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Life Discovery: Significant Insights Analysis
Life Discovery: Significant Insights Analysis
#1 —The notion of “Thematic Space”
#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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#3 —The Notion of "Life Strategy"

Oliver Ding
I took the following picture at 5:09 PM, Jan 29, 2022, when I was in the parking lot of Costco with my two sons while my wife was shopping inside the store.
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image.jpeg
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This picture refers to a significant insight: the notion of “Life Strategy”.
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Significant Insight

After casually flipping through Jordan B. Peterson’s book 12 Rules for Life for a few minutes, I put it down and started writing a list of things that happened from Jan 27 to Jan 29. See the below:
Jan 27 (morning), read
Ed Morrison
⁠
’s book about Strategic Doing.
Jan 27 (afternoon), used the iART framework as an example to test the canvas of “the Dialogue approach of Knowledge Curation”.
Jan 27 (night), curated “Anticipatory Activity System” and other frameworks together to design the first version of “Life Strategy Toolkit”.
Jan 28 (morning), talked about the “Life Strategy Toolkit” with a friend.
Jan 28 (morning), joined a webinar about Strategic Doing and Startup Ecosystem.
Jan 28 (noon), shared a post about Platform for Development on Linkedin.
Jan 28 (afternoon), designed the final version of “the Dialogue approach of Knowledge Curation”.
Jan 28 (afternoon), my iMac couldn’t turn on due to a sudden power outage.
Jan 28 (night), read printed pages about Strategic Doing and wrote some notes.
Jan 29 (morning), text-chatted with a friend about the “Anticipatory Activity System” framework.
Jan 29 (morning), went to the Apple Store.
Jan 29 (noon), replied to comments about Platform for Development on Linkedin.
Jan 29 (afternoon), went to a local library.
Jan 29 (afternoon), went to Costco.

After finishing the above list, I suddenly had the above idea about “Life Strategy”. Originally, I was busy dealing with friends’ requests for practical suggestions about strategy. So, I framed the notion of “Life Strategy” as a practical toolkit. However, I realized that I could detach from the “toolkit” and attach it to the “dialogue” which is mentioned above.
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image.png
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Now we can use the Thematic Space Canvas to visualize this moment.
Before: the focus of my mind is on the “Heuristics” block which belongs to the Practice Field.
After: the focus of my mind moves to the “Approaches” block which belongs to the Theory Field.
Then: the new focus led to a new project which is on the “Projects” block.

This insight led to the following Notions:
Architecture > Strategic Thinking
Relevance > Strategic Discourse
Activity > Strategic Acting
Opportunity > Strategic Awareness

I thought about applying the epistemological framework to curate theoretical approaches to Strategy on Jan 28. However, I didn’t produce any Practical Perspective as an outcome on Jan 28.
You can find more details
here
⁠
.

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Method

The method for this task was developed with the following heuristic tool on
April 25, 2022
⁠
.
⁠
image.png
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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.
⁠

Analysis


Other: Who is the Significant Other for this insight?

This insight refers to two meanings of the notion of “Life Strategy”. Originally, I was busy dealing with friends’ requests for practical suggestions about strategy. So, I framed the notion of “Life Strategy” as a practical toolkit. However, I realized that I could detach from the “toolkit” and attach to the “dialogue”.
The notion of the “Life Strategy Toolkit” was inspired by some friends and some authors. For example:
I had a 91-minute talk with a friend on Jan 18, 2022. This talk inspired me to think about the idea of “Life Strategy for Indie Creators”
I talked about the “Life Strategy Toolkit” with a friend on Jan 28, 2022. The friend saw my article about “
Strategy as Anticipatory Activity System
⁠
” and contacted me on Linkedin. Then, I made the toolkit for our discussion.
I read Ed Morrison’s book about Strategic Doing on Jan 27, 2022.

The notion of the “Life Strategy Dialogue” was inspired by my work on knowledge curation and thematic space canvas. My notion of “Life Strategy” can be understood as a dialogue between my “Life” thematic space and my “Strategy” thematic space.

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

On Feb 3, 2022, I wrote an article about
my “Strategy” thematic space
⁠
. In the article, I mentioned the “Life Strategy” project.
As mentioned in the previous article,
Thematic Space: A “Strategy-as-Curation”Weekend
⁠
, I am recently thinking about Life Strategy for Indie Creators.

The “Life” thematic space is a huge container for me. In the Theory field of the thematic space, I did something about it. For example:
-
The Lifesystem framework
⁠
⁠
-
Life as Activity
⁠
⁠
-
Life Curation
⁠
⁠
- Life Theory (yes, I wrote a 160-page private document titled Life Theory in Feb 2020.)

The “Life Theory” document is both a theoretical plan and a toolkit. As a theoretical plan, it describes the position and the direction of expanding the Ecological Practice approach to a social theory. As a toolkit, it curates six frameworks together. It is the beta version of the Ecological Practice approach.

My notion of “Life Strategy” can be understood as a dialogue between my “Life” thematic space and my “Strategy” thematic space.

If we jump out of my thematic spaces, we can consider the concept of “Life Strategy” as a dialogue between the field of “Developmental Psychology” and the field of “Strategic Management”.

I called this method Double Dialogues which is a technique of the Knowledge Curation framework. The Double Dialogues method differs from Conceptual Blending because my method is about Themes and the Conceptual Blending method is about Concepts.
Both “Life Development” and “Strategic Thinking” are my favorite themes. In the article, I also mentioned my personal story about the theme of strategy. I was an enthusiast of business management and strategy books many years ago during the first stage of my career. In 2020, I wrote a long file about John Hagel’s books with a title Net as Strategy. Now I call it Strategy as Net. This private file is also part of my “Strategy” thematic space.

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

As mentioned above, the technique behind the notion of “Life Strategy Dialogue” is called Double Dialogues which is part of the Knowledge Curation framework.
The Double Dialogues method differs from Conceptual Blending because my method is about Themes and the Conceptual Blending method is about Concepts. I am a big fan of Gilles Fauconnier and Mark Turner’s
Conceptual Blending
⁠
Theory which is an established theoretical approach in the field of cognitive linguistics.
The major difference between my method and the Conceptual Blending is my method is based on Thematic Spaces while the Conceptual Blending is based on Mental Spaces. Also, Conceptual Blending requires four mental spaces for the whole process of blending. For my Knowledge Curation framework, we can use Thematic Spaces as many as we want.
Moreover, the Conceptual Blending method is only about linguistic analysis because it is a theory of cognitive linguistics. The Double Dialogues method and Thematic Spaces are part of Developing Tacit Knowledge which is an activity.
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image.png
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One tool of the knowledge curation framework is the above meta-diagram. Now we can consider Life (Developmental Psychology) as Container X and Strategy (Strategic Management) as Container Y. Then, the “Life Strategy” Project is the Container Z. Our knowing about the new concept of “Life Strategy” should be developed within the Echozone.
Also, there is a Creative Attachance behind the moment of getting the insight of “life strategy dialogue”.
After finishing the above list, I suddenly had the above idea about “Life Strategy”. Originally, I was busy on dealing with friends’ requests about practical suggestions about strategy. So, I framed the notion of “Life Strategy” as a practical toolkit. However, I realized that I could detach from the “toolkit” and attach to the “dialogue” which is mentioned above.
In the original article, I used the Thematic Space Canvas to visualize the Creative Attachance. See the diagram below.
⁠
image.png
⁠
⁠
Before: the focus of my mind is at the “Heuristics” block which belongs to the Practice Field.
After: the focus of my mind moves to the “Approaches” block which belongs to the Theory Field.
Then: the new focus led to a new project which is at the “Projects” block.

Self: Where did I capture this insight?

I captured the insight of “Life Strategy Dialogue” in my car on Jan 29, 2022 when I was in the parking lot of Costco with my two sons while my wife was shopping inside the store.

Self: When did I capture this insight?

In fact, I thought about applying the epistemological framework to curate theoretical approaches about Strategy on Jan 28. However, I didn’t produce any Practical Perspective as an outcome on Jan 28.

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


It is part of several projects. Each project can be considered as an activity.
The insight led to the idea of “Life Strategy Project” which is a new activity. If we use the Anticipatory Activity System (AAS) framework to analyze this project, then the insight is the outcome of a Second-order Activity.
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image.png
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The AAS framework uses Second-order Activity to refer to a specific type of activity in which subjects aim to define objectives and goals for their further activities. The second half of the AAS framework is First-order Activity which refers to normal activities.
The Life Strategy Project was defined as “the Life-Strategy Thematic Dialogue” on Jan 29, 2022. We can consider the activity about the notion of “Life Strategy” as a Second-order Activity.
It also can be considered as a sub-project of the Knowledge Curation project and the Thematic Space project.

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

The notion of “life strategy dialogue” led to the article about
my strategy thematic space
⁠
. The notion led to the following ideas:
Architecture > Strategic Thinking
Relevance > Strategic Discourse
Activity > Strategic Acting
Opportunity > Strategic Awareness

From the perspective of the Knowledge Curation framework, these ideas are called “Practical Perspectives” which are intermediate instruments for the knowledge curation activity.
For example, I consider “Strategic Thinking” as a practical perspective. It means we can claim that Strategy is a cognitive phenomenon. In this way, we can adopt theoretical approaches about cognitive development for discussing strategic thinking. This perspective roughly echoes what strategic management scholars called “
Strategic content
⁠
”.
For “Life Strategy”, I pay attention to a person’s strategic cognitive capability. How can we help a person improve her strategic thinking competence in order to cope with life challenges?
This view echoes some of my works. For example:
⁠
Anticipatory Activity System
⁠
: Strategy is a process of developing advanced predictive models in order to manage the complexity of anticipation and performance.
⁠
Curativity Theory
⁠
: turning pieces into a meaning whole.

Later, I worked on the Anticipatory Activity System (AAS) framework in Feb and March. Though we can consider the AAS project as an independent project, the project can be considered as a First-order Activity of the Life Strategy Project too. In fact, I expanded the content of the Life Strategy Project from the original notion of “Life - Strategy Dialogue” to the AAS framework.
I also wrote a new article about
my “Life” thematic space
⁠
on Feb 17, 2022. I applied the same method to develop the following Practical Perspectives:
Architecture > Life Patterns
Relevance > Life Themes
Activity > Life Performance
Opportunity > Life Discovery

If we put these four “Life”Practical Perspectives and the above four “Strategy” Practical Perspectives together, we get a new framework for the Double Dialogues project.

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