On how to grow an idea
Our ideas, too, will disappoint us if we don’t give them the right environment to develop in. They’ll be shallow, derivative, dull, repetitive, or take too long to show up. Or they’ll just not show up at all. We must find the perfect glass jar and lid for them to appear in.
What is that perfect glass jar, though? Our ideas appear primarily in one s... See more
What is that perfect glass jar, though? Our ideas appear primarily in one s... See more
Nat Eliason • The Art of Fermenting Great Ideas
The “idea” isn’t a finished product with identifiable boundaries that one moment sprung into being—one of the reasons artists so hate the interview question, “So what was your inspiration for this?” Any idea is actually an unstable, shifting intersection between myself and whatever I was encountering. By extension, thought doesn’t occur somehow ins
... See moreJenny Odell • How to Do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy
I like the notion that in the struggle to create something—to bring to fruition a project, a work of art, a company, whatever— sometimes the best strategy is slowness.
are.na • On Motivation
The first half of “doing nothing” is about disengaging from the attention economy; the other half is about reengaging with something else. That “something else” is nothing less than time and space, a possibility only once we meet each other there on the level of attention. Ultimately, against the placelessness of an optimized life spent online, I w
... See moreJenny Odell • How to Do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy
