On the Open and Closed Modes

Supported by research from psychology, Cleese puts forward two general ways people operate: the closed and open modes.

By the "closed mode" I mean the mode that we are in most of the time when we’re at work. We have inside us a feeling that there's lots to be done and we have to get on with it if we're going to get through it all. It's an active (probably slightly anxious) mode, although the anxiety can be exciting and pleasurable. It's a mode which we're probably a little impatient, if only with ourselves. It has a little tension in it, not much humor. It's a mode in which we're very purposeful, and it's a mode in which we can get very stressed and even a bit manic, but not creative.

By contrast, the open mode, is relaxed, expansive, less purposeful mode in which we're probably more contemplative, more inclined to humor (which always accompanies a wider perspective), and, consequently, more playful. It's a mood in which curiosity for its own sake can operate because we're not under pressure to get a specific thing done quickly. We can play, and that is what allows our natural creativity to surface.

Cleese believes that creativity isn’t a talent, but the effective use of these modes of thinking. We need to spend as much time as possible in the open mode, but know when to switch to the closed mode for implementation.

Once we've taken a decision we should narrow our focus while we're implementing it, and then after it's been carried out we should once again switch back to the open mode to review the feedback rising from our action, in order to decide whether the course that we have taken is successful, or whether we should continue with the next stage of our plan. Whether we should create an alternative plan to correct any error we perceive. And then back into the closed mode to implement that next stage, and so on.

In other words, to be at our most efficient we need to be able to switch backwards and forwards between the two modes.

Designers may be reminded of descriptions of the design process. Most explanations of design process will talk about how the scope of a project begins wide, diverging with all the possibilities of a new design, and then narrows as the designers discover or create constraints to their design. I see this widening and narrowing as analogs to Cleese's open and closed modes. The qualities he uses to describe his modes apply well to the iterative cycles of a design process between ideation and execution, thinking and making.