The mental change needed to allow yourself the possibility of using a generative sequence while making a design

The crux of every design process lies in finding the generative sequence for that design, and making sure that sequence is the right one for the job. Because such a generative sequence is hard to find, people do not easily grasp the fact that such sequences exist, and therefore find design much more difficult than it needs to be.
Another way of saying the same thing is to observe that for many people, perhaps the most difficult thing of all in understanding living process, and in getting a proper sequence for the unfolding of the whole, is reconciling oneself to the idea of doing one thing at a time.

The unfolding process allows you to go one step at a time, precisely because it is based on a sequence which permits this without disturbing or screwing up the unfolding of the whole.
The reason it works is that, like any system in nature, what is actually unfolding is indeed the whole.
The key to any human unfolding process, is that the artist or builder visualizes the thing as an entirety, as a whole, from the first day. Even before you start, you already fix on it and see it as if it were a whole. You feel it as a whole, imagine it in its wholeness… and gradually tease out from it the features of this wholeness. At each step you do something which has a significant (and good) effect upon this whole, seen as a whole.

When someone can’t design, it is usually because they confuse themselves by taking things in the wrong order. The continuous back and forth between all possible issues causes confusion instead of clarity.

You just take one thing at a time, and do it in the right order. That’s all there is to it. Just do the most important thing. Finish it. Then do the most important thing. Finish it. And so on.

#book/The Nature of Order/2 The process of creating life/11 The sequence of unfolding#