Momentary Design Minds, Mendel and Mathematics
I want you to PAUSE for a moment and ask:
How many different places did your mind go to during the past one minute?
How many moments were you actually aware of and how many were on auto-pilot?
Can you dissect that one minute and identify how many times you intentionally chose which mind to inhabit next?
Let me take a guess at your answers to these questions.
My mind wandered to many, many different places, most of which I can’t even recall only a minute later. Autopilot was the default setting. Perhaps one or two seconds of that minute involved conscious “mind choosing”.
Am I close?
So, why does this matter?
Momentary Design Minds
Every second – every moment - of our design process is a “cause-and-effect” engine. Each “momentary design mind” is the EFFECT of a previous design mind and the CAUSE of the next design mind.
In the absence of capturing and controlling these momentary design minds (our default!) we are at the mercy of distractions and well-traveled mental roads that don’t take us to a good place and time slips away. I'm sure you can relate?
However, when we are able to harness more of these momentary design minds we occupy the driver’s seat. Indeed, exercising agency to change just ONE momentary design mind has the power to switch the trajectory of the entire design process, opening up creative paths that otherwise would have remained unseen.
Momentary design minds encompass meta-aware understanding of the mind that just came before, the mind it led to that you currently inhabit, and conscious action on what mind to embrace next.
What does such a firm grasp on momentary design minds look like in practice?
A monk and his pea plants
Let’s make a visit to the 19th century, quiet monastic garden in Brno, Germany. Thousands of pea plants fill this garden. Puttering about in the garden is Gregor Mendel, a Catholic monk and biologist, later given the honorific “Father of Genetics”.
With painstaking care Mendel uses a paintbrush to transfer tiny pollen from one pea plant to another…one plant to another…and another. He is seeking the answer to how the traits in one generation of plants can disappear from the next generation but then reappear in the one after that.
Can you imagine the tedium – over seven years - of this process?
Imagine Mendel, with tired eyes and fingers but passionate attention, consciously slowing down time and choosing each momentary mind to connect with his larger intention of elucidating, in his view, God’s mysteries through his pea plants. Whenever those eyes and fingers were about to falter he was able to take charge of the next momentary mind and return to his mission. How else could he have accomplished so much in such little time?
How will your design process change with a Mendel kind of meta-awareness fully engaged? Good, old, brilliant Calculus can be our friend here!
Definite Integrals: Area under the design curve
Do you still have a dusty Calculus textbook on your bookshelf? You can probably recall those not so fun times calculating "definite integrals" - the area under a curve? I was a Math and Physics major in college and was absolutely fascinated by this powerful tool for quantifying accumulated change.
Here’s a very simple way to understand it. With one rectangle placed inside the curve a very crude estimate of its area can be calculated. As more, narrower, rectangles are placed under the curve, the sum of their areas gets you closer to the actual area under the curve. As we move towards an infinite number of rectangles (the limit) we finally obtain the right number!
So what does that have to do with your design process?
Here are two graphs of two scenarios with x axis representing your design process over time and y-axis representing flow in your design process.
Designing as usual: Chunky design minds
Look at the area under the curve here in the first graph. In the absence of momentary design minds many seconds – many minutes! – can go by with no intentional decision-making. Instead, routinized, auto-pilot mental actions are the rule.
This is a REACTIVE DESIGN PROCESS.
As a result, your design area under the curve is dominated by what I call “chunky design minds” that result in large “insight gaps”. Lots of potential flow is lost, and more effort is needed to keep your larger design intention fully on track.
Designing as a Contemplative Designer : Momentary design minds
Now take a look at the area under the curve in the second graph. If we as architects and designers can train ourselves – like Mendel - to recognize and consciously choose each mind to inhabit, moment by moment, we can better occupy a flow state throughout the design process, reducing "insight gaps" while building, metaphorical brick by brick, the steps required to achieve our larger intention for design!
This is a CREATIVE DESIGN PROCESS.
Every momentary design mind is a path that is taking us somewhere. So how do we learn to seize our creative agency to direct the paths to a place where we want to go to?
The Plan of Action
Here are some steps to practice exercising creative agency over “momentary design minds” in your design process. I suggest starting small, choosing a couple times in your design day to do the following:
PAUSE (like Mendel) while zooming in and out of your Revit model or when you are stressed before a client presentation or when emailing the contractor about construction detailing going awry on the site.
DISSECT the immediate past minds you inhabited by asking similar questions that I asked at the beginning.
ACKNOWLEDGE how many moments were subsumed within “insight gaps” versus how many you consciously observed and used as a springboard to a next actively chosen mind.
CHOOSE your next momentary design mind in alignment with your larger intention for design.
ACT, however small, take a breath and reflect.
CHOOSE AGAIN using the experience of the previous design mind to help you in this decision-making moment.
As you gain familiarity you can go through these steps more and more during each design session, and it will get easier and easier. This will give you authentic confidence in your daily design processes.
Ultimately, the goal is for the area under your design curve to look more like graph 2 than graph 1, and for this to happen more and more organically. You will be in flow more of the time and your design practice will reap amazing benefits!
Practice this today just for a few moments at different times during your design practice and let me know how it goes. I would LOVE to hear from you!
Email me at sarika@contemplativedesigner.com !
with gratitude,
Sarika Bajoria
Founder, Contemplative Designer