
How to Do Nothing (2017) - panic
https://medium.com/@the_jennitaur/how-to-do-nothing-57e100f59bbb
======
simonebrunozzi
> Gilles Deleuze in Negotiations: "…we’re riddled with pointless talk, insane
> quantities of words and images. Stupidity’s never blind or mute. So it’s not
> a problem of getting people to express themselves but of providing little
> gaps of solitude and silence in which they might eventually find something
> to say. "

Well said. I really liked this article, and as a side note, the "satellite
landscapes" are a thing of beauty.

~~~
lorddagoba
It's interesting how much this relates to competitive strategy games like
chess, kungfu, dota etc.

If you watch a beginner he has not much to do, but he enjoys what happens
seemingly randomly.

Then if you watch a mediocre strategist you will see them hustle and hustle
and hustle away, always feeling one step behind optimum.

And then when you watch the experts, they simply refuse to do the 80% of the
hustling where they know it has no value for their goals. Then they sit around
calculating how an actual opportunity would look like, observing what their
opponents are doing and when one of these opportunities comes around they are
already prepared and therefore can take it in a relaxed manner.

The thing is step 1 is easy, everybody can do it. But the value in the
competitive environments like your working environment are almost zero. Good
and bad things happen at random to you. And while you might have less stress
in general, the bad things will hurt you badly.

What we actually want is getting to step 3. But few people take the time after
reaching step 2 to actually continue learning and optimizing. But that's the
way to get to step 3.

The reason people feel that way is because they "just" need to get to that one
thing that is in front of them, "just" barely out of reach, not realizing that
they don't get it because they are so exhausted.

And the solution is really letting go. Accepting that you won't achieve the
opportunities that you see directly in front of you, but rather work on
improving yourself to become more capable to achieve anything. And then one
needs to continue for quite some time in that state, slowly improving ones
health, ones ability to observe oneself and others, recognizing big
opportunities that are further away, and realizing which steps to take to
reach them.

------
mikekchar
For an article about nothing, I wasn't expecting so much of it. I'm afraid
that I wasn't able to read the whole thing. My biggest criticism is that I
think there are too many connections drawn at various points. It's one of
those things where X led me to Y which led me to Z, but X doesn't really have
any bearing on Z at all. Because a path led there, it gives credence to the
idea that they are connected, but the only connection is the author. In that
way, I found it difficult to read as I felt I was searching for a needle in a
haystack. I don't need the author's stream of consciousness in order to do
nothing. I have my own. I kept wondering why I am looking at her rose garden
and her birds rather than looking at my own.

~~~
parksy
Personally I think these types of writings offer valuable opportunity for
reflection, I found the stream of thought approach appealing and overall
enjoyed the experience of reading this.

I think if you have reached a point where you've found your rose garden,
that's a beautiful thing and maybe this article and others like it seem less
appealing. And I get it can seem contradictory, narcissistic or sacrosanct to
want to write (or read) an entire article about something so personal or
subjective (and in doing so, add noise to the very noisy environment the
author was describing). All valid points of view, which shift in relation to
the observer.

Read as an essay on culture, I don't think it has a clear thesis beyond a
general sensation of defending our time and space. Explored as a meandering
journey through a garden of ideas we're given the opportunity to reflect on
our own thoughts and feelings - in a way the article shows us some disjoint
pieces of the haystack as experienced by the author (in a very blind-men-
describing-the-elephant way), and the needle is ourselves.

Each to their own ::)

~~~
GrumpyNl
Friend om mine wrote this book about it.
[https://andiepeveen.wordpress.com/artofpositivelaziness/](https://andiepeveen.wordpress.com/artofpositivelaziness/)

~~~
verelo
Is “om” a common abbreviation? This is the first time I’m seeing it, i
understood, but still new to me. Sorry for the off topic question!

~~~
GonzaloQuero
I think it might just be a typo on "friend of mine"

~~~
laumars
That was my assumption too. Which makes me wonder what the previous poster
thought it stood for when he said he understood it.

~~~
verelo
Ha yeah i thought it meant “friend of mine”. And now i read it again i see
“mine” is written, so maybe I’m just in wake up brain and not reading right.
That was a fun waste of everyone’s time, sorry ha!

~~~
laumars
It brought a smile to my face on what has otherwise been a stressful Friday.
So I'm grateful :)

------
waveymaus
I'm currently halfway through Jenny's book of the same title, and the situated
and the personal, with a strong philosophical grounding makes this such a
refreshing read compared to the rest of the literature on attention. Attending
is such a subjective experience, and the personal account of developing a
different kind of attention (especially one that is situated in places
relatable to myself) makes this so much more meaningful than other, still
excellent, but more View From Nowhere texts such as Stand Out of Our Light, or
The Attention Merchants.

Reading this post earlier this year stopped me in my tracks and would highly
recommend the book if you enjoyed this!

~~~
trevyn
While I am glad to see and encourage the production of more material on the
topic of intentional attention, I found this particular book amateurish and
much more of an angry clichéd rant about active resistance against certain
qualities of our current political and cultural climate than useful and
fundamental advice on personal attentional freedom, and would actively dis-
recommend this book.

~~~
vollmond
Do you have others which you would recommend in this vein?

~~~
waveymaus
there are a few on the topic of the attention economy:

\- stand out of our light by james williams

\- the attention merchants by tim wu

\- the shallows by nicholas carr

and not on the attention economy, but nervous states by william davies is very
much in the similar thread.

------
winningcontinue
>suggesting that we protect our spaces and our time for non-instrumental, non-
commercial activity and thought, for maintenance, for care, for conviviality

wonderful sentiment. Too many occassions pass where we miss out on these
moments because we're worried too much about productivity.

------
quickthrower2
I might look like I'm doing nothing, but I'm extremely busy at a cellular
level.

~~~
basetop
Only 10% of you at the cellular level is you. The 90% of you at the cellular
level is bacteria.

[https://bigthink.com/amped/humans-10-human-
and-90-bacterial](https://bigthink.com/amped/humans-10-human-and-90-bacterial)

~~~
Filligree
In terms of cell count, yes. Not in terms of weight, or computation. :)

------
good-idea
It should be noted that she published a book of the same name earlier this
year: [https://www.amazon.com/How-Do-Nothing-Resisting-
Attention/dp...](https://www.amazon.com/How-Do-Nothing-Resisting-
Attention/dp/1612197493)

------
jaden
I half-expected this to be a link to
[http://www.donothingfor2minutes.com/](http://www.donothingfor2minutes.com/)

It's harder than you think.

------
loblollyboy
3 paragraphs in and I'm not following, but I do like the pretty pictures. I
guess she got through to me, if only for a bit.

------
marmaduke
Jonathan Crary's 24/7 is a somewhat parallel if less navel gazing take on
similar topics.

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rdiddly
I needed this right now.

------
kyleblarson
I agree with the overall sentiment of putting aside time for 'doing nothing'.
However I read the first few chapters of her book and found it to insufferably
epitomize the ramblings of an entitled millennial.

------
bubble-07
I find many of the comments on this article hilarious -- Jesus Christ, HN
commenters, can't you recognize the irony of complaining that your attention
span is too short to read an article about the joys of paying attention to the
world around you?

~~~
RobertRoberts
I would have enjoyed a blank page... it would have been a metaphysical
experience.

Maybe one sentence like "Think for a minute..."

~~~
nacs
The bounce rate on that page with the HN crowd would be like 99.99% in 1
second followed by 5 minutes of composing a critique in the comments.

------
binnary
Hard pass. Going to read the book instead.

------
code_scrapping
Downvotes be damned, but after listening to the actual Eyeo talk, I'm
surprised how much fluff (Jenny's work) can be added to a good statement
(Gilles Deleuze's statement). Art is supposed to be a consideration on human
sentiment/action/whatever, but this is just next level of not actually
producing anything and calling it "art" \- not because of its value, but
because it won't fit into any other meaningful category... and then you do a
keynote with it.

