I was once solemnly informed “We won’t get to Sustainability without Mindfulness.”

If you don’t know what Mindfulness is, it’s apparently “the intentional, accepting and non-judgemental focus of one’s attention on the emotions, thoughts and sensations occurring in the present moment.” And it’s all the rage.

My response to my pious friend was “Why not?”

He struggled to answer that one. Maybe I wasn’t being accepting enough.

And the more I think about it, the more I think he’s 100% wrong.

We cannot function as human beings if we have to be entirely conscious of everything we do – we’d spend all our time focussing on breathing and walking and sitting so much we’d never do anything else. If we require a conscious focus on every sustainability-related decision every day, it’ll never be fully integrated into our routines. You can only focus on one thing at a time.

Much better to take the sustainable option by default, by habit or because it’s the path of least resistance. We need to design our world so you don’t even have to think about sustainability – it just happens.

Frankly, I think we have to be more mindful of nonsensical pronouncements that aren’t properly thought through.