[MUSIC FADES IN]
Shumita Basu, Narrating: This is "In Conversation," from Apple News. I'm Shumita Basu. Our "Think Again" series continues. Today, the art of doing nothing.
[MUSIC FADES OUT]
[AMBIENT CITY NOISE]
Basu, Narrating: I've spent more time in Washington Square Park than any other green space in New York City. It's my go-to "just killing time" park, and I'm convinced that it's one of the best people-watching spots on the planet.
[INCOHERENT CHATTER, LAUGHTER]
Basu, Narrating: There's the one shady area where the jazz musicians usually play…
[TUNE PLAYS ON CLARINET]
Basu, Narrating: …the person who's always feeding pigeons…
[PIGEONS COO]
Basu, Narrating: …the guy who's been sun-tanning in the same exact spot for years.
Now, it's hard to look at a place that you know really well and try to see it with fresh eyes, but that's what I did one day, recently, after having a conversation with Jenny Odell. Jenny is an artist and the author of the book "How to Do Nothing$% Resisting the Attention Economy."
[INTRIGUING MUSIC]
Jenny Odell: It's "doing nothing" with, like, air quotes.
Basu, Narrating: I'll tell you more about how I "did nothing" in the park a little later in the show. But to be clear, Jenny's idea of doing nothing is not about being bored. It's not about sitting around watching paint dry. The point is to pull away from the things that we call "productive" in a capitalistic or work-oriented way, and instead engage in things that aren't measured in dollars or clicks.
Odell: You can actually perceive more, sometimes, by doing less. And I think I quote the acoustic ecologist Gordon Hempton, who basically is saying that, like, if you're silent, then you can actually hear what is around you.
Basu, Narrating: Jenny says, in a way, it's an act of refusal: refusing to be tied to the so-called attention economy. She thinks of it quite literally as corporate platforms buying and selling human attention. Our scrolling and our screen time are their currency. I spoke with Jenny about how attention is a precious resource that most of us aren't really using well, and how paying attention to the right things might look like doing nothing, but it can change your life. Of course, it's a lot easier said than done, because social media is designed to be addictive.
[MUSIC FADES OUT]
Odell: I don't know how many years ago this was, but I got a Chrome extension called Facebook Newsfeed Eradicator, and it just makes your newsfeed go away. And I didn't plan to stop, necessarily, using Facebook, I think I probably wanted to use it less. And I stopped using it because I would go and I would get the information that I needed, right, like an address or some kind of, like, details, and then I would just leave.
Basu: There was no need to hang around, you're saying.
Odell: Yeah, yeah, yeah. That was a long time ago, and it's a Chrome extension. And then I think-- At some point recently, I think I went to Facebook on Safari, and so, like, I didn't have the extension, and try being confronted by your Facebook newsfeed after years of not seeing it. I was like, Whoa! Like, who are these people? What are they talking about? Why is everyone screaming?
Basu: Yeah. Yeah. Information overload, huh?
Odell: Yeah. Yeah. And so I think it's very telling that, like, when I sort of muted the most addictive feature of this platform, I stopped using it. Like, I just think that that says a lot. I also have been thinking a lot about the sort of relationship between tiredness and susceptibility to doomscrolling or whatever you wanna call it.
Basu: Ooh, wow. Say so much more about that. [LAUGHS]
Odell: [LAUGHS] Well, I think when I say tired, I mean, like, spiritually tired or something, right? It's like-- I just find that in that state, it's so much easier to, like, fall into this pattern, this, like, easy, habitual pattern. It's so familiar. It's, like, not really doing something, but it's not doing nothing. It's something. And then the worst part, I find, is that it wears you down more. You're just consuming more things that make you feel more spiritually tired, so then you're even more stuck. And it's just this, like, horrible feedback loop that you kind of know you're in, but you can't get out of because you're so tired.
Basu: You know, I think that people think that they're solving the problem in some way when they do things like delete social media apps off their phone, or put time limits or parental controls, or even, say, like, you know, go for a walk outside. They're like "Ah, that was very centering," and then they kind of sit right back down and go back to the same stuff. So, you sort of made the argument that all of that is sort of fighting the battle on the wrong plane.
Odell: I'm obviously opposed, in the book, to the way social media apps are designed, for example, to be very addictive and try to keep your attention all the time, but I don't actually have a problem with social media per se in so far as, like, social media as just, like, means of communicating with different people, and I don't have any problem with that. And I think that's actually quite important for building, like, knowledge and movements and things like that. So what I ended up advocating in the book was really more of a sort of "Let me pay attention to how I pay attention so that I can not fall into these loops."
[MELLOW MUSIC]
Basu, Narrating: Pay attention to how you're paying attention. That's the first step to doing nothing, at least in the way that Jenny is proposing it, and what she means is: start by recognizing the ways that your attention is being pulled in so many different directions and how that's affecting your mood and your brain. So, once you acknowledge the problem, what are you supposed to do, just run away and live in the woods? Jenny says that's not what she's asking for. Her next tip is what she calls "refusing in place."
Odell: I think, really honestly, like just the idea of not taking something for granted is probably the easiest way to explain it. It's like if you think about what it means to take something for granted, it means you don't see it. Versus not taking something for granted is, like, I see it, I can think of alternatives, maybe, I can think about what it would mean if it wasn't there. You know, you can sort of see things around that. And so I think refusing in place is sort of like "I will be in a situation, but I won't take anything about the situation for granted."
Basu, Narrating: Think about the way you engage with technology, with social media. Do you ever find yourself scrolling, but not really paying attention to what you're doing? Now, refusing in place doesn't mean that you can't still go on TikTok or whatever social media site, it just means that maybe you approach it differently, you pay attention to what you're doing and what you're seeing, and you think about it more critically. You challenge yourself to be curious.
[MUSIC FADES OUT]
Odell: I've said this before, but, like, my sort of dystopian example is like if you have to look at ads on Instagram, try to look at them like they were in a sci-fi movie about the present from the past. Like, "Well, it was a time when they wanted this," you know, "and people thought they needed this" and-- Or even just, like, analyze the fonts and the colors, and why did the algorithm think that I wanted this? You know, just be, like, morbidly curious about it. 'Cause I think even just morbid curiosity is already, like, a little bit of a removal from it.
Jenny's next step? Train your brain to really notice things around you, really take in the details of your surroundings. Jenny did this with birdwatching, and she says it was a huge breakthrough for her in understanding how her attention could be trained in new ways. Like most of us, Jenny said she'd been hearing birds her entire life, but she never stopped to listen, listen closely and pay attention.
Odell: You know, obviously sounds went in my ears, but I didn't register them as anything.
[BIRD CAWS IN DISTANCE]
Odell: And then there's an intermediate, like, period where it's like, Okay, well, I am-- now I'm noticing bird songs, but I don't know what they are.
Odell: Small birds and big birds, or, like, crows and other birds, or, like, the really obvious ones, like in New York it's blue jays, right? Like, a really pronounced sound.
[BLUE JAY SQUAWKING]
Odell: And then, you know, over time as you become more familiar it's like, Okay, now I'm starting to be able to identify different birds. And then even later, different sounds that those birds make in different situations.
[MULTIPLE BIRDS VOCALIZING]
Odell: Something that seemed maybe simple or not super differentiated, it becomes more and more differentiated. So I think it's just this kind of like… There's a really important part of the beginning where you just decide to pay attention to something, but after that point, I find that it just naturally unfolds. Like, you almost can't help but notice differences, especially if you are genuinely interested in that thing. And then it's kind of unidirectional, right? It's hard for me to imagine collapsing individual bird species back into, like, medium-sized birds.
Basu: You can't un-know it now. I mean, so much of what you're saying makes me think about how… the way that we think about social media as something that dulls our senses, and the way that you write about nature as something that can sharpen our senses, if only we pay attention to it.
Odell: Yeah, it definitely does that. And I think it… I think there are things that it's good for, but I also think it's just good. It's, like, amazing and beyond description, and I just sort of wake up in the morning, like, wanting to look at something growing outside, even if it's just, like, outside my apartment. Like, it's amazing in and of itself.
Basu, Narrating: So much of Jenny's advice revolves around being able to access nature: trees and animals, plants, even rocks. But what about people who might not live near a park or some other green space? I asked Jenny "How can they put these ideas into practice?"
Odell: If you can get a jeweler's loop or a hand lens, as they're sometimes called. It's like a little 10x lens that folds out, it fits in your pocket, and I've been obsessed with this thing for the last year.
Basu: Wait. So it's just like-- it's like a little magnifier?
Odell: Yeah, it's like a tiny magnifying glass. And you can use it to look at anything. I mean, obviously, you know, things that are outside like moss and plants and stuff are great, but even, like, any surface really is very fascinating. I've told so many people. Like, I'll have it with me and I'm like "You're gonna be shocked." And they're like-- they're skeptical. [LAUGHS] And then they're like "Oh, my God!" when they look at, like, a leaf.
Basu: Jenny, you just unlocked a childhood memory for me. I had a magnifying glass that I'm just remembering now the total joy of just, like, shoving different things under it and being like "Whoa! I had no idea."
Odell: Yeah! Exactly, right? And, like, we do associate that kind of wonder, right, with childhood. I mean, that's kind of, like, the last time it was, like, actively encouraged for, I think, a lot of us. I feel like if you're listening to this and you're skeptical, just try it. You will be amazed.
[GENTLE MUSIC]
Basu, Narrating: Another tip for people living in more urban spaces actually involves using technology to your advantage. Jenny recommends wildlife webcams, that means just sitting and watching animals do their thing, in real time. It's the total opposite of the instant gratification you get from, say, scrolling Instagram reels. Jenny says that she spent a lot of time during the pandemic watching these kinds of webcams, and she remembers one that was just of tropical fruits. And as a viewer, you're sitting there, waiting for an animal to come along and eat them.
[MUSIC FADES OUT]
Odell: It does encourage that quality of, like, waiting. Waiting and then being sort of overjoyed when something or someone shows up, and being surprised. And I think the thing that those two suggestions have in common, like the loop and the webcam, is that kind of ability to be surprised, because I think that's delightful in and of itself, but I think that that carries over into the rest of life, like willing to be surprised, willing to consider that there may be, like, a different perspective on something that you're not currently seeing, and having the patience to seek that out.
Basu: Let me ask you, Jenny, if you could give more examples of this kind of… I find it really helpful, actually, hearing you talk about really concrete things, practical things, that you can do or engage with, or just think about differently. I mean, I'll volunteer myself as a person to go through the process as someone who definitely does feel like her attention is being grabbed and gathered and divided among many things. What other things can I do, can I think about doing, to sort of retrain my brain and reclaim my attention away from technology and toward other things?
Odell: Yeah, I mean, it's-- I mean, it's very hard. There's an exercise that I used to give my students at Stanford where I would have them go outside for 15 minutes and write everything down that they saw, which of course is impossible. I paired it with a reading of this author, Georges Perec, who's a French writer who did something very similar. He chose a particular place in Paris and would sit somewhere around there and write down, almost like a police blotter, like, things that he was noticing. And they tend to be very banal. Like, he actually says in the introduction, he was looking for kind of unremarkable things, like noticed a lot of buses and, just, descriptions of passers-by. So I would show them this text, and then they would go outside and they would write down everything that they noticed. And then I had a rule that-- I don't remember if I said they could look at their phone, but I said if they wanted to look at their phone, they had to write down why. And then they would come back in and one of the things that we would discuss is, like, why did you notice what you noticed?
Basu: Ooh.
Odell: Which is a really fascinating question to me. And then seeing, like, sort of overall patterns. Like, you know, obviously everyone tended to notice, like, things that were out of the ordinary. Like, you know, big movements or, I don't know, someone wearing something really flashy. Things like that. But then there were other things that I think were more subtle, like I think we have individual reasons for noticing certain things over others. It's really interesting, actually, if you hang out with someone who notices very different things than you do. Like, my partner is really into cars, so I know all about cars now. It's like-- I didn't start out, like, caring about cars, but I just know all these… I, like-- Cars and birds, actually. Car people and bird people have a lot in common because, you know, there's like, "Ooh, there's a rare car" or, like, a rare bird.
Basu: [LAUGHS] You know it by the call, by the sound.
Odell: Yeah. Yeah, exactly.
Basu: It sounds like you're well-paired.
[TINKLING MUSIC]
Basu, Narrating: Jenny's final piece of advice is: just keep doing these exercises. Repeat them until you can't help but differentiate between things that used to seem one-dimensional.
Now, I meant it when I asked Jenny to give me an assignment, so that's how I ended up in Washington Square Park, sitting in a spot that I'd sat in many times before, trying to see things with a new perspective. I spent 15 minutes, just like she said, writing down everything I was noticing.
Two birds, clearly in conversation with each other. A spotted lantern fly, smushed. A squirrel sitting so still and so flat I was convinced he was dead until he started nibbling on something. A patch where no grass was growing.
I noticed a pattern started to emerge in my observations — lots of questions. How old is the oldest tree in this park? What kinds of birds were those? What does that monument say?
These are all obvious questions, but truthfully, I'd never asked them before. Or maybe I always thought the answers didn't really matter.
I left the park for the first time wanting to know the answers, and yes, I looked them up on my phone. It turns out, Washington Square Park is home to some of the oldest trees in Manhattan, over 300 years old. It's got English elms and sycamores and sugar maples. Those were probably blue jays I was hearing. And that monument, the huge arch in Washington Square Park, says it's to commemorate the 100th anniversary of George Washington's inauguration as the first president of the United States. It all made me think of something Jenny told me…
Odell: You can actually perceive more, sometimes, by doing less. If you're silent, then you can actually hear what is around you.
[MUSIC FADES OUT]
Basu, Narrating: I've been reflecting on our "Think Again" series now that it's coming to an end, and it made me realize that there's a reason why it's worth rethinking our usual pathways of thought. One is, it's humbling. It's a useful reality check to say, often, "How do others see this? And what can I learn from that?"
Another reason is to not succumb to numbness. To shock the body and mind is to feel alive. As kids, we do this all the time. We're told to learn and try and fail and scrape our knees. But we're not really told to do that as adults. Not enough. In fact, a lot of adult life revolves around sameness. Establishing routines, perfecting them, making them, and us, more efficient and more boring and less engaged.
[MUSIC FADES IN]
Basu, Narrating: Each of these conversations in the "Think Again" series was designed to shock the system a bit. They're supposed to be conversations that stick with you, that you live with. If you haven't yet, I hope you'll go back and listen through them all. And let us know what parts you're still thinking about and what tips you've tried applying in your life. You can reach out to me on Twitter. I'm at shubasu. That's S-H-U-B-A-S-U. Or shoot us an email at applenewstoday at apple.com. Thanks for listening. We'll be back with our usual episodes of "In Conversation" next week.
[MUSIC FADES OUT]