Module Quests and Closure

I know a little more of what I understand about modules and closure. This might remind you of the opposite remark: “I don’t understand all I know about that.” But the reverse is also a common experience, at least for those of us who are professionally obliged to explain what we understand in language. People who don’t have to talk about what they understand would not run into this problem.

As pointed out several times in the Thinkerer, people can have unverbalized goals. You can find out about someone’s unvberbalized goals by watching what they do. You can find out about your unverbalized goals by watching what you do.

Now let me be clear. Having unverbalized goals is normal. It is not a disease. It is not a neurosis. It does not need a cure. Verbal systems may not see things that way. Or rather, they may not talk about things that way. But I am not writing on behalf of verbal systems.

Sure, it is convenient to have some match between verbalized and unverbalized goals. And that’s why I am thinking about module quests and closure. In this case, it takes two to tangle. For that, we need two names. So I picked the name quest for those unverbalized goals. The name, as drawn from Native American traditions, seems to fit. There certainly some sort of objective in such a quest, but it is not of the clearly measurable variety. “You’ll know it when you see it.” That seems to describe the goal of the traditional quest and the searching of a module. I think the experience of closure, for example, in remembering the name of a partially forgotten actor, is very much like knowing it when you see it.

Another reason I like the term quest is that it has a major role in human myths and is historically significant in psychology as part of a Jungian archetype. See:
http://psychcentral.com/psypsych/Hero
http://www.vinnys.net/campbell.html

At present, my quest is to find a way to show people how to use the unverbalized goals to support their verbalized goals. Or to use the powerful machinery of language to support unverbalized goals. The main elements presently in the Thinkerer are:

Find your unverbalized goals by watching what you do.
http://thinkerer.org/Topics/TopicsGoalOfGoals.htm

Start your silent modules on an activity of your (conscious) by the Startalittle method. This is set, a well established principle in psychology.
http://thinkerer.org/Tools/ToolsStartaLittle.htm

Select modules well suited to the objective and start them on the activity. Example: Storyboarder, representing the episodic “memory” subsystem. I am working on a Clipit to help people apply this to study of a chapter.

Give started modules time to work before you force closure by calling an end to the job. (Zeigarnik effect)