We try to keep up by obsessing about productivity and speed, but it makes us lose sight of the bigger picture. The economy of the 21st-century feeds off our attention the same way the 20th-century economy fed off natural resources and cheap labor. It scrolls in front of our eyes in the form of messages, advertising, notifications, reminders, emails, and pop-ups. So much of it, it became stripped of all meaning and became merely data. Show me anything that can help me make sense of it all, or at least sense of me-books like Atomic Habits by James Clear, or Deep Work by Cal Newport, or Flow by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi-and I am hooked. Besides, I am a sucker for good self-help books, always visiting that section of the bookstore, digging for nuggets of understanding.

So why are we so miserable? This manifesto helps us break free of our unhealthy devotion to efficiency and shows us how to reclaim our time and humanity with a little more leisure. We work feverishly to make ourselves happy. I ended up settling for a kindle version (I have a habit of highlighting and taking notes when reading non-fiction), but it was the blurb on the back cover that caught my attention: I found Do Nothing, while just-browsing in my favorite Berlin bookstore.

And it inspired a month of self-experimentation, so all in all, I think you should give it a read. Second, it somehow proved a highly engaging read anyway. First of all, this book isn’t about what it says it is.

Celeste do nothing