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  • How to Do Nothing

  • Resisting the Attention Economy
  • Written by: Jenny Odell
  • Narrated by: Rebecca Gibel
  • Length: 8 hrs and 10 mins
  • 4.0 out of 5 stars (76 ratings)

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How to Do Nothing cover art

How to Do Nothing

Written by: Jenny Odell
Narrated by: Rebecca Gibel
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Publisher's Summary

A galvanizing critique of the forces vying for our attention - and our personal information - that redefines what we think of as productivity, reconnects us with the environment, and reveals all that we've been too distracted to see about ourselves and our world

Nothing is harder to do these days than nothing. But in a world where our value is determined by our 24/7 data productivity . . . doing nothing may be our most important form of resistance. 

So argues artist and critic Jenny Odell in this field guide to doing nothing (at least as capitalism defines it). Odell sees our attention as the most precious - and overdrawn - resource we have. Once we can start paying a new kind of attention, she writes, we can undertake bolder forms of political action, reimagine humankind's role in the environment, and arrive at more meaningful understandings of happiness and progress. 

Far from the simple anti-technology screed, or the back-to-nature meditation we hear so often, How to Do Nothing is an action plan for thinking outside of capitalist narratives of efficiency and techno-determinism. Provocative, timely, and utterly persuasive, this book is a four-course meal in the age of Soylent.

©2019 Jenny Odell (P)2019 HighBridge, a division of Recorded Books

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What listeners say about How to Do Nothing

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    1 out of 5 stars
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    4 out of 5 stars

ROBOT VOICE narration is UNLISTENABLE!

I am 100% sure that it's not a real person reading this book. "Rebecca Gibel" is a computer algorithm. I don't know about you but I can't listen to the answering machine lady for 10 minutes, let alone 8 hours! I am flabbergasted that they are allowed to sell this. I love Jenny Odell and have watched all of her TED talks and presentations available on youtube. I'm sure this book is as wonderful as they are. I am incredibly disappointed.

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13 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    3 out of 5 stars

The book is fine. The reading? I dunno...

Couldn't listen to that reading voice any more. So I just read it without. Love the book and all it has to say.

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3 people found this helpful

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  • JMS
  • 2020-04-05

Not a fan of narrator; content is great

Podcast of my review available on Apply podcasts and Anchor under Audiobook reviews in 5 minutes:

Apple podcasts: https://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewPodcast?id=1500773777

Anchor: https://anchor.fm/audiobookreviews/episodes/Review-of-How-to-Do-Nothing-Resisting-the-Attention-Economy-by-Jenny-Odell-ec42po

Much of Odell’s discussion examines the opportunities and pitfalls of our obsession with productivity, and what she describes as essentialism, which broadly describes a tendency to categorize and simplify how we order and understand the world. Another powerful idea Odell discusses is context collapse; think about how you might share your travel experience details with different groups, such as family members, colleagues, or close friends, vs how you’d share those details on social media. For myself, this helped me understand why, although I’m a communications professional, I tend toward the visual and sharing images on social media like Instagram, which contain their own context in a more satisfying way (in my opinion) than text-dominant platforms like Twitter.

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2 people found this helpful

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    3 out of 5 stars
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    5 out of 5 stars

narrator ruins it for me

That's all I wanted to say - the ideas are great, the narration sounds like a Hallmark movie..... ruined it.

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amazing!

what a fascinating listen. I loved all the themes Odell threaded through the narrative: bioregionalism, public space, activism and community engagement. this will merit several more listens, as it's packed with ideas.

I'm very pleased I didn't let the negative reviews on the narrator keep me from buying this. I found her to be just fine - she has a "radio" style rather than that of a fiction narrator, but it is very much in keeping with the tone of the book. absolutely worth listening to!

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1 person found this helpful

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    2 out of 5 stars
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    4 out of 5 stars

unlistenable narrator

ughhhhh - the material is fascinating but I'm just gonna go out and buy the book to read because the robot narrator is awful. this audiobook is impossible to follow because it's like listening to a computer and I just keep tuning out :(

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    2 out of 5 stars
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    4 out of 5 stars

Ideas overshadowed by AI narration

What a sad piece of irony that this book, with so many points about the pitfalls of progress, is almost certainly “read” by AI. Some great nuggets of info and inspiration, but practically unlistenable — I feel sorry for the author.

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  • Overall
    2 out of 5 stars
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    2 out of 5 stars

Did not enjoy

The narrator’s voice sounds like a robot.
The book was not as expected and not practical.

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  • Overall
    4 out of 5 stars
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Great book

Despite the overly formal and AI-like voice, I loved everything the author wrote. Smart, creative, funny, and not preachy or self-helpy.

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    1 out of 5 stars
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  • D
  • 2021-07-13

Disappointed by the outcome

I had high hopes for this book, and was thrilled to crack it open after hearing both the sample and the description. This was definitely the book I felt I needed, but it tragically failed to deliver. I don’t often leave negative reviews on books — in fact I don’t think I ever have before, but this one really did discourage me. “How To Do Nothing” could more accurately be titled as “How To Waste Your Time.” The author’s premise is fantastic, and she has all the makings of a brilliant thesis here, but she ends up diving into tangents that make no logical connection to the book, and then claims to be doing this on purpose as a matter of proving her point. Instead of proving fantastic points that could help both draw me into her message and make me feel empowered to take a stance myself, she casts the reader into muddy pool after a muddy pool. Over half of this book I would suggest completely wasted my time, from diving way too deep into how social media platforms invest their resources, to random tangents about the merits of wildlife behaviour — even that makes it sound more interesting than it is. She speaks to her readers from an academic standpoint, but then tries desperately hard to prove how clever she is. I think this is the work of a brilliant thinker, who needed a supportive editor.

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  • Anonymous User
  • 2019-08-24

great book, voiceover is brutal

it’s difficult to listen to this book about resisting technology when the narrators voice sounds computer generated. unfortunate because this is a wonderful book with meaningful insight about navigating today’s world — it’s just plain hard to listen to. in practice of the book, read the print version instead!!!

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38 people found this helpful

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  • Anonymous User
  • 2019-09-16

the narration is shockingly bad

The voiceover really does a disservice to the work. It's almost hard to comment on the work itself because I'm still trying to figure out how to listen to what feels like Alexa talking at me for 8 hours.

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22 people found this helpful

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  • Joan Q Public
  • 2019-09-10

just cant listen

I wanted to listen to this book, but the narration was too mechanical and irritating.

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19 people found this helpful

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    3 out of 5 stars
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  • Kate Woodbury
  • 2020-03-05

worst narrator ever

i thought i could handle the narrator after listening to the sample but it starts to get impossible to listen to by chapter 3. it's too bad because i think i would have gotten a lot from this book had the narration been well-done. i listen to a LOT of audiobooks, 15 in the last two months, and this is the worst narration i've ever heard.

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16 people found this helpful

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  • Rob
  • 2019-11-19

Unlistenable

I know that narration is harder than it seems, but this narrator can’t even complete a sentence. She ends a phrase with a level tone (not up, like a question, nor down like a period). It’s just silence and you think it’s a pause but it was the end of a sentence or paragraph.

I’ll check this out on kindle.

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13 people found this helpful

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  • Alexey Badalov
  • 2019-09-05

Not convinced narration is not computer-generated

I find it admirable that the author discovered curiosity about the natural world, but it was hard to listen to the book narrated in this detached voice with a consistently panicked expression, often as if on the verge of tears.

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11 people found this helpful

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  • Eddie
  • 2019-08-29

Long Essay Not A Novel

I love the topic and really enjoy the concept. You need to deliberately refuse certain parts of the attention economy if you're going to live a balanced life. Simply deleting social media apps and running away isn't sustainable. However, the way in which it was delivered felt like listening to a really long essay in which each chapter proves one point, and feels like one long paragraph. I found myself skipping to the next chapter halfway through once I understood the point of it. It is also obviously read by a robot. Sounds like the book is read by Siri. It didn't bother me at first, but once I noticed I could no longer pay attention without the voice distracting me.

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  • E
  • 2020-02-26

Narrator voice was distracting

The book is good. The narration sounds like a robotic text to voice app. It’s sort of hard to believe it’s a real live person. Made it hard to pay attention

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    3 out of 5 stars
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  • Maria V. Bissex
  • 2019-06-30

some good nuggets

I suppose I should have known from the subtitle, but this book was far more political than I expected, which hampered my enjoyment of it. I still got some interesting tidbits out of it though.

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5 people found this helpful

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  • Amazon Customer
  • 2019-09-24

It sounded great at first glance, but

When I first read the summary, it sounded like this book was about how to slow down and break away from the economical ratrace and such, but within a few minutes I realized that this book was going to be politically charged and is just spreading barely disguised negativity. Thanks, but no thanks.

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4 people found this helpful