Life’s meaning depends on the off time productivity eliminates.

Evidence

We submit our free time to numerical evaluation, interact with algorithmic versions of each other, and build and maintain personal brands. For some, there may be a kind of engineer’s satisfaction in the streamlining and networking of our entire lived experience. And yet a certain nervous feeling, of being overstimulated and unable to sustain a train of thought, lingers. Though it can be hard to grasp before it disappears behind the screen of distraction, this feeling is in fact urgent. We still recognize that much of what gives one’s life meaning stems from accidents, interruptions, and serendipitous encounters: the “off time” that a mechanistic view of experience seeks to eliminate. — Jenny Odell, How to Do Nothing, 6

Categorization

• QUESTION: Claims a shared ‘we still recognize’ about accidental meaning — worth checking whether this is universal or class/privilege-specific.
• XREF: connects to: How we live is equivalent to how we spend our time. — Hartmut Rosa, Social Acceleration: A New Theory of…, 47