This lecture, which I think I watched as a video on YouTube, was on my mind along with Hammock Driven Development (mentioned in another comment) while I was reading Thinking Fast and Slow. It fits very well with the System 1/System 2 thinking, where the "open" mode is related to allowing the associative machinery to go about its business, chasing strange combinations and associations without the more analytical thinking interfering too much, and then the "closed" mode is a switch, where you allow the more logical system to take hold, really think about what you've come up with and polish (or discard) it.