The institutions and practices of a society often do things we can't see or think through

I'm working on the third 12-Minute Method book at the moment. It's due out in the next few weeks. For those who don't know, these books emerged when I started to think about the first three years of my blog. I realised I could share them in book form and then, when challenged by my friend Steve, I realised that actually, miraculously, they were books about something.

Three years, 12-minutes a week. 80,000 words. And, accidentally, I had written a series of books about the creative process. And one of the things that is magical for me about putting them into books is seeing the patterns that emerge. The third book - How to Create the Conditions for Great Work - is in some ways the most interesting in this respect. As I pulled it together I looked at the habits, mindsets and relationship skills that I learned over those three years, which have enabled me to do more of my best work now than ever before.

One of the things that stands out are the people who influenced me - almost impossible to ignore as their names and ideas crop up again and again. One of those, in the three years from which those four books emerged is Jordan Peterson. And whilst there are valid questions to raise about some of his more recent work, it's undoubted that his second book, 12 Rules for Life, had a profound effect on me and many others.

His third, Beyond Order, had less of an impact on me. Not that I didn't value reading it. Simply that fewer ideas from it stayed with me in the years following. Perhaps that's no surprise - it is even subtitled '12 More Rules for Life', and as my brother and I joked, that's a bit like Oasis's third album. Some of the songs on it had been knocking around from before their first, but hadn't made it on there because... they weren't as good. And no matter how much I love the pre-chorus of All Around the World, it's no Live Forever.

But in Beyond Order, one idea that has stayed with me is something like this: the best time to break a rule is when breaking the rule is more in the spirit of the rule than sticking to it. Love the rule. Know why it was there. Understand its spirit. Then, if you believe it's better to break the rule than stick to the rule, break it.

Peterson demonstrates this with a Harry Potter story - at the end of several of the books, Harry and his friends are deducted house points for breaking a rule (say, being out of bed at night) before being awarded FAR MORE points for saving the world from Voldemort (the spirit of the rule being keeping everyone safe). Professor Dumbledore gets it.

In some ways this reflects one of the most startling realisations of my life: that political conservatives had interesting things to say. I lived the first 27 or so years basically thinking they were all just selfish people who were out for themselves. And then, through various steps, I saw that actually, they were good people who just saw things differently to me. And that helped me see things differently and move - I hope - to a more balanced and accurate picture of the world.

One of the key ideas of conservatism echoes Peterson's idea about rules. Essentially: err on the side of caution. Protect things for future generations. And, really understand something before you destroy it.

That's doubly important in the complexity of the modern world. When we change things there are always consequences that we couldn't have imagined. That's pretty much the definition of complexity. So before we tear something down, love it. Understand it. Look for all its purposes. Undestand its spirit.

And then, if we're sensible, if we can, experiment at the edges with taking it down. Don't just destroy it.

In modern society, many of the things we do look absurd from a rational point of view. Football is great example. Twenty-two men kicking a spherical plastic bag around a field. And yet it is clearly meaningful to millions, me included. If we took it away, what would happen? Who knows?

Something big changed yesterday in the UK. A constant of decades - a constant of many people's whole lives - changed. An era shifted. We don't really know what the consequences will be yet. Maybe nothing. Probably something.

But these things that have been around a long time. The institutions and practices, particularly, although also the people. They often do things that we can't see or think through. We can't analyse. And these things have a profound effect on us, on our societies, on the world.

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This is the latest in a series of articles written using?the 12-Minute Method: write for twelve minutes, proof read once with tiny edits and then post online.?Read the archive of articles written using the 12-Minute Method here.

The first two 12-Minute Method books are out now - find out more here.

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