Intense attention can become immobilizing and bring one out of step with everyday life

Evidence

There is more than a touch of delirium in William Blake’s description when he invites us “[to] see a World in a Grain of Sand / And a Heaven in a Wild Flower / Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand And Eternity in an hour.” This way of looking, in which we are Alice and everything is a potential rabbit hole, is potentially immobilizing; at the very least, it brings us out of step with the everyday. — Jenny Odell, How to Do Nothing, 372

Categorization

Category: Contrarian or Surprising Claims

• XREF: This tempers Odell’s own advocacy: attention can paralyze, which circles the reader’s question of whether her method is capacious or evasive — she acknowledges the cost.