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1-Page Summary of How To Do Nothing

Overview

After the fall of unions in 1980, Americans began looking at work as leisure. This led to a new way of thinking that we are all capitalists and that every hour is monetizable (can be turned into money). But this isn’t true because sometimes we need to stop working and enjoy life.

“Time is money.” That saying has been around for a long time, but it’s taken on new meaning in today’s digitally driven world. Whether you’re working or trying to better yourself, we’ve come to believe that our time should produce something of value. Anything that doesn’t have value isn’t worth spending your valuable time on.

Jenny Odell believes that we should be able to switch off from the world and do our own thinking. Otherwise, we will become like sheep following the crowd and then living a shallow existence.

Odell’s alternative is to do nothing. Above all, this involves being attentive and learning how to focus your attention on the world around you. It also means resisting social media’s attempts to capture your attention as much as possible. This can help you have a more meaningful experience with the world around you.

In this article, you’ll learn how to use social media like a brand; what attention is and why it’s important; and the importance of empathy.

Big Idea #1: When work and leisure overlap, doing nothing seems like a waste of time.

In the 1880s, American workers began to push for an eight-hour workday. They wanted more time to rest and recover from their strenuous labor. However, they also wanted a life outside of work that was free from obligations or pressures. This meant having at least one third of the day where they could do whatever they pleased without any interruptions or distractions.

In the twentieth century, people fought for a shorter workday. They succeeded in getting laws passed that restricted the number of hours worked per day. However, today’s world is different from what it was then and those laws are no longer relevant or useful because they don’t acknowledge how much technology has changed our lives.

The main point here is that when work and leisure become indistinguishable, doing “nothing” looks like a waste of time. It was long assumed that economic risk was the business of capitalists and investors; workers were expected to clock in, get the job done, and go home. Workers did this so they could keep their jobs and wages safe. However, this arrangement ended after labor movements lost power through strikes and political pressure in the 1980s.

In his book, After the Future, Italian philosopher Franco Berardi argues that we’ve lost our economic security. We can’t expect to find jobs and be safe from job loss anymore. Instead of looking for stable employment in a company, we must navigate the market and look for opportunities like freelance work or one-time gigs.

To succeed in today’s competitive job market, you have to be on top of things all the time. Critics say that this is a problem because people who are always working can’t stay healthy. However, critics aren’t the only ones saying that; Fiverr also had an ad campaign about how workers need to work constantly and never take breaks.

Fiverr’s suggestion that people could use the site to sell their services while they were doing nothing was widely ridiculed. However, it highlighted one of the main characteristics of a gig economy —time becomes an economic resource because there are 24 hours in a day and you can make money off them.

Big Idea #2: Social media makes us think we’re brands.

Since we’re all capitalists, it makes sense that we spend most of our time acting like corporations. Social media has made this easier because even when we’re not working, we can still be thinking about work. It’s as if the stock market follows us everywhere and everything is a potential investment opportunity. This changes how people act on social media because they are constantly monitoring their personal brands to make sure they continue to grow in value.