James Hilton: What Could Possibly Go Wrong?

I’ve just done the career equivalent of jumping out of a perfectly good airplane. So I thought this month I would try to explain why and how, just in case anyone feels like doing it. And it begins with my half-baked theory that life runs in 20-year cycles.

The first 20-year cycle we can run over fairly quickly. For me, the initial 10 were largely spent learning how to pee without missing (still a bit touch-and-go that one, to be fair), playing with Star Wars figures and sellotaping electrical components together in the misguided thought that they would somehow work when plugged in to a household power socket. 

That nothing happened isn’t much of a shock, but the frustration of nothing happening continues to irk me to this day. Actually ‘nothing happened’ doesn’t take into account small house fires and personal electrocution, but they weren’t the intended results so I don’t count them.

The following 10 years were studiously spent being as miserable as possible listening to The Cure and Fields Of The Nephilim. Pass the flour will you? (You wont get that if you’re under 40. Or weren’t a Goth. Or had a life.) And while I never sat in trees (look it up, hilarious) I did like to sit in graveyards wondering why the conversation seemed to flow so much easier with very dead people. Moving on.

Then there was the whole college and uni thing, which wasn’t really my cup of tea, and can be summed up with the profound words of Special Agent Ben Harp of Point Break fame: “You know nothing. In fact you know less than nothing. If you knew that you knew nothing that would be something. But you don’t.”.

I hadn’t seen Point Break yet so I didn’t know I knew nothing, which was inconvenient. It does however go some way to explaining my enthusiasm for moving to London to help a guy called Ajaz Ahmed start a company called AKQA which would challenge the status quo of the entire advertising industry. I mean, what could possibly go wrong?

It would be fair to say that I learnt things of significantly more use in the next 20 years than I did in the preceding – I’m fairly sure this is a universal experience. In terms of ‘career’, it could be said that I had succeeded in achieving all that constitutes success – an amazing team of far cleverer people around me, an enviable client list, a beautiful body of work and a degree of notoriety. More importantly, I knew what I was doing.

Just to reassure any old clients reading this, I knew what I was doing at least eight or nine years ago too, before that though, the ratio of skill to blag does tend to even out a bit. Just being honest.

The point at which you know what you’re doing is a very important moment. You’ve reached enlightenment. You’re like Neo or Trinity and you can see the Matrix. “You mean I can dodge bullets?”, “No Neo, I’m telling you that when you’re ready, you won’t have too.” That’s just what it’s like, except with Photoshop and PowerPoint. And there’s no bullets flying around. Just plenty of shit.

So with all this experience (and dare I say the dirty word ‘comfort’?) in my chosen field the obvious thing to do was the very least convenient thing of all: leave and go and do something I knew almost nothing about. In the quiet words of Mother Theresa, “what the fuck?”

Assuming it takes about 10 years to become an expert (this is a hot topic of debate with some contending that it takes much longer – probably because it took them much longer) you then need to be able to enjoy being an expert – the Neo/Trinity thing – five years is a good time in which to do this as you ascend to the top of your particular tree.

In the final five years you’re still excited about what you do, but there is a nagging suspicion growing incrementally, almost imperceptibly, that there might be something else out there. Greater challenges. It doesn’t have a name, just a feeling. Sometimes it goes away for months only to spike up and confuse you with thoughts of ‘another way’. Frustratingly though, what this ‘other way’ is, is often elusive.

The tipping point for me came during a ‘spike’ about three years ago. I was frustrated, approaching 40, and I wanted to change, but into what? It was then I was asked the very simple, quietly brilliant question 'What do you want to be remembered for?'. I couldn’t answer it, but it triggered in me a multitude of other questions and it was in this idea soup that the following internal conversation took place:

Me 1: “I want to be a designer.”

Me 2: “What do you want to design?”

Me 1: “Whatever I feel is missing.”

Me 2: “You’ll need to be more specific.”

Me 1: “I don’t want to be specific, I want to create everything.”

Me 2: “That’s ridiculous.”

Me 1: “Why?”

Me 2: “Err… Because.”

Me 1: “Very convincing.”

The point is that we tell ourselves everyday what we can and can’t do. We tell ourselves what our limitations are. Sometimes, we’re told by others, but that’s usually because they have a vested interest in keeping us where we are. In the same way we build our own borders, we can also move them, or even dismantle them. Sure, you can build them some place new, but just recognise that they aren’t permanent structures.

It took three years for my ‘other way’ to present itself, and when it did the change was rapid. This is because I’ve come to know in myself ‘the feeling’. It’s something I’ve paid attention too over the years and honed, and (so far) it hasn’t let me down.

When it arrives it only means one thing: change. A decision has been made in my subconscious, usually an unbelievably inconvenient one, and all that remains is for me to act upon it. This will almost always involve upsetting someone, and far too many people use this as their reason not to push on and make the change. But it’s vital that you do. And it’s vital that you find and listen to that inner voice.

So how could I leave everything I knew to begin again, knowing so little? Was it really all done on ‘a feeling’? Well, yes. A bit. People can get obsessed with planning new ventures. Maybe it gives them confidence, maybe there is comfort in a plan, no matter how illusionary it actually is. I don’t know, because I’ve never really done it. I’ve always thought the best way to start anything is to have a general idea of where you want to end up, know enough to get you going, and find out the rest as you go.

Today, I find myself at the start of my third 20-year cycle, and as someone told me the other day I’m at ‘the idiot stage of genius’. It’s an unnerving yet exhilarating place to be, and the most potent thought I have in my head comes from the guy who taught me how to ride motorcycles, and his advice was this: "Ride like everyone wants you dead and don’t go anywhere your head wasn’t two seconds before".

This, I now believe, is the prime instruction for how you do something new, and this is how I was able to do what I did – I know where I want to get to, I work like everyone wants me to fail, and I plan one move ahead and no more.

It’s a scary place to be, but by that point I’m already too excited, and I’m 20 years old again moving to London thinking ‘what could possibly go wrong?’. As Hunter S Thompson said of riding bikes: “Faster, faster, until the thrill of speed overcomes the fear of death.”

James Hilton is co-founder and former CCO of AKQA, and founding partner of design company AtelierStrange.