***• This book by Johann Hari has helpd me find my stolen focus***

by

Peyton Lieser

When I walk around the city of Sydney what do I notice? Is it tall buildings, cars rushing by, people, people talking? Would I know the answer to my question?

***• Me, putting the Sydney Opera House into perspective***

How about you, wherever you are?

Or, like me, were you on your phone, too busy to notice because you were checking your never-ending notifications? If you cannot admit it that is okay, I’m like you. Most of us, wherever we are, fall into the continuous loop of doom scrolling or constantly checking our phone and most often being distracted from the life in front of us.

What’s this question got to do with Michael Mobbs and Sustainable House who I’m interning with, or ‘sustainable’ living?

Asking this connects all of us in a weird way and is specific to you and everyone else reading this this second. I am finishing up my work as an intern for Michael and also being a student at The University of Sydney. Here, a long way from home in the United States, I was struggling during my internship to balance everything in my life - my classes, the workload, my personal life.

***• Getting out into the Australian bush, and getting into thinking about focussing, too***

In the internship Michael handed me a book and said “Just read it, trust me” so I did. Now I would say the same thing to someone who was struggling with the same things I was.

This book published in 2022 connected to everything in my life and changed how I see myself. It was “Stolen Focus; Why You Can’t Pay Attention” by Johann Hari.

I’m not writing here about any faith, a place to belong or something to believe in.

A poll was created to collect data and opinions from the public about what they felt was making their attention worse and why they believed that was happening.

The number one result was not their phones but stress! This was chosen by 48% of the public, the second was a life-changing circumstance, the third was trouble sleeping, and phones were fourth (Hari, 165).

What do you think is the cause of your attention, to get worse? I would say stress as well till I heard that stress isn’t something imposed on us. We impose stress on ourselves (Hari, 144). As a college student, and just being a human getting by, I impose way more stress on myself than I need to or should do. When I have a deadline on a project or paper, I find myself doing anything but starting that project or paper. Mostly putting things off sees me doom scrolling on my phone. Because of this, my stress levels increase even more than they were before because I am just wasting my time on my phone and reducing the time I had to do my uni or other work or actions.

Early in the book, Hari gives strategies on how to cope with stress like this in a healthy way, the answer to this is slow practices. Slow practices are things everyone can do such as reading a book, doing yoga, meditation practices, and going outside to take a breath of fresh air (Hari, 33). This immediately made me think of what Michael said to me at the beginning of this internship and how gardening is his favorite way to escape reality and connect with nature while being free of all outside factors that would stress him out and this is exactly what he told me to do as well. Just small, simple tasks like these are easy phone time replacers that are beneficial to your brain and focus. Once I implemented these practices I realised how dependent I am on checking my phone constantly.

I accept I’m responsible for recovering my focus.

But there are, Hari shows, dark forces stealing our focus, particulalry what is called, ‘surveillance capitalism’. This widely-used business model tracks you and I online to figure out our weaknesses. Then the data trackers sell your private data to the highest bidder so they can change your behaviour and sell you stuff.

Hari’s solution would be to require Facebook, etc to require subscribers to pay, say, a 50c subscription so Facebook and others would be working for we citizens, not advertisers.

Students are extremely affected by the unbalanced life between classes, workload, stress, and time to decompress, destress, and connect with themselves and the world around them without technology getting in the way.

Stress is especially important to avoid in young students, so they can identify the cycle before it's too late.

It is said that only 10% of children spend time playing outside during their free time (Hari, 234). This is becoming limited due to technology and the amount of time spent on homework due to the lack of focus. It is said that it is important to have children learn through play, but schools are making a terrible mistake by having children locked in classrooms learning on a screen.

A few schools have actively tried to identify this problem and by doing so they would send children home with a homework assignment to go home and do something new independently (Hari, 244). This is so incredibly important to have kids try something new and learn how to do it on their own and to not be told what to do and how to do it constantly. Because of this, parents are now realizing that their children are becoming more confined at school and home. Before all this technology kids were just allowed to learn and play outside but now it is becoming all online which is dangerous to see. This is also why there is an increase in loss of focus and diagnoses of learning disabilities in children from an early age.

This is one of the many priorities that Michael has with his mission to implement more sustainability within the local community. Through the company he created to make, use in his community, and to sell - Coolseats - they are much more than just an efficient way to compost, garden, and help the environment.

Coolseats are also a wonderful way for kids to implement what they are learning in the classroom such as the water cycle, decomposers, and photosynthesis outside of the classroom independently. If schools began using equipment like Coolseats to educate children with real-life skills outside the classroom that allow them to connect with nature and being outside, work independently, and limit time spent inside using technology there would be an increase in the level of focus seen in children in and outside the classroom.

I’m not the only student needing to chill, read a book or go gardening. According to an article by Rose Horowitch in The Atlantic even “elite” students don’t – some can’t - read books: “Many students no longer arrive at college—even at highly selective, elite colleges—prepared to read books.”

Being able to read and reflect on real-world problems like these while connecting it to my degree of study has been so empowering. I have learned so much about composting and its benefits to the community and the environment around us. Having experience working with a small local sustainable business gave me more experience than I could imagine. I learned how to work with other companies, schools, and cafes, I sent professional emails to people who were key to the projects, gave pitches to local communities and businesses, helped educate students about sustainability, and most importantly I got to do what I loved, working outside and connecting with nature! I am glad this internship taught me life skills, and future job skills while having the opportunity to grow my voice and knowledge in my field of sustainability and inspiring others while giving back to the community around me.

Please go outside today, most days, and do something for yourself, your community, or our planet Earth. It and us may be the only ones in the billions of other planets and solar systems in our galaxy; imagine that.

Get off your phone. Look across the room – are people sitting together, not talking but tapping their phones, galaxies away from each other? Choose another way of being.

Appreciate the magic of breathing in and out, walking or swimming or being still in the day. Breath out. In.

Peyton Lieser

Intern with Sustainable House, December 2024