Week 13
This week’s assignment asked me to fight against distraction by attempting to do nothing, first for 8 minutes, then 16, then finally32. At first “nothing” seemed very simple. But once I sat down to try it, I realized how not super easy the concept really is. Sleeping, eating, scrolling on tik tok or even daydreaming, all of these are something. Doing nothing meant resisting the urge to fill the silence, to reach for my phone, or to mentally over think. I already deal with anxiety and depression. Keeping myself busy is my way to stop over thinking everything. So this was super hard for me.
The Process:
• 8 minutes: This felt manageable ish, though I caught myself thinking what I could be doing instead. My mind wandered toward tasks I hadn’t finished, and I had to remind myself that the point was not productivity. The point was literally nothing.
• 16 minutes: Here, the challenge deepened. I noticed how uncomfortable I was with stillness. My body wanted to fidget, and my brain wanted stimulation.
• 32 minutes: This was the hardest. I felt restless, but eventually something shifted. The longer I sat, the more I noticed little details like the noise of the fan blowing, the way light moved across the wall, the rhythm of my own breathing. What had felt like “nothing” began to reveal itself as a layered/detailed experience. This exercise taught me that “nothing” is not empty. It is full of overlooked noises, sensations, and thoughts that surface only when distraction is stripped away. My limits were the impatience, and the discomfort. Pushing past them opened a space where I could simply just exist.
In the assigned text, Odell writes about resisting the attention economy and reclaiming time as our own. She suggests that stepping outside the cycle of productivity and distraction allows us to notice the world differently. My experience did relate to her ideas, doing nothing was not passive, but active resistance against the pull of constant stimulation. It was a reminder that attention is a resource, and choosing to direct it toward stillness is a radical act.
