Jenny Odell

"What first appears to be a wish for more time may turn out to be just one part of a simple, yet vast, desire for autonomy, meaning, and purpose." -Jenny Odell Join us for an evening on long-term thinking with a talk & reading from Jenny Odell and conversation with Long Now's Executive Director Alexander Rose. Artist and writer Jenny Odell brings her acutely insightful observations to the dominant framework of time, based on industrial and colonial worldviews, that is embedded within our societies. Addressing the inability to reconcile the artificially constructed time pressures of modern culture with planetary-scale crisis, she offers a series of histories, concepts, and places as "provocations that can defamiliarize an old language of time, while pointing in the direction of something else." Odell's newest book is Saving Time: Discovering a Life Beyond the Clock (March 02023) and her first book is the widely-read How to Do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy (02019). Her visual work is exhibited internationally, and she's been artist in residence at Recology SF (the dump), the San Francisco Planning Department, the Internet Archive, and the Montalvo Arts Center. Previously, Odell taught digital art at Stanford University.

How we experience time is, ultimately, how we experience our lives. In this conversation with Jenny Odell, artist and author of Saving Time: Discovering a Life Beyond the Clock, she describes the social and cultural ideas that underpin our sense of standardized, mechanized time, which has laid an abstract grid over the living world. What choices, what futures, might become possible, she asks, if we allowed ourselves to slip free of the grip of linear, predictable chronos time and be swept into dynamic, interruptive kairos time?Read the transcript: https://emergencemagazine.org/interview/another-kind-of-time/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

📣 The Free Time podcast is nominated for a Webby Award, the "Oscars of the Internet!" Please visit http://itsfreetime.com/webby to cast your vote for Free Time between now and Thursday, April 20! This nomination alone is a major achievement, putting us in the top 12% of nearly 14,000 projects entered—thank you so much for being here and for your support!What if time wasn’t something we had to hoard, protect, or chase? What if we could change our relationship to time—to life itself—expanding beyond the linear, grid-like units running out as we race against the clock, and toward a true sense of aliveness instead?Today’s I’m trying an experimental format: diving deep into a book that relates to so much of what we talk about here, Jenny Odell’s Saving Time: Discovering a Life Beyond the Clock. I haven’t landed an interview with her (yet!), but I also really appreciated her previous book, How to do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy, so am happy to spotlight both.A few caveats: This is not a book review where I critically examine the content (here are two from The New Yorker and the NYT), nor a comprehensive summary. Instead, I’m bringing you three big ideas from the book related to our Free Time universe, that sparked aha moments and mindset shifts for me. I hope these inspire similar paradigm shifts for you. As always, my goal is to help set even more of your time freeeeeee!🌟 3 Key Takeaways: Notice the productivity paradigm that many of us are still operating under: seeing our days as a race against time, leading to an internal tyranny and guilt even if self-employed. Embrace the roads not taken: Step off the hedonic treadmill by allowing limits, and even deliberate mediocrity. Who gets to say what is mediocre in the first place? Cultivate abundance: “What if time [could] be gardened?” Jenny writes, “Then it's also possible to imagine its increase in ways other than individual hoarding.” 📝 Permission: To be tired in a good way, one that softens you; to be unproductive, to stop optimizing every micro moment of your day, to do less, to be free.✅ Do (or Delegate) This Next: Be an observer as you go about your week; look for people and places that give you time, that expand your sense of aliveness.🔗 Resources Mentioned Articles: The New Yorker—Why We Never Have Enough Time, NYT—Time Has Been Codified and Commoditized, WIRED—Jenny Odell Can Stretch Time and So Can You Community: BFF (apply promo code PODCAST) 📘Books Mentioned Saving Time: Discovering a Life Beyond the Clock by Jenny Odell How to do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy by Jenny Odell Free Time: Lose the Busywork, Love Your Business Pivot: The Only Move That Matters Is Your Next One 🎧Related Episodes Interviews with Jenny on Saving Time: Jenny Odell Saves Time, and Herself, by Living Beyond the Clock, Making Sense of Time (Jenny Odell), Jenny Odell on Saving Time: Discovering a Life Beyond the Clock Free Time: 141: Process, Permission Slips, and Business Pivots with Tara McMullin 027: Time Management for Mortals with Oliver Burkeman Pivot: 305: Is What You Are Wanting Actually What’s Best For You? With Luke Burgis 🌟 Enjoying the show? The best way to thank us is by leaving a rating or review »❤️ Join Jenny’s private BFF community for access to a monthly Q&A call, a private podcast feed with bonus content, and a community forum to exchange ideas and feedback with fellow Heart-Based Business owners.💌 Subscribe to the Time Well Spent newsletter: http://itsfreetime.com/join🛠 Get instant access to the Free Time Toolkit: http://itsfreetime.com/toolkit💬 I’d love to hear what’s on your mind! Take the Free Time listener survey☎️ Submit a voice question or comment for future episodes: http://itsfreetime.com/ask🎧 Make sure you’re subscribed wherever you listen to podcasts📝 Check out full show notes and share this episode with a friend: https://itsfreetime.com/episodes/178 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Do you ever feel like time is marching in a particular direction? Towards, say, rising global temperatures, mass extinctions, ever-increasing divisions — and ultimately, towards inevitable collapse? What if this particular perception of time contributes to our feelings of despair and hopelessness about our futures? What if it limits our ability to imagine and fight for a more just, equitable, and regenerative system? In this conversation, we’ve brought on Bay Area artist and author Jenny Odell to help us unpack and reimagine our experience of time and to foster hope and inspire action for a better future. We focus on insights and stories from Jenny’s two books, her 2019 New York Times Bestseller How to do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy and most recently, Saving Time: Discovering Life Beyond the Clock. In this conversation, we learn about the commodification and colonization of time under capitalism, how it happened, when it happened, and how the fungibility of time contributes to human and planetary suffering. We explore her unique reframe of classes to include those who time, those who are timed, and those who self-time. We also talk about a more ecological and place-based sense of time, a life beyond the clock, unbound from capitalism, that shows that neither our lives nor the life of our planet is a foregone conclusion, that we are not alone in our efforts to dismantle capitalism, and that the more-than-human world is actually an active participant in the endeavor — and here to help.  Thank you to Carolyn Raider for this episode’s cover art and to Bowerbirds for the intermission music. Upstream theme music was composed by Robert Raymond/Lanterns. Further Resources: Saving Time: Discovering Life Beyond the Clock, by Jenny Odell How to do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy, by Jenny Odell The Bureau of Suspended Objects Where Almost Everything I Used, Wore, Ate or Bought on Monday, April 1, 2013 (That Had a Label) Was Manufactured, to the Best of My Knowledge This episode of Upstream was made possible with support from listeners like you. Upstream is a labor of love — we couldn't keep this project going without the generosity of our listeners and fans. Please consider chipping in a one-time or recurring donation at www.upstreampodcast.org/support If your organization wants to sponsor one of our upcoming documentaries, we have a number of sponsorship packages available. Find out more at upstreampodcast.org/sponsorship For more from Upstream, visit www.upstreampodcast.org and follow us on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, and Bluesky. You can also subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts.  

Our conception of time is a construct, so why does it have so much power over us? Adam and author Jenny Odell delve into the history of "time" as we know it, and how the popular obsession with trying to make the most of every second is a losing battle. Pick up Jenny's book at factuallypod.com/books SUPPORT THE SHOW ON PATREON: https://www.patreon.com/adamconoverSEE ADAM ON TOUR: https://www.adamconover.net/tourdates/SUBSCRIBE to and RATE Factually! on:» Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/factually-with-adam-conover/id1463460577» Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/0fK8WJw4ffMc2NWydBlDyJAbout Headgum: Headgum is an LA & NY-based podcast network creating premium podcasts with the funniest, most engaging voices in comedy to achieve one goal: Making our audience and ourselves laugh. Listen to our shows at https://www.headgum.com.» SUBSCRIBE to Headgum: https://www.youtube.com/c/HeadGum?sub_confirmation=1» FOLLOW us on Twitter: http://twitter.com/headgum» FOLLOW us on Instagram: https://instagram.com/headgum/» FOLLOW us on TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@headgumSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Join Jenny Odell, a Stanford lecturer and author of *How to Do Nothing*, as she champions the art of embracing stillness in our hectic, productivity-driven lives. She delves into the joy of observing the world without an agenda, suggesting that true idleness can be a form of rebellion. Odell highlights the significance of engaging with nature and discusses how letting go of constant busyness can lead to deeper understanding and connection. Her insights reveal that moments of existential despair might actually pave the way for profound personal growth.

Today, we’re joined by writer and artist Jenny Odell! At the top, we discuss the recent legislation regulating social media in Utah (4:02), how these platforms affect our perception of daily life (5:20), and the relationship between time and power Odell unpacks in her first book, How to Do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy (6:41). Then, we talk about ‘productivity bros’ (13:05), our culture of self-optimization (16:35), and the social inequities that shape our relationships to time (20:31). On the back-half, we walk through Odell’s tools to help experience time (34:47), a historic picture of today’s home office (38:22), the systemic reform she hopes to see in the US (42:15), and to close, the ways she’s grown since completing hew new book Saving Time: Discovering a Life Beyond the Clock (49:30).See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Jenny Odell, a multidisciplinary artist, discusses breaking from the attention economy to feel fully alive. She shares stories of encounters with nature, valuing creativity over productivity, being less useful to survive, the real reason for art and rest, and staying human in a world that wants us to become machines.

In this engaging conversation, Jenny Odell, an author and artist renowned for her book 'Saving Time', challenges conventional views of time. She explores the contrast between mechanical Kronos time and qualitative Kairos time, urging listeners to embrace nature's interruptions. Odell discusses the significance of seasonal changes, connecting them to climate justice and personal well-being. Through her insights, she invites us to redefine our relationship with time, highlighting the beauty of living in sync with the natural world and the possibilities that arise from a more mindful existence.

Jenny Odell, a writer and artist celebrated for her books "How to Do Nothing" and "Saving Time," dives deep into our fraught relationship with time and productivity. She discusses the emotional complexity of climate grief and how it intersects with our daily lives. Odell emphasizes the power of stillness and interconnectedness, exploring how moments of forced relaxation can reshape our perception of time. She intriguingly frames burnout as a spiritual issue and highlights how love can transcend linear time, inviting listeners to embrace a more profound, shared existence.