# What does Jenny Odell's How to Do Nothing argue? Canonical: https://zestasy.com/wiki/how-to-do-nothing/ Section: Zestasy Wiki > Books & ideas · Updated: 2026-10-14 · Publisher: Zestasy *Zestasy Wiki: our reference answers. Checked for facts and sources; less curated than the magazine.* How to Do Nothing (2019) argues that our attention is valuable, that the apps and feeds competing for it are shaping our lives more than we notice, and that one way to take it back is to pay close attention to the real places and people around us. By "doing nothing" Jenny Odell does not mean idleness: she means stopping long enough to notice what is actually there. It is not a productivity book or a guide to switching off your phone, and it is more interested in shared, local life than in personal optimisation. Jenny Odell is an artist and writer, and *How to Do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy* was published by Melville House in 2019. According to [Wikipedia's page on Odell](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jenny_Odell), it became a *New York Times* bestseller, and a *New York Times* review described it as a book that starts out reading like a self-help manual and becomes something broader. ## Where the book came from The book grew out of a talk Odell gave in 2017 at the Eyeo Festival in Minneapolis, called "How to Do Nothing". A [2019 profile in The Ringer](https://www.theringer.com/tech/2019/4/15/18307883/how-to-do-nothing-jenny-odell-tech-addiction) traces the idea to the hours she spent sitting alone in the Morcom Rose Garden, a municipal rose garden in Oakland. Sitting there with no aim, she began to notice the place: the people, the plants, the birds. ## The argument, in plain words **Your attention is being harvested.** A great deal of modern technology is designed to keep us looking at it. Odell's point is not that phones are evil but that the attention economy treats our attention as a resource to be captured, and we let it. **"Doing nothing" means noticing.** In The Ringer interview, Odell admits the title is a little misleading. She is not recommending lying on the sofa. She describes doing nothing as holding still long enough to perceive what is really around you. Stillness, in her sense, is active. **Place matters.** A recurring idea is that we should know where we actually live: its landscape, its history, its creeks and trees and neighbours. In The Ringer piece she gives the example of a Silicon Valley town whose real identity, she suggests, lies in the creek that runs through it rather than in the famous company headquartered there. **Birds are a way in.** Birdwatching, which she prefers to call "bird-noticing", runs through the book as a model of attention: patient, local, endlessly surprising. **This is not just a personal project.** Odell is less interested in individual willpower than in people reclaiming their attention together. She has called it an activist book disguised as a self-help book, and said she is not sure it is fully either. ## What it is not **Not a productivity book.** It is quietly sceptical of the whole idea that every hour should be put to use. If you want to get more done, this is the wrong shelf. **Not a phone-quitting guide.** There is no checklist for deleting apps or a thirty-day plan. Odell is less interested in individual abstinence than in changing how we pay attention, together. For practical tips on the phone itself, see our page on [using your phone less](https://zestasy.com/wiki/using-your-phone-less/). **Not a light read.** It has a lot of ideas, from art and philosophy to local history, and it can be dense. The rewards are real, but it takes concentration, which is rather the point. ## Who it suits - Readers who feel scattered by feeds and notifications and want to think about why, not just switch off for a week. - People who love walking in their own neighbourhood, gardening, birds or local history. - Anyone who liked the gentler slow-living books, such as [In Praise of Slowness](https://zestasy.com/wiki/in-praise-of-slowness/), and wants something more searching. It suits less well if you want quick, practical rules. ## A good way to read it Read it alongside a small experiment of your own: one regular hour a week in the same outdoor spot, a park bench, a café terrace, a corner of a garden, with no phone. Notice what changes over the weeks. It is the book's idea made concrete, and it is the Italian *[dolce far niente](https://zestasy.com/wiki/dolce-far-niente/)* in another accent. ## FAQ ### Is it anti-technology? Not exactly. Odell is critical of technology designed to capture attention, but the book is about using attention well, not about rejecting tools. ### Do you need to live in California to enjoy it? No. The examples are local to her, but the invitation is to look at your own place with the same care. ### Has she written anything since? Yes. *Saving Time: Discovering a Life Beyond the Clock* came out in 2023, a book about how we experience time. ### Is it a book about doing less work? It is more about where your attention goes than how many hours you work. ## Sources - [Wikipedia: Jenny Odell](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jenny_Odell) - [The Ringer: How to Quit Your Phone and Change Your Life By … Doing Nothing](https://www.theringer.com/tech/2019/4/15/18307883/how-to-do-nothing-jenny-odell-tech-addiction) ## Related - [How do you use your phone less without making it a big project?](https://zestasy.com/wiki/using-your-phone-less/) - [What is Wintering by Katherine May about?](https://zestasy.com/wiki/wintering-katherine-may/) - [What is In Praise of Slowness about?](https://zestasy.com/wiki/in-praise-of-slowness/) - [What does dolce far niente really mean?](https://zestasy.com/wiki/dolce-far-niente/) - [What is Cal Newport's Deep Work about?](https://zestasy.com/wiki/deep-work/) - [All Books & ideas answers in the Wiki](https://zestasy.com/wiki/#books)