Saving Time: Discovering a Life Beyond Productivity Culture

by Jenny Odell

Any consideration of leisure as a mindset—its definition, conditions, and purpose—is complicated by the history in the United States of the active destruction of anything and everything that many people have needed for wholeness, a sense of agency, and peace of mind. There are many people who, simply by walking down a street, whether public or private, are seen as “a threat to the design of the place” and for whom simply appearing in public at all is interpreted in some places as an invitation to violence. In 2021, a year that saw increased anti-Asian hate crimes, a Filipina American woman my mother’s age was brutally attacked in New York City by a man who said she didn’t belong here. I remember starting to see my mother’s movements through public space as newly restricted by potential threats.