Jenny Odell Is Here to Liberate You From the Clock

When it comes to seeing the forest, not just the trees, few people do it as well as author, educator, and artist Jenny Odell. Her 2019 debut, How to Do Nothing, helped make plain the pervasive, draining pull of the attention economy, that network of applications built to reward our engagement and exploit our aversion to sitting quietly with ourselves. Sure, we already knew our ballooning screen time wasn’t exactly healthy, but Odell’s book investigated not just the negative impacts of the endless scroll, but the underlying motivations that keep us double-tapping. It also suggested where we might find an alternative to all that blue light.