The “Flow-Focus-Center-Circle” Schema and the Ecological Formism Framework (v1.2)

Last updated on 11 Sep 2026

Ecological Formism: Creative Self and World of Activity

by Oliver Ding

September 11, 2025

This article was published on Medium.com

In my recent Kindle book, Homecoming: A Thematic Trip and the World of Activity Approach, I used the World of Activity Model (also known as the “Flow-Focus-Center-Circle” schema) to reflect my 2015 autobiography and a recent trip, discovering seven distinctive forms of personal “Worlds of Activity.”

The “Flow-Focus-Center-Circle” schema was based on the “Ecological Formism” schema. In this article, I will review the context of the “Flow-Focus-Center-Circle” schema and return to the Ecological Formism Framework.

A Situational Map

In my recent creative Flow, the theme of World of Activity has become a significant Focus. In June, I created the World of Activity Toolkit (v1.0, 2025).

From late June to July, I traveled to China, spending most of my time in Fuzhou, also known as Foochow. During the trip, I reunited with an old friend from Beijing, and together we explored the city. Before moving to the U.S., I had lived in Fuzhou for nearly 20 years. This journey became a deeply meaningful re-engagement with familiar places, old friends, and the memories that had shaped my earlier life.

Immersed in this rich experiential context, I began connecting the World of Activity approach with my situational experiences.

At the beginning of the trip, I revisited Wuyi Mountain, searching for a symbolic object that had inspired my son Peiphen’s name. This moment led me to re-read my 2015 biography, A Freesoul. While in Fuzhou, I used the World of Activity model to reflect on that biography and discovered several distinct forms of “World of Activity,” corresponding to different developmental stages of life.

I continued writing daily notes to deepen the theory-practice connection. By the end of the trip, I had written 138,352 words in Chinese. Combined with the original 2015 biography, the total came to nearly 211,145 words — enough for a new potential book titled:

Freesouls in Foochow: Theme, Enterprise, and World of Activity

The Chinese book has several parts, covering topics such as World of Activity, Thematic Enterprise, Significant Social Forms, and Strategic Agency.

The diagram below shows the Outside Look of the World of Activity approach. Red dots highlight several creative ideas I developed while working on the Freesouls in Foochow project.

I began writing notes on the first day of my trip. On July 12, I curated these early notes and wrote a long post outlining a new book. The project was planned in six parts, as follow:

Part 1: The World of Activity Approach
Part 2: The World of Activity Analysis Method
Part 3: Evolving Worlds of Activity
Part 4: Evolving Social Forms
Part 5: Evolving Thematic Enterprises
Part 6: Strategic Agency and the Flower of Heart-Mind

The second half of the book focuses not directly on the World of Activity itself, but on phenomena occurring within or related to it. Part 4 (Evolving Social Forms) was inspired by three social forms I discovered in my biography. Part 5 (Evolving Thematic Enterprises) emerged from encounters with thematic objects during the trip and conversations with friends. Part 6 covers nine aspects of strategic agency, essential for mastering the complexity of the World of Activity.

More details of these situational choices are highlighted in the diagram above:

#2 (The Double Center Model) was discovered through revisiting my 2015 biography and relates to the Center Development toolkit.
#3 (Basic Ecological Forms) defines six basic ecological forms evolved from the Ecological Formism approach, supported by case studies based on my 2015 biography.
#4 (The Social Form (Action Patterns) Model) was developed during the trip after identifying three social forms from my biography.
#5 (Individual Thematic Enterprise) focuses on several thematic objects from my earlier life and related thematic enterprises.
#6 (Nine Aspects of Strategic Agency) addresses adaptive capacities critical for mastering the World of Activity’s complexity.

While Part 3 builds directly on my 2015 biography, Parts 5 and 6 were inspired by my trip to Fuzhou, especially conversations with classmates and friends.

These choices were made in response to the Flow of my trip.

After returning to the U.S., I focused on World of Activity and rewrote an English book titled Homecoming: A Thematic Trip and the World of Activity Approach (it was published as a Kindle book on September 7, 2025). It officially introduces the “Flow-Focus-Center-Circle” schema to readers.

Now I continue to use the “Outside Look” of the World of Activity approach to guide my upcoming knowledge projects.

In this article, I move to the Context of the “Flow-Focus-Center-Circle” schema and its meta-framework: the Ecological Formism framework.

A Brief Overview of the “Flow-Focus-Center-Circle” Schema

A key theoretical resource of the World of Activity approach is the Ecological Formism schema, composed of Variant, Quasi-invariant, Invariant, and Invariant Set. The schema combines cultural-historical thinking (inspired by Activity Theory) with structural-networked thinking (inspired by Curativity Theory). It offers a perspective for understanding change, continuity, and stability by examining the relationships between parts and the whole.

Building on this schema, on May 25, 2025, I developed a hierarchical structure for the World of Activity approach. This model is illustrated in the diagram below.

Based on this structure, I defined a series of terms that together form the World of Activity model:

Flow of Activity (or Creative Flow, Thematic Flow)
Focus of Activity (or Creative Focus, Thematic Focus)
Center of Activity (or Creative Center, Thematic Center)
Circle of Activity (or Creative Circle, Thematic Circle)
World of Activity

Now, let’s unpack these terms one by one:

Flow → the “flow” of everyday life experience.
Focus → the mental “focus” of our mind.
Center → the creative “center” we work with continuously.
Circle → the creative “circle” formed by connecting several creative centers.

Let’s use my journey of developing Curativity Theory to illustrate these concepts in action.

I have been working in the field of curation for over a decade. I served as Chief Information Architect of BagTheWeb, an early content curation tool launched in 2010. This experience inspired a long-term commitment to the theme of curation. After ten years of diverse practical work and theoretical exploration in curation, I coined the term Curativity and developed Curativity Theory, which led to a book draft in March 2019.

From March 2019 to March 2025, I used Curativity Theory as a meta-theory across various knowledge projects. This ongoing application produced multiple book drafts and a series of knowledge frameworks. Because Curativity Theory serves as a meta-theory, I did not apply all of its concepts directly to each project. Instead, I developed a series of models as knowledge frameworks, applying each model to a project as appropriate. The result is a large-scale knowledge enterprise composed of diverse elements, including meta-theories, thematic schemas, knowledge frameworks, diagrams, and knowledge maps.

In 2022, I launched the Curativity Center, positioning it as a meta-center to support a range of other knowledge centers.

Using the World of Activity model, we can understand the story at an abstract level through general terms such as “Center,” without needing to specify concrete terms like “Knowledge Center.”

Flow: the flow of everyday life experience. In my case, this represents work experience centered on the theme of curation.
Focus: the mental concentration of the mind. At a certain point, I realized that the “Curation” theme held significant importance in my life and career. This recognition marked a specific thematic space, framing my intention and attention.

The distinction between Flow and Focus lies in the emergence of a specific thematic space, which serves as the vehicle of the focus.

Center: the creative center we engage with continuously. In my story, this could be the 2019 Curativity book or the Curativity Center launched in 2022. It may also refer to earlier activities, such as a speech titled Curation Common for Education that I gave at a student event at Harvard University in 2012.

The difference between Focus and Center is that Focus emphasizes intention and attention, while Center involves action and ongoing curation.

Circle: the creative circle formed by connected creative centers. In this story, the Curativity Center functions as a meta-center supporting other knowledge centers I am working on. Together, they form a circle of knowledge engagement.

Homecoming: A Thematic Trip and the World of Activity Approach provides an empirical study based on the schema. You can find more detailed forms of the World of Activity and the dynamic transformation of center configurations (from single-center to dual-center to multi-center forms).

In Four Looks at the World of Activity Approach, I use the “Flow — Focus — Center — Circle” schema to reflect on the historical development of the World of Activity approach, providing an engaging self-referential story.

The Context of the “Flow-Focus-Center-Circle” Schema

Over the past several years, I have written a series of book drafts, some of which are related to the “Flow-Focus-Center-Circle” schema. In this section, I review these books in the context of the “Flow-Focus-Center-Circle” schema.

The diagram below serves as a map for this reflection and exploration.

Influenced by Ecological Psychology, Activity Theory, and social theories, I employ “Container Thinking” to understand the concepts of “Self” and “Mind.” On June 20, 2023, I developed the theme of “Context (Mind),” followed by the theme of “Life (Self)” on July 17, 2023.

These two themes are key focus areas of my creations, which have influenced a series of knowledge projects and book drafts. For example, I used them as frames for a map called A Tree of Thoughts, which presents all my book drafts.

After editing the 42nd book draft, I decided to stop updating the A Tree of Thoughts map.

It’s time to use a new framework to organize my creations. Now I see the “Flow-Focus-Center-Circle” schema as the new meta-framework for my publishing-focused activities in the coming months.

The “Creative Self and World of Activity” diagram uses the following themes as a framework to curate 16 books, one of which is a Kindle book, while others are book drafts.

Life (Self)
Flow
Focus
Center
Circle
Context (Mind)

Due to the limitation of the 2D diagram, I just made rough connections between these themes and the 16 books. Although this association is not precise, it provides initial insights.

The 16 books are listed below. More details can be found through the links:

The “Flow-Focus-Center-Circle” schema is an abstract framework, in which concepts such as Flow, Focus, Center, and Circle encompass many concrete instances. For example, a “Knowledge Center” is one such instance of Center. The connections between my books and these four concepts can be understood in this way.

These books are closely connected with the themes of “Flow,” “Focus,” “Center,” and “Circle.” The lines in the diagram illustrate these relationships.

Flow

Two themes are represented as two hubs: Flow and Center. “Flow” connects to the following books:

Homecoming
Meaning Discovery
Thematic Exploration
GO Theory
Mental Moves
Social Moves
Strategic Moves

In the World of Activity Approach, Flow refers to the foundational level of Self, Life, and Mind, representing the default state of action, experience, and consciousness.

The World of Activity Toolkit (v1, 2025) also includes the Life Coordinate (v2) framework, which incorporates the key terms “Lifeflow” and “Life Focus.”

The diagram above uses two thematic schemas: 1) the Attach — Container — Detach schema, and 2) the Subject — Potential (Actual) — Object schema. These correspond to two perspectives of the Ecological Practice approach.

Lifeflow: The Attach — Container — Detach schema

The Attach — Container — Detach schema represents the basic model of the Ecological Practice approach.

If we repeat the above basic model, we see a Lifeflow, which is the short name of a metaphor: “Life as a continuous flow.”

I use “continuous flow” as a metaphor to describe life and experience. This metaphor is inspired by William James’ metaphor “Stream of Thought.”

What James emphasized was the Subjective Life. I follow this metaphor and directly use Life as a continuous flow to describe a person’s subjective experience of their own life. You can’t use a knife to cut a stream. You can only use a container to contain it.

Life Focus: The Subject — Potential(Actual) — Object Schema

The pair of concepts “Subject-Object” is commonly used in social science. From the perspective of the Ecological Practice approach, the primary aspect of the “Subject — Object” relationship lies in the transformation between Potential (action opportunities) and Actual (actions).

In addition, I use the term Focus to describe the Thing.

The basic unit of the Ecological Practice approach is the interaction and relationship between Person and Thing.

Potential: The possible opportunities for action that a person could have with a particular thing.
Actual: What a person actually does with that thing. Act 1 and Act 2 refer to two types of actions.
Focus: The thing the person is acting with.

In the “Flow — Focus — Center — Circle” schema, the distinction between Flow and Focus lies in the emergence of a specific thematic space, which serves as the vehicle of the focus. The thematic space can be inspired by a concrete object or an abstract idea.

In this way, we see the “Flow — Focus — Center — Circle” schema and the Life Coordinate (v2) framework working together.

Center

“Center” connects to the following books:

Project Engagement
Inside, Outside, and Projectivity
Strategic Moves
Center Development
Wonder and Wander
Center, Circle, and Genidentity

These books also belong to the Creative Life Theory family. On October 6, 2023, I edited a book draft titled Creative Life Theory: Building A Knowledge Enterprise.

I used the diagram shown above on the right as a sign of Creative Life Theory (v2.0). It also inspired me to structure the book.

Part 1: The Introduction
Part 2: The Sandglass
Part 3: The Circle
Part 4: The Square
Part 5: The Engagement

The Sandglass refers to the S-T-O Tendency, which is a core idea of the Creative Life Curation framework. It highlights three keywords of the framework:

Subjectification: turning the world into a person’s experience
Crystallize Thematically: discovering a match between individual life themes and collective cultural themes
Objectification: turning the person’s experience into artifacts for the world

The Creative Life Curation framework is included as part of the World of Activity Toolkit (v1, 2025) and is also included in the book draft, GO Theory: Genidentity, Opportunity, and World of Activity.

The Circle refers to the “Knowledge Center,” which serves as the container for Knowledge Engagement. From the perspective of the Ecological Practice approach, the concept of “Knowledge Center” is an application of the Attach — Container—Detach schema. You can find more details in TALE: A Possible Theme called “Knowledge Center”.

For the Creative Life theory (v2.0) and the Knowledge Engagement project, a “Knowledge Center” is also a Collaborative Project, too. In this way, the Project Engagement approach, inspired by Activity Theory, was adopted to support the Circle metaphor.

Strategic Moves, Project Engagement, and Inside, Outside, and Projectivity are part of the Project Engagement approach.

Between 2022 and 2023, I worked on a network of knowledge centers. Eventually, I developed the “Center Development” framework.

If we summarize my journey from 2019 to 2023 in a single model, we can see a developmental trajectory of “PRACTICE” in the diagram below.

The above model uses five movements to represent situations I experienced in the past years. Let’s use Curativity Center as an example.

March 2019: Single Theme (the theme of “Curativity” and Curativity Theory)
June 2020: Single Project (the Knowledge Curation project)
June 2022: Single Knowledge Center (Curativity Center)
Sept 2022: Single Knowledge Enterprise (the “Curativity” knowledge enterprise)
Sept 2023: Single Value Circle (a network of knowledge centers)

The model covers a transformation process between “theme,” “project,” “center,” “enterprise,” and “circle.” I’d like to claim that this is the seed of the “Flow-Focus-Center-Circle” schema.

The Center Development toolkit was part of the World of Activity Toolkit (v1, 2025). It was also featured in GO Theory: Genidentity, Opportunity, and World of Activity.

In June 2025, I closed the Wonder and Wander project and created the Theory as Enterprise framework.

The “Theory as Enterprise” theoretical framework consists of two components:

1) Map: a three-layer map that describes the structure of an evolving thematic enterprise, incorporating the Evolving Knowledge Enterprise model as one of the layers;
2) Model: drawing on core concepts from the Ecological Practice Approach, a four-level framework was developed to explain the dynamic complexity of an evolving knowledge enterprise.

The diagram below represents these ideas. The Map appears on the right side, while the Model is on the left.

The separation between Theme, Map, and Model allows the “Theory as Enterprise” framework to remain open and developmental as a thematic enterprise. While I use the Ecological Practice Approach to build a four-level Model, others are welcome to adopt different theoretical approaches to construct alternative Models.

The more frameworks added to the Model section, the richer the “Theory as Enterprise” thematic enterprise becomes. This openness is a core principle of the framework itself.

In my recent trip to Fuzhou and Homecoming, the “Theory as Enterprise” framework was expanded into a general approach: the Thematic Enterprise Approach, which serves as a tool to explore “Tiny Culture” and Cultural Innovation.

Creative Self and World of Activity

The World of Activity model can thus be understood as a new hierarchical structure for comprehending Creative Life. This perspective resonates strongly with Howard E. Gruber’s notion of the Self as Center, which views the self not as a fixed point but as a mobile center of synthesis and intention.

Howard Ernest Gruber (November 6, 1922 — January 25, 2005) was an American psychologist and a pioneer of the psychological study of creativity. His ideas and career deeply influenced my creative trajectory between 2020 and 2025.

One of the central concepts in Gruber’s Evolving Systems Approach to Creative Work (1974, 1989) is the Network of Enterprises — a framework I adopted from 2019 to 2021 to manage my own creative activities. In 2022, I transitioned to the Knowledge Center model, which eventually evolved into the Evolving Knowledge Enterprise approach.

A central issue in both Gruber’s approach and my own exploration of different ways to manage creative work is the hierarchy of creative life. Though we use different terms, we share the same focus on its hierarchical aspect.

Gruber offered a distinctive view of human progress — not as a linear trajectory, but as an expanding, multidimensional web of great complexity with no fixed or stable center.

In such a fluid and ever-evolving world, how can a creative individual orient themselves toward the future?

Gruber suggested that the answer lies in seeing the Self as the center.

Because “outward” is only defined with regard to some particular starting point, some developmental lines might seem to be moving back toward previously developed areas. Thus the web of human knowledge and experience would grow without limit both larger and denser. In such a web would the exploring person be lost?

Not subjectively, or at least not always, for although there is no real center, she would often feel herself to be at the center.

But then, how does one maintain this central sense of Self while moving into uncertain futures?

Gruber implied that this requires an active process of interpretation and reorientation. The creative individual must continuously make sense of the anticipations of others, read signals from the evolving world, and frame difficulties as opportunities — thus sustaining a purposeful sense of direction amid complexity.

This insight resonates with the modern condition of knowledge workers, who must often navigate ambiguous futures not by relying on external maps, but by curating internal coherence — treating the Self not as a fixed point, but as a mobile center of synthesis and intention.

In a complex, evolving creative world without a stable center, individuals maintain continuity and direction by actively interpreting their surroundings and reorienting themselves. Building on this, the World of Activity model offers a concrete framework to further develop and operationalize the notion of the Self as Center.

Gruber’s approach remains largely within the realm of psychological realism, focusing on the internal evolution of a creative individual over time. His analysis draws heavily from biographical case studies, emphasizing the history of ideas within the individual.

By contrast, the sociological perspective on Center Development offers not only an internal view of development but a contextual one, recognizing both creative life and thematic enterprise as socially embedded and ecologically structured.

In this view, the “Center” refers not only to a Mental Focus within a creative individual’s mind but also to a Knowledge Center (or Creative Center) situated in the person’s real-life activities, both personal and social.

In Chapter 6 of Homecoming, I introduced a special form of World of Activity: Internet: Digital Engagement @ World of Activity.

Through this case study, I identified a deep structure underlying the dynamic development of Worlds of Activity. This higher-order structure, which I call Significant Social Forms, represents social forms that organize and contain diverse types of behavior. One such social form relates to sociotech development, which I call the Sociotech Landscape.

The Sociotech Landscape encompasses four layers:

Technology — Application — Behavior — Culture

Underlying Technology — the underlying technical infrastructure
Application tools — platforms, software, and utilities that leverage the technology
Behavioral patterns — the ways individuals and groups interact with and through these tools
Sociotech culture — the norms, values, and collaborative practices emerging around these technologies

The rise, development, and diffusion of emerging technology-driven sociotech infrastructures require a period of exploration, trial-and-error, and normalization across these four layers.

The “Technology — Application — Behavior — Culture” schema inspired me to think about other Significant Social Forms.

On the other side, I used six Basic Ecological Forms to analyze my life course across different developmental stages.

Before — After
Slow — Fast
Up — Down
Left — Right
Inside — Outside
Center — Periphery

In chapter 10, the Conclusion of Homecoming, I expand my insights into a new framework called the Ecological Dynamics of the World of Activity, which incorporates opposite states to balance the discoveries of my case study.

Before-After: Boundary Dynamics (Expansion, Maintenance, Contraction)
Slow-Fast: Rhythm Dynamics (Acceleration, Steady, Deceleration)
Up-Down: Generational Dynamics (Prefigurative, Cofigurative, Postfigurative)
Left-Right: Relational Dynamics (Intimacy, Attention, Distance)
Inside-Outside: Positional Dynamics (Initiation vs. Participation vs. Observation)
Center-Periphery: Genidentity Dynamics (Curation — Adaptation — Separation)

Each dimension presents three typical states of dynamic change, offering a value-neutral lens to understand the complex patterns of growth, adaptation, and transformation. Rather than promoting a simplistic ideology of linear progress, this framework highlights the interplay between environmental conditions, personal situations, and strategic choices.

After publishing Homecoming, I used the Ecological Formism schema to organize my ideas about Significant Social Forms, Basic Ecological Forms, and my previous work on the Social Landscape framework. The outcome is a new model, see the diagram below.

The new model incorporates the Social Landscape framework and the latest ideas on social forms. I now use the model to build a hierarchical structure of the Social Landscape framework. Four layers are named as follows:

Variant: Social Norms
Quasi-invariant: Significant Social Forms
Invariant: Basic Ecological Forms
Invariant Set: Social Landscape

This is also significant progress for the Ecological Formism framework, as it offers a solution to connect embodied cognition with social cognition.

Return to the Ecological Formism Framework

As mentioned earlier, the “Flow-Focus-Center-Circle” schema was based on the “Ecological Formism” schema. In this section, let’s return to the Ecological Formism Framework.

The Ecological Formism Framework was introduced as a component of an integrated ecological approach to social cognition in December 2023 and was presented in Social Moves: The Attachance Approach to Social Cognition.

The Ecological Formism framework is an epistemological framework that organizes several units of analysis based on four types of knowing.

The “Variant - Quasi-invariant - Invariant - Invariant Set” schema defines these four types of knowing.

The v1.0 framework (Dec 2023) considers the following five levels of analysis:

Concept
Frame for Work
Thematic Space Theory (TST)
Activity
Affordance

The “Concept” level is about the transformation between themes and concepts.

The “Frame for Work” level is about the emergence of knowledge frameworks.

The TST level (the “Thematic Space” level) is a middle level that connects “Activity” and “Frame for Work”.

The “Activity” level is about different patterns of actions.

The “Affordance” level is related to the Operation level of Activity.

The V1.1 framework (Jan 2024) adds “Diagram” as a unit of analysis, which was introduced in a book draft titled Creative Diagramming: The Fifth Way of Knowing and Early Discovery.

Now, it is time to develop V1.2 and add the “Flow-Focus-Circle-Center” schema back to the whole family. The Social Landscape model is also featured in the new version. See the diagram below.

The previous versions didn’t consider the subject as a unit of analysis. The “Flow-Focus-Center-Circle” schema now brings the individual subject perspective to the framework. Thus, this “social cognition” framework now includes its subjective component.

Moreover, the new version has a strong middle part, highlighted in color in the diagram, which is built by Thematic Space, World of Activity, and Social Landscape. This idea has been validated in a case study I conducted in March 2025. See the diagram below. More details can be found in A Multi-layered Thematic Map and Project Engagement.

Wow! Version 1.2 is more powerful than the previous versions. While earlier versions focused on knowledge engagement, the new version presents a more general ecological approach to social cognition.

Self, Life, and Mind

In the Preface of Homecoming, I claimed that “This book is about Self, Life, and Mind.”

In fact, the “Self-Life-Mind” schema is a meta-framework I have used since May 2024.

In a recent diagram, I used it to create the landscape of Creative Life Theory (v3.0). See the diagram below.

The “Flow-Focus-Center-Circle” schema sits at the top of the diagram. It links to the “Self” layer, which is related to Ontology and Philosophy.

It seems that the “Flow-Focus-Center-Circle” schema and Homecoming provide a satisfactory solution to explain how a creative self evolves.

The “Flow-Focus-Center-Circle” schema represents a theoretical framework that integrates different layers of existence into a unified model for understanding creative life and activity.

Flow → Experiential Layer: The continuous stream of lived experience
Focus → Consciousness Layer: The intentional structure of awareness
Center → Action Layer: The organizational structure of practical activities
Circle → Social Interaction Layer: The networked relations of collective engagement

Traditional approaches study these layers separately. The “Flow-Focus-Center-Circle” schema reveals their mutual implication. Experience already contains consciousness structures. Consciousness embeds action tendencies. Actions are inherently social. Social interactions manifest individual experiences.

This creates a dynamic system where each layer unfolds from and returns to the others, forming what I call an ecological approach to the evolving creative self and social cognition.

At the “Life” layer, two book drafts — Wonder and Wander and Castle and Forest — offer systematic frameworks for understanding center development and thematic enterprise.

A potential project should be related to the “Mind” layer, which focuses more on mental moves from the perspective of Thematic Space Theory.

v1.0 - September 11, 2025 - 4,765 words