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Zen master Dogen - perhaps "doing nothing's" greatest champion - once said that to study Zen is to study the self; to study the self is to forget the self; to forget the self is to become one with the ten thousand thing." Ms. Odell seems incapable of the second directive. So much of "doing nothing", of real retreat, is characterized not by a separation of ourselves from the red dust of the world but rather from our own mental patterning. While Ms' Odell's book has some very interesting and helpful passages on physical removal, the vast majority of its pages suffers from interminable leftist screeds and neo-Marxist platitudes that Odell seems incapable or unwilling to put down. She is able to drop her phone, but not the ideas that keep her equally enthralled. Doing nothing, for Odell, seems little more than a way to rally the one's mental energies so as to mount a quixotic challenge against the patriarchy and all of the oppressive "isms" that are keeping us from our post capitalistic utopia. For those truly interesting in learning how to do nothing, learn to pray, find a meditation teacher, or take a walk in the woods. Either will leave you recharged, open to new ideas, and feeling timeless and free. Sadly, Ms. Odell's book will leave you more tightly bound to the tyranny of our divisive age. The real practice of doing nothing is that of forgetting. It gives us the space to remember who we were before we knew.