I recently finished Jenny Odell’s book, “How To Do Nothing.” It was an interesting book, though outside the title there was actually nothing ‘how to’ about it. Rather it was really more a book on the importance of doing nothing, a concept I have been fully on board with for a long time. I have, for as long as I can remember, placed a high value on sitting still. There really is no replacement for being alone with your thoughts, particularly when it comes to fostering creativity. And I don't just mean creativity from an artsy standpoint; everyone is creative in some way. My best problem solving is creative work, and generally only happens when I have empty time to discover the solution. My “nothing” time allows me to reconnect with myself, and with the world around me. And although this time is described as “doing nothing” that is of course far from what’s actually happening. She articulates well that we view it as time spent doing "nothing” because we’ve become a society that only places value on activities that produce something tangible and measurable; we’re so obsessed with productivity that we’ve forgotten what we gain - for ourselves, our relationships, and our communities - when we give ourselves the space to just be. But that’s perhaps a blog for another day…
There is one idea in the book though that I had never really considered before, not in the terms she uses. She describes attention as a resource, perhaps one of our most valuable resources, but one that we don’t always even realize we are giving up. It had never occurred to me that we use the phrase pay attention and never think through that it is indeed something we are giving up, or that we have agency over to whom and to what we pay it. Most of our days are so busy that it’s easy to get to the end of one having dealt only with the things that required our attention, with little thought left to the things to which we want to give our attention. And then in an effort to stay ‘connected’ we spend any down time mindlessly scrolling through social media feeds, without much thought (or even much control) over what our attention is brought to there. So often we kill time engrossed in thoughts of the next thing or the other thing, instead of on this thing in front of us.
So I’ve spent the last week trying to be a bit more mindful about where my attention is spent. I’ve removed most of the notifications from my electronic devices, set extended “do not disturb” hours on my phone. I’m trying to guard my attention more, treat it like the limited resource that it is, and spend it wisely. I’m making a conscious effort to be conscious of what’s around me, to notice more of the life that’s happening in front of me. And it’s amazing how, when you pay attention to where you’re paying your attention, you notice beautiful things you would have otherwise missed.