Why being unproductive is a form of productivity
For this essay, I decided to build off of an idea that Jenny Odell mentioned in her very first chapter, that self maintenance is required for our lives, and therefore is productive. This may seem ironic, as when Jenny Odell talks about self maintenance, she is talking about the exact opposite of being productive. In later chapters, Jenny Odell describes many different examples that could be seen as maintenance. Her first example is, of course, the rose garden, Jenny Odell describes the rose garden as a retreat, saying on page 9, “and like longer retreats, they affect the way we see everyday life when we do come back to it.” She then talks about the idea of a longer retreat. Odell began the chapter describing what she called a “social detox”. Aka, a break from social media, emails, work, etc. Personally, in terms of self maintenance, I try mindfulness and rest. I find that sometimes, when I feel overwhelmed with everything, I really just need to sleep and restart.
She begins the chapter by explaining how she took an accidental social detox, after discovering her cabin had no wifi. She describes how she had no connection to look at social media, respond to work emails, phone calls, and anything of the sort. One of the things I find interesting is how Odell makes such a point later on in the chapter about how a social detox is not to increase work productivity, but how it increased her productivity on her own projects. She says,
“With newfound peace of mind, I worked on my project unperturbed by the information and interruptions that would have otherwise lit up that tiny screen every few minutes.” (Odell)
I’m thinking that, with a total distraction from the outside world, all she could think about was the project. She later goes on to talk about Levi Felix, who opened a camp just for social detox. The camp was for people to go on a technology break and just have the time to themselves. Unfortunately, after Felix’s death, the camp was advertised as a way for companies to make their workers more productive when they returned to work, which is not what the goal of Felix was. His goal, which Odell talks about on page 34, was, “a total and permanent reevaluation of one’s priorities…” What I gathered from that quote was that Felix’s goal was actually to make those not necessarily less productive, but to remind people that their life’s worth was not the productivity of the company they worked for. With this in mind, I was surprised to find that Felix somewhat suffered from what these people were experiencing before they attended the camp. He is described as constantly walking around the camp making sure everything was perfect. An image that stays in my mind is something Odell quoted in Poswolsky’s eulogy of Felix, saying that he
“dreamed of escaping the stress of running Camp and moving to a beautiful farm somewhere in the redwoods where he could just listen to records all day with Brooke.” (Poswolsky’s eulogy of Felix)
… Ever since I read chapter 2 this sentence has stayed in my mind. I can imagine Felix seeing people constantly being given a break from our capitalist society that is constantly forcing non-stop productivity, yet almost never getting to take a break himself. I can completely understand what he meant by that quote, of just laying with the one you love, taking in our earth’s scenery, and enjoying something like music, instead of constantly working for money just for survival.
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Throughout chapter 2, Odell begins to describe some of the different permanent retreats over history. She begins by talking about Epicarus’s garden, where those who were in need of healing could go to Epicarus’s garden to “escape civic duty” by spending sometime in a self sufficient community. She also talks about how the 1960’s vietnam war led to many groups of communities attempting to escape capitalism and become a self sufficient system, without politics. However, when things got down to the knitty gritty, politics were required. Odell describes a piece of literature, Walden two, that describes a self sufficient community that is based on conditioning children from an early way how to behave and live by “The Code”. The book is eerie because it describes people living in harmony in a non-capitalistic community, but you can slowly tell how the people are suppressed of their free thinking. Odell ends the chapter by explaining how we cannot just have no responsibility. Odell says on page 61,
“Some hybrid is needed. We have to be able to do both: to contemplate and participate, to leave and always come back, where we are needed.”(Odell)
This quote makes perfect sense when you take into context what Odell was previously describing; the wild fires on the mountain where she was staying, and how fire broke out near her parents house the day she returned. Odell’s quote to me says that we should have the ability to step back from our civic duty and use it sometimes to think purely about ourselves and personal other than just work, while also being able to complete some work because we are needed in society. I have the privilege to say this because I have a good immune system, and I admit this is pretty bad to say, but sometimes I just want to catch covid and have 10 days off. I would obviously have to do my schoolwork but I wouldn’t have to go into work or into my in person classes… which would be nice, because I hate work.
This especially relates back to that core idea of needing maintenance and upkeep ourselves. It is true that we are needed in society, but it is also true that we must “contemplate”… aka having the ability to take a step back and think about something other than solely productivity. In order to serve in our role in society, we must take a step back to give ourselves a moment to think. Since our society is so focused on productivity, Odell describes in chapter 3 the action of refusing to participate in our role in society. She describes Tehching Hseih who did the art piece, Cage piece. Odell didn’t go into much detail to describe the actual physical condition of the cell, just describing its rules and how he was brought food everyday, and how his waste was cleaned out. Odell describes his rules as “He was not allowed to talk, read , or write (except for marking each day on the wall); non television or radio allowed.” This piece in itself feels a bit ironic to me, as him doing absolutely nothing is actually very productive to him. In a way, Hseih was just working, as he was simply doing his new art piece.
An idea I really wanted to forward in chapter 4 of How to do nothing was the idea that one of the most common ways we practice the art of paying attention is by suddenly noticing how something we see every day in a different light can be totally new to us if we simply look closer to observe it. Odell gives the example of the movie “The Exchange”, where the protagonist has to go back to his apartment in the middle of the day because he forgot something and suddenly notices his apartment feels very different. It is hard to put this phenomenon into words but I (and most likely many others) have experienced this exact same feeling. I can recall driving home sick from High School, and arriving at my house in the middle of a school day. My house was empty (except for the dogs) and very quiet. Even the way the sun shone through the windows just felt different to me. Even though it was over a year ago, I can vividly remember walking around my empty house, hearing the wood creak underneath my feet, experiencing everything differently in the new silence I almost never experienced.
She then relates this idea of experiencing something very closely in a new way to the art of David Hockney. In David Hockney’s art, he attempts to capture multiple moments and perspectives of things. A quote that really stuck out to me was how Odell mentions how she talked to some of the viewers of Hockey’s piece, Seven Yorkshire Landscapes. Odell says on page 101,
“Some of the museum goers who had seen the piece came back to tell them that afterward everything outside had looked different from what they were used to. Specifically, the de Young is not far from the San Francisco Botanical Garden, and those who visited it directly afterward found that Hockney’s piece had trained them to look a certain way- a notably slow, broken up, luxuriating in texture.”(Odell)
She is basically saying the Hockney’s art allowed the artists to take a slower look at the garden; so that they could see the different perspectives of it but all of its different textures and features. This reminds me of the act of mindfulness, which a Cognitive behavioral therapist taught me in order to improve my Tourrette’s syndrome and overall mental health. As someone with Tourrette’s, I get easily triggered “tic attacks’ ‘, in which I verbally and physically “tic” (aka uncontrollable movement) very quickly for a period of time. I can get very frustrated at this, but frustration just makes it worse. My cognitive behavioral therapist taught me the practice of mindfulness, in which you sort of take a “pause”, and just focus on one thing at a time. Personally, I tend to focus on all the different sounds I hear around me rather than what I can see. As I’m focusing on distinguishing sounds from one another, my tics begin to slow as my body relaxes and I can focus on my surroundings. This technique also works extremely well for anxiety and panic attacks, and I have also used to to try to pull myself out of a depressive state of dissociation, to try to remind myself of the world around me.
At the end of the day, there has been a clear message in all of the first three chapters of Odell’s “How to do Nothing.” The message is, simply put, that by learning how to get comfortable and practicing the art of doing nothing, you have not only become productive in the sense that you are getting things done to fulfill requirements of work, family, etc., but also being productive by taking care of yourself, working on yourself, and embracing the meaning of life and the gift given of the world around us.
