That might be an interesting thing to try to do, but it shouldn’t be our responsibility – we didn’t create this problem. You write about how social media erodes our “right to not express oneself ”. Surprise is a way of being reminded that there’s something outside of you. They’re so unpredictable, and there’s something about that that gets around anything that I might be thinking about.Īnd this feeds into something you write in the book – that part of being human is being surprised by everything around you, and shifting accordingly. But birds – there’s something about them that’s always surprising.

Years ago at Stanford, I would notice that if I was walking to class, no matter how stressed I was, birds were the one thing that could cut through that no matter what. It’s also a very present perspective – the bad kind of presence, being very wrapped up in whatever is happening right now, or what everyone is talking about on Twitter. And it ties into this idea that everything is a machine, and it just needs to be fixed, or made more efficient. Anything that detracts from that is too expensive, from the time-is-money perspective. It’s this perspective in which time is money, and you should have something to show for your time – either getting work done, or self-improvement, which I would still count as work.

Where is our perspective stuck right now? What is the attention economy? Your book encourages a broad shift in perspective. The stakes, she argues, are high: “In a time that demands action, distraction appears to be a life-and-death matter.” Odell acknowledges that participating in this system is, for most people, not optional, and the book is dotted with examples of standing against the tide while remaining more-or-less in it – artists, labor movements, Oakland’s last old-growth redwood tree.

How to Do Nothing by Jenny Odell