive, and the San Francisco Planning Department, and she has exhibited her art all over the world.

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