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The Life Discovery Canvas (v1.0) — Part 3A: Concepts (THINK and LEARN)

Oliver Ding
CALL4
Published in
17 min readMar 1, 2022

A Set of Pairs of Themes for Life Discovery

The above picture is the Life Discovery Canvas. I am going to introduce the new canvas and its context with the following four parts:

The theoretical background of the canvas is the Project-centered approach. You can find six basic principles of the approach from Part 1. My design thoughts behind the canvas is a deep analogy between Thematic Space Canvas and Life Discovery Canvas. Both of them share the same spatial structure.

The Life Discovery Canvas is a meaningful whole which is formed by 16 pieces of blocks. Each block refers to a thematic space around a particular theme which is a concept in general sense.

Part 3: Concepts

As a special type of cognitive representation, knowledge canvases combine Visualization and Conceptualization. This leads to a classical issue: Form and Content. A great knowledge canvas should achieve a perfect form-content fit which has three challenges:

  • How to develop a unique conceptualization?
  • How to develop a unique visualization?
  • How to match visualization with conceptualization?

Part 1 offers the theoretical foundation of the canvas while Part 2 introduces the spatial structure of the canvas. This article aims to connect the theoretical foundation which is about conceptualization and spatial structure which refers to visualization.

I use a special technique called Pairs of Themes to achieve this goal.

3.1 Conceptualization and Visualization

Let’s quickly review our previous discussion about theoretical foundation and spatial structure.

There are several theoretical resources behind the canvas, I roughly called my thoughts about these resources the Project-centered approach. For Life Discovery Activity, I highlight the following six basic principles of the approach:

  • Being by Doing
  • Engagement as Method
  • End as Means
  • Discovery as Development
  • Performance as Experiment
  • Curativity as Creativity

You can find more details from the original article.

The spatial structure of Life Discovery Canvas is adopted from Thematic Space Canvas through a deep analogy between these two projects. See the diagram below:

This deep analogy is based on the basic model of Activity Theory: Subject — Mediating Tool — Object. You can find more details on the Activity Analysis website. I consider both “Developing Tacit Knowledge” and “Life Discovery” as Activities. From the perspective of Activity Theory, Thematic Space Canvas and Life Discovery Canvas are both Mediating Tools.

Moreover, what I found is that “Life Discovery” can be understood as a subcategory of “Developing Tacit Knowledge” if we consider the target of knowing is a person’s own life development. The process of discovering new insights for life development is a process of Developing Tacit Knowledge.

However, we can’t directly copy all concepts of Thematic Space Canvas and paste them on Life Discovery Canvas. We need to do a new knowledge curation work for Life Discovery Canvas.

You can find more details from the original article.

3.2 The Conceptualization — Visualization Curation

Part 2 has introduces the following spatial configurations of Life Discovery Canvas:

  • Four Significant Areas
  • Two Subspaces
  • Dimensions
  • Chains
  • Four Thematic Fields

These spatial configurations are cognitive containers of concepts. If we consider our thoughts as tea, then cognitive containers are teacups. If we want to shape our thoughts, we can make various containers.

Instead of adopt to all above spatial configurations, I started from two ideas:

  • Four Significant Areas
  • Pairs of Themes

Though I intended to design the above spatial configurations, people perceive them in different ways. The most obvious spatial configuration is Four Significant Areas because it refers to the traditional 2x2 matrix. This should be users’ starting point, so I started from it too. Other spatial configurations are hidden for exploration.

I also use an important technique called Pairs of Themes to design a Minimal Cognitive Container. This idea is based on the following diagram.

The concept of Container is the core of the Ecological Practice approach. By adjusting the quality and quantity of the Container, we can create advanced frameworks for discussing complex phenomena. The quality of the Container can be potential and actual, the quantity of the Container can be one and two. If we develop a new framework with one potential container and two actual containers, the outcome is the above diagram.

A Pair of Themes can be visualized with the above three-container structure.

  • Theme A > Container X
  • Theme B > Container Y
  • The Pair of “A — B” Themes > Container Z

The Container Z is potential. The meaning of the pair of “A — B” is potential too. Since different people have different tacit knowledge about the same pair of themes, the pair of “A — B” themes creates a new space for exploration.

By using the Pairs of Themes technique, I can easily fit Conceptualization — Visualization.

Though even I started from the Four Significant Areas, I also test selected pairs of themes with other hidden spatial configurations. For example, the below is for testing the Attachment Field.

The result is pretty good. Each concept can be a member of many spatial configurations. In this way, we can not only use the canvas as a 2x2 matrix for building a typology, but also use it as a multiple-dimension model for visualizing a holistic view in order to sense-make a dynamic meaningful whole.

3.3 Pairs of Themes

The notion of “Pairs of Themes” is the core of the ECHO Way (2.0) framework and my book-in-draft Themes of Practice. On May 25, 2021, I also shared my own career experiences as an example of personal innovation and the Career-fit framework.

The core of the Career-fit framework is Structure and Dynamics of career themes. The idea of Pairs of Opposite Themes refers to significant differences between career themes. The idea of Meta-themes refers to using one high level theme to curate similar career themes. The idea of Development of Themes refers to the transformation of career themes.

If we want to explore personal innovation, the great starting point is Pairs of Opposite Themes because they could lead to Structural Tensions such as boundary, distance, difference, heterogeneity, contradiction, and complementation. If we can turn one or more structural tensions into creative opportunities, then we could find the way of personal innovation.

You can find more details from the original article: Personal Innovation as Career-fit.

Pairs of Themes is also a general cognitive representation of practice-oriented knowledge. For example, Bob De Wit and Ron Meyer published a classic textbook about corporate strategy in 2005: Strategy Synthesis: Resolving Strategy Paradoxes to Create Competitive Advantage. According to the authors, “At the heart of every set of strategic issues, a fundamental tension between apparent opposites can be identified…Each pair of opposites creates a tension, as they seem to be inconsistent, or even incompatible, with one another; it seems as if both elements cannot be fully true at the same time…The challenge of strategic management is to wrestle with these tricky strategy tensions.” (2005, p.13)

Source: Strategy Synthesis (Bob De Wit and Ron Meyer, 2005, p.127)

The above table is one list of the tensions of Strategy Synthesis. The authors also suggest taking a dialectical approach to deal with these tensions, “These two opposite positions are in fact the thesis and the antithesis of the debate, challenging the reader to search for an appropriate synthesis somewhere between the two extremes. This form of debate is called ‘dialectical inquiry’ — by using two opposite points of view, the problem — solver attempts to arrive at a better understanding of the issue and a ‘higher level resolution’ that integrates elements of both the thesis and the antithesis.” (2005, p.17)

If you are familiar with my writings and diagrams, you might notice that I often use pairs of themes to develop ideas and design diagrams. In Thematic Space: A “Strategy-as-Curation”Weekend, I made the following list of pairs of themes:

You only have to pay attention to the bold text. Other parts are my personal notes. These pairs of themes are discovered from my Mandala diagrams and my other articles. The Hint offers a clue for thinking about a pair of themes from my perspective.

Some pairs of themes are adopted for Life Discovery Canvas. If you want to develop your tacit knowledge about life strategy and discovery. You can follow this format to curate your own list of pairs of themes.

3.4 The Inner-Outer Mapping

The Inner Space and Outer Space is guided by the “Internalization — externalization” principle of Activity Theory. I consider the mapping between Inner Space and Outer Space as the starting point of Life Discovery Activity.

This idea echoes the Thematic Space Canvas’s same spatial structure. Since the Thematic Space Canvas is developed for Developing Tacit Knowledge, I call it it “Objective — Subjective” Knowledge Curation. While Objective Knowing refers to the outer space, the Subjective Knowing refers to the inner space.

For Life Discovery Canvas, I just call it the Inner — Outer Mapping. Readers can find the difference between Inner Space and Outer Space from the following sections about pairs of themes.

The diagram below is the Inner — Outer Mapping of Thematic Space Canvas. We could make a similar visualization from Mapping Life Discovery.

However, I should emphasize that the Inner — Outer Mapping is not the only way of Mapping Life Discovery. Since there are several types of spatial configurations, we can explore more ways of Mapping Life Discovery.

The Inner — Outer Mapping is just the starting point of the journey!

3.5 THINK: What should I Think for myself?

The THINK area contains two pairs of themes:

  • Supplies — Demands
  • Aspirations — Situations

The pair of themes “Supplies — Demands” refers to the first basic principle of the Project-centered approach: Being by Doing.

The philosophical roots of the Project-centered approach is Activity Theory and Ecological Psychology. At the general philosophical level, both ecological psychology and activity theory share the same view of the inseparability of human beings and the world. I use the slogan “Being by Doing” to highlight the philosophical roots of the Project-centered approach.

The above diagram is my intuitive idea about the slogan “Being by Doing”. It looks like this is a dialogue between Humanistic Psychology and Activity Theory/Ecological Psychology.

  • Activity Theory/Ecological Psychology: Doing means delivering “Value” as Offers for others.
  • Humanistic Psychology: Being means maintaining “Equilibrium” as Order for self.

If a person wants to offer values to satisfy others’ demand, he or she should keep a good order for internal equilibrium in order to maintain the supply system. This is an interesting idea. However, it requires more deep work.

I use “Supplies — Demands” as a pair of concept for the Life Discovery Canvas. This is the starting point of the Life Discovery Activity and its canvas. I also developed a tool for this “Supplies — Demands” mapping. See the diagram below:

I use three dimensions of the concept of “Life” to develop the above model. There are at least three ways to understand the concept of “Life”.

  • Life as Organism: this is the perspective of biological theories.
  • Life as Practice: this is the perspective of social theories.
  • Life as Ideal Type: this is the perspective of humanities.

These three perspectives can be called Biological Life, Sociocultural Life, and Spiritual Life. I also defined three types of Freedom.

  • Material Freedom: Independence of both Sociocultural Life and Biological Life.
  • Mental Freedom: Independence of both Spiritual Life and Biological Life.
  • Cultural Freedom: Independence of Sociocultural Life and Spiritual Life.

The pair of concept of “Supplies — Demands” is inspired by economics. Also, I was inspired by the developmental psychologist Robert Kegan’s 1994 book In Over Our Heads: The Mental Demands of Modern Life.

In Over Our Heads focuses on the fit or lack of fit between what the culture demands of our minds and our mental capacity to meet these demands. According to Robert Kegan, “The psychological phenomenon is the evolution of consciousness, the personal unfolding of ways of organizing experience that are not simply replaced as we grow but subsumed into more complex systems of mind…The cultural phenomenon is the ‘hidden curriculum,’ the idea that to the list of artifacts and arrangements a culture creates and the social sciences study we should add the claims or demands the culture makes on the minds of its constituents.”(1994, p.9)

Kegan’s “psychological — cultural” dialogue approach is the seed of my ideas about the above three types of freedoms. It’s clear that I want to expand the “psychological — cultural” dialogue to the “psychological — biological” dialogue and the “cultural — biological” dialogue.

The pair of themes “Aspirations — Situations” refers to two modules of Life Discovery Toolkit (v1.0):

  • Life Aspiration Orientation: What kind of hero are you?
  • Life Process Awareness: What is the status of your primary life project?

The Life Discovery Toolkit (v1) has nine modules. The first module is Life Aspiration Orientation. I use the three dimensions to start the difficult conversation for life development. The toolkit is not for discussing traditional career development, but the life as a meaningful whole. We care about the real impact you can make. You can make an impact through a paid job or other activities. You can find an example of this module from here.

The theme of “Situations” refers to the module of Life Process Awareness which aims to answer the following question: What’s the status of your primary life project?

For Life Discovery Toolkit (v1.0), I use the above model which is called Defining Zone for discussion. Here is an example. You can adopt other models for your Life Discovery Activity.

While the “Supplies — Demands” Mapping is about a discovery about life meaning at an abstract level, the “Aspirations — Situations” Mapping moves to the daily life activities at a concrete level.

3.6 LEARN: What should I Learn for my life?

The Life Discovery Activity requires designing and developing individuals that learn and adapt. These individuals can bring about their continuing transformation in the face of growing challenges to their stability. Thus, I consider LEARN to be an important area for Life Discovery.

The LEARN area contains two pairs of themes:

  • Skills — Knowledge
  • Themes — Contradictions

The pair of themes “Skills — Knowledge” refers to traditional thinking of adult development.

For Life Discovery Activity, it means on three things:

  • Reflect on your habits and behavior patterns of learning, reading, discussing, reflecting, etc.
  • Prepare for future life projects
  • Reflect on personal epistemic development

The third thing is about the Skills — Knowledge Mapping. I’d like to share a model called Epistemic Development for this task.

As a serial creator and a lifelong thinker, I am passionate about intellectual development and life reflection. Initially, I was influenced by Chris Argyris’ Action Science and Donald Schön’s Theory in Practice and The Reflective Practitioner. In 2014, I started learning Ecological Psychology, Activity Theory, and other theoretical approaches. I wrote my first learning autobiography in 2015 and was attracted to biographical studies.

In June 2018, I did a rough literature review about personal knowing and found there is an established discipline called Personal Epistemology or Epistemic Cognition. I realized there is a Sandwich of personal knowing! Thus, I designed a diagram below.

At the top of the Sandwich, there is a branch of philosophy: epistemology. Also, a related discipline is Philosophy of Science.

At the bottom of the Sandwich, there is a real daily life world. I pointed out two key words: Narrative and Action. These two key words refer to two approaches: the narrative approach is about biographical studies while the action science approach refers to Chris Argyris’ Action Science and Donald Schön’s Theory in Practice and The Reflective Practitioner.

In the middle of the Sandwich, there are several areas. One layer is about academic professional research themes such as Metacognition, Epistemic Cognition, and Conceptual Change. These themes belong to different disciplines and different theoretical research traditions. For example, Metacognition is part of cognitive psychology. Epistemic Cognition belongs to educational studies. The term Conceptual Change is only used by North American scholars.

I also place the pair of themes “Themes — Contradictions” at the LEARN area.

The Life Discovery Activity focuses on 1) Detecting Potential Contradictions and 2) Exploring Potential Themes in order to enhance a person’s life development. The term “Contradictions” is adopted from Activity Theory while the term “Themes” is adopted from my own work Themes of Practice.

In Life Discovery: The “Problem — Solution” Challenge and Response, I introduced several ways for detecting Contradictions, Disruptors, Dramatic Experiences, etc. For present discussion, I’d like to recommend a model called Levels of Activity and Disruptions. See the table below.

Source: Topsight (Clay Spinuzzi, 2013)

The above table is quoted from the Activity Theorist Clay Spinuzzi’s 2013 book Topsight: A guide to studying, diagnosing, and fixing information flow in organization. The book is about a methodology for researching work activities with Activity Theory. Based on the three-level hierarchy of Activity Theory, Topsight suggests the following three levels of activity:

  • Macro (organization) level: culture and history; objectives and outcomes.
  • Meso (human) level: actions and goals.
  • Micro (habit) level: habits and reactions.

Each level has its own type of disruptions:

  • Micro level: Breakdowns
  • Meso level: Discoordinations
  • Macro level: Contradictions

This hierarchy is awesome! Since we have a model of hierarchy of activity, we can assign problems to different levels which require different solutions.

In Life Discovery: The “Experience — Theme” Ladder and Meaning, I discussed the “Experience — Theme” ladder and the hierarchy of life experience which defines the complexity of cognitive content of problems. Finally, I developed the following three-level hierarchy.

For Life Discovery Activity, we can discover potential things at three levels:

  • Moment: What will happen in the next moment?
  • Project: What should I do for the next project?
  • Theme: What would be the next cultural theme?

There are at least three ways of exploring potential themes:

  • The Bottom-up approach
  • The Top-down approach
  • The Dialogue approach

You can learn about these three approaches from my knowledge curation framework:

The Knowledge Curation Activity is about discovering new knowledge themes. If a person chooses epistemic impact as his life aspiration, then knowledge themes are the main part of his life themes.

For example, the theme “Curativity” is one of my life theme. I have over ten years of work experiences about curation-related projects. In 2019, I wrote a book titled Curativity and develop a theory called Curativity Theory. I consider it as an example of the Bottom-up Knowledge Curation Framework. The theme of “Life Strategy” is an example of the Dialogue Knowledge Curation Framework. The theme of “Diagramming as Practice” is an example of the Top-down Knowledge Curation Framework.

The “Themes — Contradictions” Mapping refers to a new way of learning. In order to cope with potential contradictions, we need to adopt objects as Means for solving problems. In order to develop potential themes, we need to adopt objects as End as creative spaces.

This article is part of the Life Strategy project. On Jan 28, 2022, I introduced the idea “the Life Strategy framework (v1.0)” to a new friend who read the article about D as Diagramming: Strategy as Anticipatory Activity System and wondered if she could use it for her projects.

I curated the Anticipatory Activity System framework and several related frameworks together, and named them “Life Strategy”. I considered it as multiple theory curation:

  • Anticipatory Systems Theory: Present — Future
  • Relevance Theory: Self — Other
  • Activity Theory: Object — Outcome
  • Project-oriented Activity Theory: Theme — Identity
  • Curativity Theory: Pieces — Whole

I use a dialogue knowledge curation approach to develop the Life Strategy project. While I am applying the Anticipatory Activity System framework and the Project-center approach to the Life Discovery project, I am also using the project to test these two theoretical approaches.

You can find the Life Discovery Tookit and the canvas on the following board on Miro:

The Life Discovery Toolkit

Edit description

miro.com

The below is a list of related articles:

For the Project Engagement approach, you can visit the Activity Analysis website find more relevant information about Activity Theory.

For the Anticipatory Activity System framework, you can read Strategy as Anticipatory Activity System and its early version iART Framework.

You are most welcome to connect via the following social platforms:

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/oliverding
Twitter: https://twitter.com/oliverding
Polywork: https://www.polywork.com/oliverding
Boardle: https://www.boardle.io/users/oliver-ding

References

Harry Heft (2001) Ecological Psychology in Context: James Gibson, Roger Barker, and the Legacy of William James’s Radical Empiricism. Psychology Press.

Life Discoveries
Life Change
Life Transitions
Life Transformations
Reflective Practice

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Oliver Ding
CALL4

Written by Oliver Ding

876 Followers
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Founder of CALL(Creative Action Learning Lab), information architect, knowledge curator.

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