Life Discovery: Significant Insights Analysis

#2 —The “Mandala” and "Pair of Themes"

#3 —The Notion of "Life Strategy"

#4 —The Notion of "Service Thinking"

#5 —The Project-centered Approach

#6 —The Notion of "Being by Doing"

#7 —The Curated Mind Framework

#8 —The “Thematic Spirit” Activity

#9 —The AAS4LT Framework

#10 —The Landscape of Project Network

#11 —The “Domains — Works” Mapping and “Domains (Works)”

#12 —The Notion of "Activity as Project Engagement”

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#12 —The Notion of "Activity as Project Engagement”

Oliver Ding

On April 21, I worked in a room without the Internet. I read a thesis which was written by an activity theorist who is researching design and got an insight called “Activity as Project Engagement”.

In the past three years, I have been reading many papers and books about Activity Theory. I also wrote two books-in-drafts about Activity Theory and built a website called Activity Analysis. However, I still can capture a significant insight while I was reading a piece about the historical development of Activity Theory in the thesis.

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Significant Insight

On April 21, I worked in a room without the Internet. I read a thesis which was written by an activity theorist who is researching design.

In the past three years, I have been reading many papers and books about Activity Theory. I also wrote two books-in-drafts about Activity Theory and built a website called Activity Analysis.

⁠

However, I still can capture a significant insight while I was reading a piece about the historical development of Activity Theory in the thesis.

I started working on my notebook and drew a diagram with a technique called Deep Analogy.

On April 22, 2022, I reproduced the diagram on

Milanote⁠

. See the link below.

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Loading…⁠

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What’s the outcome of this action?

I realized that my approach to Activity Theory should be called “Activity as Project Engagement” and my primary theme is “Engagement”, not “Project”.

This is a significant insight because it changes my view on my work: the Project Engagement approach and its toolkit. If you read my 2021 book Project-oriented Activity Theory and will find many diagrams. One set of diagrams looks like the diagram below. I developed these diagrams for the Cultural Projection Analysis method.

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If you visit the page about

the Project Engagement Toolkit⁠

, you can’t find the above diagram there because I didn’t consider it as a primary diagram for the toolkit and the whole approach.

Thus, I didn’t have a clear idea about the concept of “Engagement” when I used the word to name the Project Engagement approach in 2021.

In the past three months, I developed

the “Engagement as Projection” principle⁠

for the Life-as-Project approach. You can see more details

here⁠

Now I have a new idea for the concept of “Engagement” and it refers to the notion of “Projectivity — Projecting — Projection”.

A project is a container of cultural themes which will attract a person. By participating in the project, the person could enhance his life themes or expand his life themes.

A person is attracted by a project through its identity and his Identity could be shaped by the project. On the other side, the actions of the person also could shape the Identity of the Project.

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Thus, The “Engagement as Projection” Principle echos the “Internalization — externalization” principle of Activity Theory. However, I use “Outside — Inside” to highlight the boundary of social spaces.

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Method

The method for this task was developed with the following heuristic tool on

April 25, 2022⁠

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The above model is called the Relevance of Zone which considers Other as an important social context for the long-term development of thoughts. You can find more details

here⁠

Based on the model, we can generate the following questions:

Other: Who is the Significant Other for this insight?

Thing: What’s the insight about? Why do I pay attention to it?

Think: How did I get this insight? Is there a technique behind the process?

Self: Where did I capture this insight?

Self: When did I capture this insight?

Activity: Is this insight part of an activity? What’s the activity?

Activity: Has this insight led to a new action or a new activity?

The following section will use these questions to guide our reflection.

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Analysis

Other: Who is the Significant Other for this insight?

The insight is about self-reflection. However, the primary trigger is a thesis which was written by

Frederick van Amstel⁠

, an activity theorist who is researching design.

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The thesis is titled

Expansive Design: Designing with contradictions⁠

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Thing: What’s the insight about? Why do I pay attention to it?

The insight is about the historical development of Activity Theory. I have read similar description many times since each paper or book about Activity Theory should mentioned the background of Activity Theory.

From Dec 2020 to Jan 2021, I worked on

Project-oriented Activity Theory⁠

which was inspired by Andy Blunden’s An Interdisciplinary Theory of Activity (2010), Concepts: A Critical Approach (2012), Collaborative Projects: An Interdisciplinary Study (2014), and other papers.

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Activity Theory⁠

or the “

Cultural-historical activity theory (CHAT)⁠

” is an interdisciplinary philosophical framework for studying both individual and social aspects of human behavior. Activity Theory is an established theoretical tradition with several theoretical approaches developed by different theorists. Originally, it was inspired by Russian/Soviet psychology of the 1920s and 1930s.

A major development of Activity Theory during the past decade is Andy Blunden’s account “An Interdisciplinary Theory of Activity”. Andy Blunden is an independent scholar in Melbourne, Australia. He works with the Independent Social Research Network and the Melbourne School of Continental Philosophy, and has run a Hegel Summer School since 1998.

In his 2010 book An Interdisciplinary Theory of Activity, Blunden traces the roots of Activity Theory from Goethe, Hegel, and Marx in order to present an immanent critique of Activity Theory and its contemporary version CHAT. The core of Blunden argument is a theoretical methodological issue: Unit of Analysis. For Blunden, the concept of “Unit of Analysis” should be understood as Goethe’s Urphanomen which is also known as the ‘cell’. Blunden believes that the unit of analysis should be followed by an explanatory principle of “the part contains the whole”. In other words, if we want to understand a complex phenomenon, we should start the most primitive form of the phenomenon. For activity theorists, if they agree that their theoretical roots are ideas from Goethe, Hegel, Marx, and Vygotsky, then they have to respect this methodological criticism because the Urphanomen principle has been adopted by all of these predecessors.

Blunden adopts the Urphanomen principle and suggests a new unit of activity for developing an interdisciplinary theory of Activity. What Blunden suggested are that 1) We can use “Project” as a new unit of analysis for Activity Theory, 2) Project should be understood as formulation of concept, and 3) The archetypal unit of “Project” is two people working together in a common project.

Andy Blunden doesn’t use “Project-oriented Activity Theory” as an official name for his approach. Originally, I used this term to refer to Blunden’s approach. Later, I realized that the name is about both Andy Blunden’s approach and my interpretation. It is an expanded version of Andy Blunden’s approach.

The most important difference between Blunden’s original approach and my interpretation is that his vision is developing a general interdisciplinary theory of Activity as a meta-theory. However, my vision is adopting his meta-theory and developing some frameworks and models for practical studies. Also, my focus is knowledge works and knowledge workers.

I edited Project-oriented Activity Theory in Jan 2021. Later, I moved to other projects. Then, I came back to

the Project Engagement Toolkit⁠

on Jan 18, 2022.

The Notion of "Activity as Project Engagement” was born on April 21, 2022. In fact, it was the outcome of a reflection on the historical development of Activity Theory. I used a specific thematic structure to analyze several activity theorists’ theories.

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Think: How did I get this insight? Is there a technique behind the process?

It seems this is an aha moment. However, we can clearly identify several hidden triggers.

In Feb 2022, I worked on the Life Discovery project and developed a toolkit and a canvas for the project. I also developed the Project-centered approach.

Originally, I used “Project Engagement” as the name of Part 3 of the book Project-oriented Activity Theory and it refers to a set of my ideas for expanding Andy Blunden’s original approach about Project as a unit of analysis of Activity and Activity as Formation of Concept.

In 2021, I moved in the direction of supporting knowledge workers and creators. I realized that the Project Engagement Toolkit has significance for practitioners. It is not a pure application of Activity Theory.

Thematic Space: The Project Engagement Toolkit for Creators⁠

, I discussed my “Project” thematic space and highlighted the following three points:

First, the Developmental Project Model is an independent framework.

Second, there is a concept called Projectivity behind the module 4 Zone of Project and the module 5 Developmental Project Model.

Third, I also adopted Howard E. Gruber’s Evolving Systems Approach to the study of Creative Work (1974,1989) for module 6.

Originally, the Project Engagement toolkit was born from the work of Project-oriented Activity Theory. Now, it is an instrument for practitioners.

The second hidden trigger is the “Deep Analogy” method. On Dec 31, 2021, I published an article titled

The Dynamics of Tacit Knowledge⁠

and mentioned a technique called Deep Analogy. On Jan 25, 2022, I used the Deep Analogy technique to develop a new insight.

In April 2022, the “Deep Analogy” technique became my tacit knowledge. Thus, I had a new skill to develop a new way for reflecting the historical development of Activity Theory.

On April 21, 2022, I worked in a room without the Internet. I read a thesis which was written by an activity theorist who is researching design. Since I didn’t work online, I was in the lazy model. It was a perfect time for creative thinking.

What’s the specific thematic structure?

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The specific thematic structure is described as the above diagram. Each creator offers his unique dialectic solution to a dualistic challenge. This method is belong to the theoretical tradition of Activity Theory. This means “Immanent Development” because I used an idea of Activity Theory to develop Activity Theory.

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The thematic structure also considered primary diagram and secondary theme.

We can consider “Symbolic Awareness”, “Thematic Analysis”, “Self-reflection”, “Immanent Development”, and “Deep Analogy” as techniques behind the process.

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Self: Where did I capture this insight?

I captured this insight in a room without the Internet.

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Self: When did I capture this insight?

On April 21, I worked in a room without the Internet. I read a thesis which was written by an activity theorist who is researching design. I made a draft and drew a diagram with a paper.

On April 22, 2022, I reproduced the diagram on

Milanote⁠

On April 25, 2022, I published the article

Life Discovery: Twelve Significant Insights from Four Months⁠

and wrote a section about the insight.

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Activity: Is this insight part of an activity? What’s the activity?

The insight is part of the Activity U project and the Project-centered approach.

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Activity: Has this insight led to a new action or a new activity?

It will definitely impact to my future work. Now I can’t predict the concrete actions and activities.

A concrete action is about the Deep Analogy technique. I’d like to write a new article about the technique for the Knowledge Discovery Project.

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