Attention withdrawal must be ongoing training, not a one-time act

Evidence

Civil disobedience in the attention economy means withdrawing attention. But doing that by loudly quitting Facebook and then tweeting about it is the same mistake as thinking that the imaginary Pera is a real island that we can reach by boat. A real withdrawal of attention happens first and foremost in the mind. What is needed, then, is not a “once-and-for-all” type of quitting but ongoing training: the ability not just to withdraw attention, but to invest it somewhere else, to enlarge and proliferate it, to improve its acuity. — Jenny Odell, How to Do Nothing, 343

Categorization

• DEFINE: Core definition of ‘withdrawing attention’ as ongoing practice, not a single quitting event — central to the reader’s defense against the ‘she’s recommending withdrawal’ misreading.
• XREF: Connects to the reader’s critique that Odell’s remedy requires ongoing practice rather than a clean exit — echoes the ‘third space’ and day-to-day attention-as-labor themes from earlier chapters.