Author Guide · Nonfiction · Attention
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In 2016, unable to make any art, Jenny Odell went and sat in the Rose Garden in Oakland, California, and did nothing. The ideas she worked out there became a talk at the EYEO technology conference in 2017, then an essay that spread widely online, then How to Do Nothing (2019), a New York Times bestseller that Barack Obama put on his list of favourite books of the year. Odell, born in San Francisco in 1986, is an artist first: she has been artist-in-residence at the San Francisco dump and the Internet Archive and has taught art at Stanford since 2013. Her second book, Saving Time (2023), takes the same questions from attention to the clock. This guide covers her two key books, in order, and where to begin.
By Lisanne Swart · 2 key books · 2019–2023 · Updated October 2026
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Quick answer
Jenny Odell has written two books: How to Do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy (2019) and Saving Time: Discovering a Life Beyond the Clock (2023). Start with How to Do Nothing, the book that made her name; Saving Time builds on its argument and turns it towards how we measure and sell time.
Where to Start with Jenny Odell
If you want her breakthrough book
→ How to Do Nothing (2019) — the argument about attention that started everything.
If you want the bigger, deeper follow-up
→ Saving Time (2023) — where the clock and “time is money” came from.
If you want something on nature and noticing
→ How to Do Nothing (2019) — birdwatching and bioregionalism as a way back to place.
2 Jenny Odell Books, in Order
How to Do Nothing
Published by Melville House in April 2019, the book grew out of a talk Odell gave at the EYEO conference in 2017. She argues that social media platforms treat our attention as a resource to be harvested, and that withdrawing it is a political act rather than a wellness habit. Drawing on art, birdwatching, the history of communes and the idea of bioregionalism, she makes the case for paying attention to the place you actually live in. It became a New York Times bestseller, was one of Barack Obama’s favourite books of 2019, and was named a best book of the year by Time, The New Yorker and NPR.
Saving Time
Published by Random House in March 2023, the book asks what time we would actually reclaim if we stepped back from the attention economy. Odell traces the clock-based, “time is money” idea of time to its roots in industrial work and argues that it was built for profit, then sets it against other ways of telling time: the seasons, migrating birds, eroding cliffs and geological timescales. She links the subject to burnout, inequality and climate fatalism. It was also a New York Times bestseller and a New York Times Editors’ Choice.
In What Order to Read Jenny Odell
Read them in publication order. Saving Time stands on its own, but it starts where How to Do Nothing stops: having withdrawn some attention from the platforms, what do you do with the time you get back, and why does time feel like money in the first place?
Both books are slower and more wide-ranging than their titles suggest. They are closer to long essays, moving between art history, ecology and Odell’s own walks around Oakland, than to productivity advice, so give each one some unhurried reading time.
A reading path
1. How to Do Nothing (2019)
2. Saving Time (2023)
Everything Else Jenny Odell Published
Beyond the 2 key books: 5 more, grouped by kind.
Open a group with the + to see every book in it.
Self-published artist’s books and catalogues
5
5 books · 2010–2015
- 2010Travel by Approximationa virtual road trip assembled from online images
- 2012I Hate to Part With Itfarewell notes from Craigslist sale listings
- 2013The Satellite Collectionscut-outs from Google satellite views
- 2015The Archive of the Bureau of Suspended Objectsobjects from her residency at the San Francisco dump
- 2015Satellite Landscapesmore of her satellite-image work
The years · 1986–2023
Quick facts about Jenny Odell
- Known for
- Arguing that attention and time have been turned into commodities, and that taking them back is a political act rather than a self-help project.
- 1986
- Born in San Francisco
- 2008
- Graduates from UC Berkeley
- 2023
- Saving Time
- Born
- 1986, San Francisco; grew up in Cupertino, California
- Lives
- Oakland, California
- Education
- BA in English, UC Berkeley (2008); MFA, San Francisco Art Institute (2010)
- Teaching
- Art at Stanford University, from 2013
- Residencies
- Recology SF (the San Francisco dump), the Internet Archive, the San Francisco Planning Department
- Recognition
- How to Do Nothing was one of Barack Obama’s favourite books of 2019
The red mark is 2019: How to Do Nothing, the book that turned an artist’s talk into a bestseller.
How Jenny Odell Writes: Looking Closely at What Is Already There
Odell works the way she makes art. Her visual projects reuse things that already exist, from Google satellite images to objects pulled out of the San Francisco dump, which she researched one by one for where they were made and how they were used. “I find existing things infinitely more interesting than anything I could possibly make,” she has said. The books do the same with ideas: she gathers material from art history, philosophy, labour history and ecology and arranges it around a single question.
Her arguments are rooted in one place. Oakland, its birds, its plants and its parks run through both books, and much of How to Do Nothing comes from her hours in the Rose Garden and birdwatching nearby. In Saving Time the Douglas iris, which, as she told PBS, “does not know what February is”, becomes a way of showing a kind of time that the calendar does not measure.
She is explicit that she is not writing self-help. Both books reject the idea that the answer is a better personal routine, and look instead at who profits from our attention and our hours, and at what collective, local alternatives might look like. That is why readers who come expecting a digital-detox manual often find something closer to political philosophy.
Watch
Jenny Odell on Saving Time
Odell presents Saving Time at a Long Now Foundation seminar, recorded at the SFJAZZ Center in San Francisco on 7 March 2023, the day the book was published.
Frequently asked questions about Jenny Odell’s books
How many books has Jenny Odell written?
Jenny Odell has written two books: How to Do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy (2019) and Saving Time: Discovering a Life Beyond the Clock (2023). Before them she self-published several small artist’s books, listed above.
What are Jenny Odell’s books in order?
How to Do Nothing (2019), then Saving Time (2023).
Where should I start with Jenny Odell?
With How to Do Nothing. It is her best-known book and sets out the ideas about attention that Saving Time later extends to time itself.
What is Jenny Odell’s most famous book?
How to Do Nothing (2019). It became a New York Times bestseller, was named a best book of the year by Time, The New Yorker and NPR, and was on Barack Obama’s list of favourite books of 2019.
What is How to Do Nothing about?
How to Do Nothing (2019) argues that our attention has become a commodity monetised by technology platforms, and makes the case for deliberately withdrawing it as a political and ecological act, not just a personal wellness practice. It draws on art, ecology and political theory rather than working as a conventional self-help book.
What is Saving Time about?
Saving Time (2023) looks at where our clock-based, “time is money” sense of time came from, arguing it was shaped by industrial work and profit, and sets it against other ways of experiencing time, from seasons and migrating birds to geological change.
Do you need to read How to Do Nothing before Saving Time?
No. Saving Time stands on its own, but it picks up the question How to Do Nothing leaves open, so reading them in order helps.
Where did How to Do Nothing come from?
In 2016 Odell spent time sitting in Oakland’s Rose Garden, unable to make art. She presented the ideas she developed there in a talk at the EYEO technology conference in 2017, posted it online, where it spread widely, and expanded it into the book.
Is Jenny Odell an artist or a writer?
Both. Jenny Odell is a multidisciplinary artist based in Oakland, California, who has been artist-in-residence at the San Francisco dump and the Internet Archive and has taught art at Stanford. Her books draw directly on that practice of close observation.
Did Barack Obama recommend How to Do Nothing?
Yes. How to Do Nothing was on Barack Obama’s list of favourite books of 2019.
Footnotes
- Jenny Odell — Wikipedia
- How to Do Nothing — Penguin Random House
- Saving Time — Penguin Random House
- GSD names Jenny Odell the 2020 Class Day speaker — Harvard GSD
- Jenny Odell’s new book ‘Saving Time’ — PBS NewsHour, 2023
- Saving Time: Discovering a Life Beyond the Clock — Long Now Foundation
Bibliography last verified 9 October 2026. Where sources give different first-publication years, this page uses the year in library catalogues or the publisher’s own record.
This list was not put together by a machine.
The notes are all mine,
and the books are all his.
Lisanne x
Written by Lisanne Swart, who has curated reading lists and author guides at lisanneswart.com since 2021.
See more on her personal bookshelf.
“I’m really obsessed with seeing something new that was right in front of you the whole time.”
— Jenny Odell, interview with Jeffrey Brown, PBS NewsHour (2023)
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