Do Nothing
29 Jan 2022
Last week's Dense Discovery newsletter had an interesting take on productivity. I see this "lets make something new" happen a lot in the software industry. Huge respect to the mainteners of software. We need you'll!
My research on Jenny Odell and her book How To Do Nothing for our interview in Offscreen opened my eyes to a more nuanced interpretation of productivity. Odell calls our conventional view of productivity a ‘forward at all costs’ concept that is obsessed with producing new things just because new things need to be produced. It’s a notion intrinsically linked to how we view and value ourselves in a capitalist society where only the ‘demonstratively new’ is valued while things like maintenance, care, rest or play are considered a waste of time.