How to Do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy

The writer, the thinker, the dreamer, the poet, the metaphysician, the observer…he who tries to solve a riddle or to pass judgement will become an anachronistic figure, destined to disappear from the face of the earth like the ichthyosaur and the mammoth.

I consider “doing nothing” both as a kind of deprogramming device and as sustenance for those feeling too disassembled to act meaningfully.

see people caught up not just in notifications but in a mythology of productivity and progress, unable not only to rest but simply to see where they are.

we could use a moment to examine the relationship between attention span and the speed of information exchange.

Look back in memory and consider…how many have robbed you of life when you were not aware of what you were losing, how much was taken up in useless sorrow, in foolish joy, in greedy desire, in the allurements of society, how little of yourself was left to you; you will perceive that you are dying before your season!

Everywhere you can find men who live for empty desires and have no interest in the good life. Stupid fools are those who are never satisfied with what they possess, but only lament what they cannot have.9

In other words, digital distraction was a bane not because it made people less productive but because it took them away from the one life they had to live.

It’s not a form of communication driven by reflection and reason, but rather a reaction driven by fear and anger.

But most important, standing apart represents the moment in which the desperate desire to leave (forever!) matures into a commitment to live in permanent refusal, where one already is, and to meet others in the common space of that refusal. This kind of resistance still manifests as participating, but participating in the “wrong way”: a way that un

the context of attention, I’d further venture that this fear renders young people less able to concentrate individually or collectively.