Doing nothing as resistance: Jenny Odell vs. the Attention Economy

Just finished reading: How to Do Nothing by Jenny Odell 📚

The subtitle of this book is “Resisting the Attention Economy”, and that’s what hooked me. I’ve been reading up on attention on and off for over a year now, mostly cognitive psychology and more academic fare.

That’s what I was expecting out of this book, but instead it reads more like a journal, or personal reflections. I’ll admit to almost abandoning this book midway through. The author seemed to meander and I felt I was losing the throughline of her message.

The second half of the book really came alive to me, though, and now I’m wondering if it was me that was the problem initially. Am I just incapable of maintaining attention over an entire book?

I realize I need to read it through again, more slowly, to fully absorb her message. That fits in well with my theme for the year, which is Slow Down. More on that in another post :)