How to Stop Doomscrolling: What “How to Do Nothing” Taught Me

How to Stop Doomscrolling: What How to Do Nothing Taught Me

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I picked up How to Do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy by Jenny Odell because I’ve been trying to build a low-scroll life. I feel myself losing more and more time to scrolling, I feel like my passion for things has been fading, and that’s starting to feel like something I need to address (probably for months now but I can’t change the past). Not in a “delete every app and go off-grid” way, more like… I want to feel like I’m actually living my days, working towards something, instead of just getting through them with quick hits of dopamine.

I thought I was signing up for a book that would give me tips to reduce screen time and focus on the long-term goals. I had read Atomic Habits by James Clear last year which I definitely enjoyed and I thought this was the “how to stop scrolling” version. What I got instead was something way more honest (and a little more unsettling): doomscrolling isn’t just a personal habit, it’s a system. And if you want to stop, it’s not only about willpower. It’s about learning how to reclaim your attention on purpose.

This post is my takeaways and my own analysis after finishing the book, especially for anyone who wants to scroll less but still live in the real world.

The problem isn’t your phone. It’s the business model.

One thing I really appreciated about How to Do Nothing is that it doesn’t do the easy “phone bad” argument. Because I don’t actually believe the internet is evil. If anything, I’ve always been a little too aware of how powerful it is, and that’s partly because I literally studied it.

I’ve always had this internal morality battle: I’m not just a consumer, I’m someone who graduated with a B.S. in Digital Audiences, basically the study of how people behave online. So I’ve never been under the illusion that the internet is neutral. It’s an insanely powerful, accessible tool, and like anything powerful, it can be used for real good, and it can be used in ways that don’t feel so good.

I’ve always found social media fascinating, too, especially because I’m also a psychology person. I thought learning the psychology behind the “digital audience” and making a career out of that would be fun. And in some ways, it is. But I had this moment of realization that a lot of that psychology isn’t just used to understand people, it’s used to influence them. Marketing tactics can feel not so good when it’s manipulation. Even when it’s not intentionally harmful, it can still be designed to move you, shape you, and keep you paying attention.

And here’s where it gets complicated for me, because I also want to be a creator. I want to make work that means something, and I’d love for it to support my life one day. But I don’t want to feed the parts of the internet that profit from insecurity and constant consumption. Is that even possible? Maybe that’s the philosophical moment. But it’s something I’ve been thinking about a lot lately.

That’s why this book hit for me. Odell doesn’t say the villain is the internet or even social media as a concept. She says the problem is the invasive logic of commercial social media, the business model underneath it. The kind that makes money when you’re stuck in a profitable emotional state: anxious, envious, distracted, always looking, always consuming, always slightly unsatisfied.

Honestly, that framing made me feel less like I’m fighting a personal flaw and more like I’m trying to protect my brain from something that was built to hijack it. So when I say I’m trying to stop doomscrolling, I’m not saying I’m quitting the internet. I’m saying I’m trying to stop donating my attention to systems designed to extract it, because I want my life to feel like it belongs to me again.

You can literally see the business model evolving in real time.

Something I keep thinking about is how social media “success” has shifted since this book came out. For a long time the vibe was picture-perfect: curated feeds, aesthetic everything, looking like you had your life together 24/7. And now it’s swung hard in the other direction, raw, behind-the-scenes, “close friends” energy, messy kitchen counters, unedited thoughts, voiceovers recorded in the car, “come with me while I…” content.

At first glance it feels like a healthier era. Like we’re finally craving real life again.

But the more I think about it (and the more this book sits with me), the more I wonder if it’s less of a cultural awakening and more of a platform adaptation.

Because the business model didn’t change. It still needs our attention. So the style shifted to whatever keeps us watching now. And right now, what keeps people watching is intimacy. Relatability. The feeling of being “in” on someone’s real life. That close-friends vibe is addictive in a different way: it feels like connection, but it still keeps you in the loop, still keeps you checking, still makes you feel like if you leave for too long you’ll miss something.

And I’m not saying raw content is bad. I actually love it. I want to make content that feels more like that too. But it’s interesting to realize that even the “realness” trend can become a product. Even authenticity can be optimized. Even behind-the-scenes can turn into another kind of performance.

Which brings me back to the point Odell makes: the problem isn’t the internet, it’s the incentive system underneath it. The aesthetic can change every year, but the goal stays the same, keep you engaged, keep you consuming, keep you emotionally activated.

So for me, this isn’t just about switching from curated content to raw content. It’s about asking a harder question: am I using social media as a tool, or is it using me?

“Doing nothing” isn’t laziness. It’s refusal.

Odell’s definition of “doing nothing” is not about leisure, relaxation, or escaping responsibilities. It’s not romanticizing being unproductive. It’s about refusing to be defined by productivity.

That line hit me because productivity culture doesn’t just tell you to work hard. It tells you that your worth is tied to output. And now, with social media, that pressure sneaks into everything: hobbies, routines, vacations, even self-care. You can feel like you’re “falling behind” even when you’re resting.

So “doing nothing,” in this context, becomes a reclaiming move. It’s saying “I don’t exist to be optimized”. My time doesn’t need to be justified. I don’t have to turn every interest into content. I’m allowed to live a life that isn’t constantly “useful”. The story of the "Useless Tree" from the Daoist sage Zhuangzi also sent me into a hours long rabbit-hole search of Daoism and ended with me adding The Alchemist to my TBR.

The book isn’t just about disengaging. It’s about re-engaging.

Here’s what I didn’t expect: How to Do Nothing isn’t mainly a “quit social media” book. It’s more like a two-step:

First, disengage from the attention economy.
Then, re-engage with the world in a deeper way.

Odell talks about placefulness, being sensitive and responsible to the place you’re in: its history, its ecology, and what’s actually happening around you.

This is where the book got weirdly personal for me, because I realized I already know what this feels like. Whenever I travel, I love going to museums alone. It’s quiet, it’s slow, and observing is literally the point. You’re allowed to just look, think, wander. There’s no pressure to perform.

It made me realize how rare that feels in daily life, to be somewhere where you can exist without producing anything. And it made me want to build more of that into my normal routine, not just on vacations.

Doomscrolling makes life feel thin, and here’s why.

There’s a metaphor in the book that I can’t stop thinking about: the idea that when everything has to “produce,” the mind becomes like a monoculture farm. When your attention is only directed toward what is fast, clickable, and profitable, the landscape of your thoughts starts to flatten. You don’t get depth. You get volume.

You can consume a thousand tiny pieces of content and still feel like you have nothing to say.

The book talks about how we’re surrounded by an insane quantity of words and images, and what we actually need are gaps: silence, solitude, boredom, time without input. Not as punishment. As a requirement. Because you need space to notice what you actually think, what you actually want, and what you actually care about.

And doomscrolling kills that space.

The self is not a personal brand.

This part felt especially relevant to me as someone who wants to create more online, but doesn’t want my life to feel performative.

Odell argues for a view of identity that is basically the opposite of a personal brand: the self is unstable and shapeshifting, shaped by interactions, relationships, and the places you move through.

That idea felt like permission. Online, it can feel like you have to become a recognizable pattern: consistent opinions, consistent aesthetic, consistent tone, consistent identity. Like you have to turn “yourself” into something marketable.

But real life doesn’t work like that. You’re allowed to change. You’re allowed to be inconsistent. You’re allowed to be a person.

And honestly, doomscrolling and personal brand culture are connected. When you’re constantly watching other people perform their lives, it’s easy to start feeling like you’re failing at your own.

Attention is political (and ecological), not just personal.

This is the part that took the book from “self-improvement” to something bigger.

Odell argues that attention isn’t just an individual choice. It shapes what we can even see. And if you can’t pay attention, it becomes easier for the world to quietly fall apart in the background. She asks what it means to build digital worlds while the actual world is crumbling. Um, holy shit? Crisis?

That question is heavy, but it landed for me. Because doomscrolling doesn’t just steal time, it steals noticing. It trains you to live in reaction mode. It pulls you away from your own community, your own body, your own place, your own life.

And I don’t want to live like that!

My honest review

This book is dense in parts. It’s philosophical, and it expects you to slow down. It’s not the kind of book you can speedrun while half-paying attention, which is funny, because that’s exactly what it’s trying to undo.

If you want quick hacks, you might not love it.

But if you’ve ever felt like your attention isn’t yours anymore, if you’re craving depth, slowness, and a life that feels like it has texture again, How to Do Nothing is worth reading.

My biggest takeaway is this: the goal isn’t to disappear from the world. The goal is to come back to it, on purpose.

If you’re trying to scroll less too, I’d love to know what’s been working for you :)