Jenny Odell Books
Jenny Odell is an American artist and writer based in Oakland, California. Her work examines the intersections of technology, ecology, and attention.
Known for: Saving Time: Discovering a Life Beyond the Clock
Books by Jenny Odell
Saving Time: Discovering a Life Beyond the Clock
In Saving Time, Jenny Odell asks a radical question hidden inside an ordinary phrase: what are we really trying to save when we say we want to save time? Her answer unfolds into a powerful critique of modern life. Odell shows how the clock, the calendar, and the demand for constant productivity have trained us to experience time as scarce, measurable, and marketable. Instead of living within seasons, relationships, care, and attention, many of us live under deadlines, notifications, and the pressure to optimize every hour. The result is not freedom, but exhaustion and alienation. Drawing on history, philosophy, ecology, labor politics, and personal reflection, Odell reveals that our current sense of time is neither natural nor inevitable. It was built through industrialization, capitalism, colonialism, and technological systems that reward speed and efficiency above all else. As an artist and author known for her work on attention, she brings a rare mix of intellectual depth and human sensitivity to the subject. This book matters because it offers more than critique: it helps readers imagine a fuller way of living, one rooted in presence, interdependence, and shared temporal dignity.
Read SummaryKey Insights from Jenny Odell
How Clock Time Was Invented
What feels natural is often historical. One of Odell’s most important insights is that our modern experience of time as a uniform sequence of measurable units did not simply emerge from reality itself; it was constructed over centuries. For much of human history, people lived by cyclical and event-b...
From Saving Time: Discovering a Life Beyond the Clock
Colonialism Imposed a Different Time
To control people, you often have to control their time. Odell expands the history of time beyond Europe and industry by showing how standardized, capitalist time spread through colonial power. Colonization did not only seize land and labor; it also disrupted temporal worlds. Many Indigenous culture...
From Saving Time: Discovering a Life Beyond the Clock
The Earth Keeps Another Calendar
The planet does not move at the speed of the inbox. Odell invites readers to step outside the narrow urgency of human scheduling and encounter ecological and planetary time. Seasons, tides, migrations, forest succession, drought cycles, coral growth, and geological change all unfold on timescales fa...
From Saving Time: Discovering a Life Beyond the Clock
People Live in Different Temporal Worlds
There is no single human experience of time. Odell challenges the assumption that everyone moves through life according to the same pace, milestones, and expectations. In reality, personal and social temporalities vary dramatically. A child, a caregiver, a night-shift worker, a person living with ch...
From Saving Time: Discovering a Life Beyond the Clock
Technology Speeds Us Without Freeing Us
If technology keeps saving time, why do so many people feel they have less of it? Odell examines the paradox of technological mediation: tools designed to increase efficiency often deepen our sense of acceleration and fragmentation. Email, calendars, messaging apps, productivity software, and algori...
From Saving Time: Discovering a Life Beyond the Clock
Other Ways of Keeping Time
A different life requires different clocks. After exposing the limits of industrial and capitalist time, Odell explores alternative temporal frameworks that have existed across cultures, philosophies, and practices. Some traditions emphasize cyclical time rather than linear progress. Others center s...
From Saving Time: Discovering a Life Beyond the Clock
About Jenny Odell
Jenny Odell is an American artist and writer based in Oakland, California. Her work examines the intersections of technology, ecology, and attention. She is also the author of the acclaimed book 'How to Do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy'.
Frequently Asked Questions
Jenny Odell is an American artist and writer based in Oakland, California. Her work examines the intersections of technology, ecology, and attention.
Read Jenny Odell's books in 15 minutes
Get AI-powered summaries with key insights from 1 book by Jenny Odell.