“In the best of times, our days are numbered anyway. So it would be a crime against nature for any generation to take the world crisis so solemnly that it put off enjoying those things for which we were designed in the first place: the opportunity to do good work, to enjoy friends, to fall in love, to hit a ball, and to bounce a baby.”

Alistair Cooke didn’t say much that wasn’t quite wise. These words, brought to me by my friend Dean Shareski, bring some comfort in the face of any madness that enters your working week.

But this week, I’ve been surrounded by amazing energy. Firstly, the energy of smart students, their parents and teachers in Bangkok. And then with 16 architects and educators in Sydney we facilitate as part of the legendary Mayfield Project. They’re tackling the question of how we know a learning space is successful.

In each scenario, creating strategy in Bangkok or a new perspective in learning space design in Sydney, the enthusiasm of each team risks being thwarted by the minority who say “I’m not really interested, thank you.”

Apathy and mediocrity is the greatest enemy of these teams’ greatness.

You know what it’s like: you think you’re onto something and the idea gets shut down before it’s started by the “yes, but…” brigade.

It’s normally done by someone with pads on their elbows, who at lunchtime does the crossword instead of talking to any colleagues, eats the same cheese savoury sandwich every day and never has much to contribute other than a tut. Let’s call him Bob. (All persons, living and dead, are purely coincidental, and should not be construed…).

The problem for many ideas is that, while they’re fascinating for the people who made them up, they’re barely on the horizon of those busy people whose attention we are trying to attract.

We have to communicate ideas with an assumption that the people around us are too busy to stop and listen.

Back to Alastair Cooke. Every Sunday lunchtime as a child, we’d sit eating and listening to Cooke’s Letter from America on the BBC*.*

The one that sticks most in my mind from some of the 2700 episodes I’ve heard, was the one about Reuben Mattus.

Mattus was a teenager when he emigrated to the US from Poland. He peddled the family’s ice cream until his late 40s, making a living, but little more.

Then he noticed something.

People like shiny and new things.

So he took the family’s ice-cream and came up with a new name: Häagen-Dazs was born, a name representing its Danish quality.

And yet, there is no umlaut in Danish. There is no such word as Häagen-Dazs.

But we don't have to reach very far to prove that his instinct was sound.

“The mystical belief in the superiority of Reuben Mattus's invention spread far and wide all across America onto Europe and Asia and by the time he was 71 he had hundreds of Häagen-Dazs franchise stores all around the globe. He sold the name and the product to a famous old American flour firm [for over $200m]).”

The team in Sydney this weekend have developed some incredible ideas that have the potential to change the profession of architects and educators involved in school design.

The biggest risk is that we’re all too busy to listen.

They’ll do their bit to Häagen-Dazs things - to make us sit up and value the insights they’ve gained with us this weekend.

But if we work in education, then surely we have to show up with an unrelenting curiosity, an unwavering unconditional positive regard for those who attempt to make our work a little better tomorrow than it is today.