# Waking mind The waking mind is the deliberate, conscious mode of thinking. [[Rich Hickey]] named it this way in [[Hammock Driven Development]] to contrast it with the [[Background mind]]. What it's good at: - Analysis and step by step reasoning - Critique. Give it a candidate solution and it will find the holes. - Directed search. It goes where you point it. - Loading a problem: reading, listing facts, listing constraints. What it's bad at: - Holding much. [[Working Memory]] caps you at roughly seven items, which is nowhere near enough for a real design problem. This is why writing things down isn't optional. - Leaps. It tends to follow the paths it already knows, which is why staring harder at a stuck problem rarely helps. - Patience. It wants to produce something now, and will happily accept the first plausible answer. The practical consequence: use the waking mind for the two ends of the process and not the middle. At the start, to load the problem thoroughly and honestly. At the end, to attack whatever the [[Background mind]] hands back. Sitting at the keyboard grinding in between those two moments is mostly theatre. If you notice you've been rereading the same paragraph for ten minutes, that's the waking mind out of room. Write down what you have, and go do something else. ## References - [[Rich Hickey]], "Hammock Driven Development", Clojure Conj, 2010 - Miller, G.A. (1956). "The Magical Number Seven, Plus or Minus Two" ## Related - [[Background mind]] - [[Hammock Driven Development]] - [[Working Memory]] - [[Analytical thinking]] - [[Critical thinking]] - [[Convergent thinking]] - [[Linear thinking]] - [[Cognitive complexity]] - [[Rich Hickey]]