I was once very ambitious. I coupled it with orthodoxy in a highly noxious combination. In August 2007 I suddenly ran out of steam, and underwent a significant change in my view of the world. The chief symptom of this transformation was my complete abandonment of all ambition, at least as I had previously defined it. Like most architects I was educated according to the template of the mythical lone, heroic designer, and I had followed the template like a Good Boy.

I suddenly got sick of it all, and I remember that almost overnight, I stopped caring about many things that had previously concerned me a great deal. 

Reading Tom Hodgkinson’s ‘How to be Free’ was a catalytic moment. Hodgkinson explained how our society had changed, largely for the worse, from the mediaeval society that preceded it. He pointed out that the art of not caring - of being literally carefree - had been all but erased from the cultural mythology of the west, and that the mercantile, Puritan notions of the work ethic and miserly prosperity had screwed things up more than a little.

Anyway, I oversimplify, but what it boiled down to was that I suddenly had a different ambition, and that was to care as little as possible about what happened in the future, professionally speaking. Since then the future has never looked brighter, and I have realised a great truth: there are some things that really do matter, and a vastly greater number of things that do not matter at all.

Forget about those and concentrate on the former.