A few weeks back, I was antsy in a way that I couldn鈥檛 explain. My head was swimming from a bunch of weeks on the road for work, which turned into both too much and not enough time with people. I was tired no matter how much I slept. Inside all the time. Sucked into the cycle of: delete Instagram, then redownload Instagram and numb brain with other people鈥檚 stories of their shiny lives, feel shitty (repeat forever?).听
So one Saturday afternoon back home, annoyed with myself and unwilling to submit anyone else to my attitude, I took off for the woods alone. Wine can, sandwich, warm layer,听book. South down the Pacific Crest Trail听toward a lake I was pretty sure was pretty. At the lake, I set up my tent and shook out my sleeping bag, then sat on a log near the muddy shore and cracked open the can and the book.听
Before I even made it through the introduction, I realized I鈥檇 chosen well. Sometimes, I think, books show up in your life at exactly the right time.
Despite its prescriptive title, Jenny Odell鈥檚 听($26, Melville House) is not a self-help book. It鈥檚 critical theory about the attention economy听and how easy it is to be pulled away from reality by the constant churn of the internet and social media, which are听specifically designed to grab at our most base instincts and keep us hitting refresh forever. It鈥檚 about how the digital world is distracting us from the actual world听and what we lose when we stop paying attention.
None of this is new, exactly, but Odell鈥檚 biggest counter to those issues is the natural world: spending time outside observing,听so you know exactly what your local ecology looks like, how it connects, and how it changes over time. Odell, who grew up in Cupertino, California, and now lives in Oakland, meanders (literally and literarily)听through the wilds of the Bay Area. She weaves stories of the birds in her neighborhood and time in her local rose garden with the growth of Silicon Valley and the erosion of small towns and natural areas. 听
Odell isn鈥檛 the only one trying to figure out the morass of technology听and how it chips away at our ability to be present. If you want to cut all the way back on your habit, Mark Boyle鈥檚 听($25, Oneworld Publications) is a look at full rejection. Boyle, whose previous book, , was about freeing himself from cash, started homesteading without technology in rural Ireland in 2016. He鈥檚 far from the first man to set out for the woods alone to see if he can hack it, and the book scratches those familiar Thoreauvian itches, but he鈥檚 appealingly clear about when it doesn鈥檛 work鈥攖he ways it can stress a relationship, for instance鈥攁nd it鈥檚 a good lesson on the checks and balances of modernity.听
If you鈥檙e thinking about what you actually get when you cut out all the distractions, Jane Brox traces the concept of quiet听and how we get it鈥攆rom the pain of prison isolation to the pleasure of Trappist monk Thomas Merton鈥檚 time in the hinterlands鈥攊n 听($27, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt). She looks at what noise does to us spiritually and physically, how we鈥檝e commodified sounds, and what we lose at either end of the register. Like Odell, she doesn鈥檛 try to sort silence into good or bad, but she makes a well-defined case for paying attention to the elements around us that shape our days.
If you do want something a little more self-helpy and prescriptive, computer-science professor Cal Newport, who made a career out of life-hacking technology, recently published 听($26, Portfolio). It鈥檚 his guide to cutting back to just the essential technology. The value of the book rides on his critical analysis听and the ways his computer-science brain picks apart technology as a tool instead of glorifying it. His approach: get rid of all of it,听then intentionally add back the things that actually serve you.
It鈥檚 hard to say where the tipping point of technology takeover might be,听or if we鈥檝e already blown way past it, but all of these books have the same conclusion: the best we can do is slow down and be present. We must pay attention to the landscape around us and how it鈥檚 changing, because we impact it鈥攅ven if we鈥檙e zoned out鈥攁nd it changes us, too.听
Rain rolled in over the lake as I slept, and in the morning, I lay in the tent with How to Do Nothing, listening for a break in the storm. For the first time in a long time, I did not anxiously check my phone听or internally berate myself for not getting up earlier. I just stayed.听