The World of Activity Model: Flow, Focus, Center, and Circle (v1.0, 2025)

Last updated on 17 Sep 2026

A brief introduction to the primary model of the World of Activity approach

by Oliver Ding

September 7, 2025

This is the original Chapter 2 of my 2025 kindle book Homecoming: A Thematic Trip and the World of Activity Approach. It has now been curated into a 2026 possible book: World of Activity: An Ecological Approach to Activity Analysis and Intervention (AAI).

What’s the World of Activity?
The World of Activity Toolkit
Flow, Focus, Center, and Circle
Creative Self as Center
Seven Forms of the World of Activity
The Map of My Father’s World

The concept of World of Activity was born in 2021 during my Career Curation project. At that time, I sought a framework to define “career” in a way that considered both paid work and unpaid work — an approach inspired by my own life course, especially my non-profit activities and intellectual explorations.

What’s the World of Activity?

In the social phenomenologist Alfred Schutz’s work, I found a starting point: his World of Working.

To distinguish covert acts of mere thinking from overt acts requiring bodily movements, Schutz referred to the latter as Working. According to Schutz, Working refers to action in the outer world.

Working, thus, is action in the outer world, based upon a project and characterized by the intention to bring about the projected state of affairs by bodily movements. Among all the described forms of spontaneity that of working is the most important one for the constitution of the reality of the world of daily life… The wide-awake self integrates in its working and by its working its present, past, and future into a specific dimension of time; it realizes itself as a totality in its working acts; it communicates with others through working acts; it organizes the different spatial perspectives of the world of daily life through working acts.

Source: Alfred Schutz on Phenomenology and Social Relations (1970, p.126)

Schutz’s concept captures something essential about human engagement with reality: that our most significant acts are those that project intention into the outer world through bodily action. This “Working” constitutes not just individual activity, but the very fabric of social reality — integrating time, enabling communication, and organizing our spatial experience. However, Schutz’s framework primarily focused on the practical world of daily life, treating other realms like fantasy and dreams as separate sub-worlds within the broader Life-world.

The World of Working is one sub-world within the World of Daily Life, or Life-world. There are other sub-worlds in the Life-world. For example, the worlds of fantasy and dream.

In 2022, when developing my approach to researching creative life, I recognized that Schutz’s distinction between different sub-worlds needed to be reconsidered. For creative individuals, the worlds of fantasy and dreams are not merely separate realms — they are significant sources of creative inspiration that actively inform and shape their outer-world projects. A novelist’s dream becomes the seed of a story; an artist’s fantasy transforms into a painting; a theorist’s imaginative leap leads to new frameworks.

This insight led me to coin the term “World of Activity” to capture a more integrated understanding of creative engagement. While Schutz’s “Working” emphasizes the projection of intention into the outer world through bodily movements, my “Activity” encompasses the fuller spectrum of creative engagement — including how inner experiences of imagination and reflection actively contribute to outer-world projects.

The “World of Activity” thus represents both a continuation and an expansion of Schutz’s insights. It maintains his emphasis on intentional, project-based engagement with reality, but recognizes that for creative individuals, the boundaries between inner and outer worlds are more porous and dynamic than his framework suggests.

In Creative Life Theory, the “World of Activity” refers to the world of a person’s all working activities within their life course.

From the perspective of the Ecological Practice Approach, the “World of Activity” can be understood in two complementary ways: as a large life container, where we can discover the structure and patterns of development of life activities; and as a thematic space, where we can curate a set of relevant knowledge elements together.

As a large life container, every person’s World of Activity is fundamentally bounded by what phenomenology terms “givenness” (Gegebenheit) — those aspects of existence that present themselves to consciousness as already-there, prior to our choosing or willing. Drawing on this insight and inspired by Chinese philosophical imagery, I identify four fundamental givens:

Birth — the temporal beginning. Literally, birth marks the start of life, family formation, lineage continuation, and social participation. Metaphorically, it represents the “starting state” from which all activity unfolds.
Death— the temporal horizon. Literally, death defines the endpoint of life, influencing healthcare, cultural legacies, and societal structures. Metaphorically, it represents the “ending state” that frames urgency and purpose within the World of Activity.
Heaven — the upper spatial and conceptual boundary. Literally, it refers to the heights humans can reach; metaphorically, it includes language, culture, symbolic systems, and thought — the abstract dimensions we are immersed in upon entering a World of Activity.
Earth — the lower spatial and material boundary. Literally, it refers to the ground we inhabit; metaphorically, it encompasses ecology, environment, and material conditions — the concrete circumstances shaping every action.

These four dimensions of givenness — Birth, Death, Heaven (Language), and Earth (Environment) — define the “boundaries” of the World of Activity. They are not chosen but inherited conditions that set the stage for human action. Yet within these very boundaries lie the openings for creativity. While we cannot choose the circumstances of our birth or the language we first acquire, we can choose how to engage with them in inventive and transformative ways.

Although these givens define the boundary of everyone’s World of Activity, inside this life container, there are diverse forms of the World of Activity. Since 2022, the dynamics and complexity inside the World of Activity have led me on a creative journey. This book is part of the journey’s recent development.

The World of Activity Toolkit

In June 2025, I curated several newly developed knowledge frameworks to develop the World of Activity Toolkit. See the diagram below.

The toolkit currently includes:

The World of Activity Model (v1, 2025)
The Life Coordinate Framework (v2, 2023)
The Center Development Toolkit (v1, 2025)
The “Aion-Chronos-Kairos” Schema
The Creative Thematic Curation Framework
The Creative Identity Engagement Framework
The Thematic Identity Curation Framework

In this book, I mainly focus on the World of Activity Model, also known as the Flow-Focus-Center-Circle Schema.

Flow, Focus, Center, and Circle

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.

Appendix 1 Four Looks at the World of Activity Approach uses the Flow — Focus — Center — Circle schema to reflect on the historical development of the World of Activity approach, providing an engaging self-referential story.

Creative Self as Center

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.

Let’s return to the “Flow — Focus — Center — Circle” schema:

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

Together, the first four terms define four types of creative elements within the World of Activity, with “World of Activity” itself representing the encompassing whole. The framework also describes how these elements interact dynamically to generate new creative possibilities.

Seven Forms of the World of Activity

As mentioned earlier, I applied the World of Activity approach to reflect my 2015 autobiography and my situational experiences in Fuzhou. I used the “Flow — Focus — Center — Circle” schema to discuss each stage of my life journey. Eventually, I discovered seven distinct forms of “World of Activity,” corresponding to different developmental stages of life.

Hometown: Primordial Situatedness @ World of Activity
Alien Land: Geographical Expansion @ World of Activity
Domain: Professional Development @ World of Activity
Internet: Digital Engagement @ World of Activity
Foreign Land: Cultural Reconstruction @ World of Activity
Inheritance: Generative Anticipation @ World of Activity
Homecoming: Spatio-temporal Emergence of the World of Activity

What struck me most profoundly was how these seven forms, initially extracted from my particular biographical trajectory, began to suggest universal patterns. They could be generalized beyond my individual case to serve as reference points for understanding how the World of Activity evolves across different life stages and contexts.

What emerged from this analysis was not just personal insight, but a methodological discovery. Using my 2015 autobiography, A Freesoul, as test material, I found that the World of Activity analysis method could illuminate patterns that remained invisible when viewing life experiences in purely chronological terms.

Consider the dual-center structure that appears consistently across multiple phases: from the childhood pairing of home and thematic object, through the academic period’s coursework and interest community, to the professional phase’s survival center and development center division. This structural continuity, even as content radically transformed, hints at deeper organizing principles in human development.

Most significantly, the analysis revealed how World of Activity maintains structural continuity even as it undergoes radical content transformation. The persistent dual-center organization, the cyclical relationship between stability and exploration, the role of circles in supporting both individual development and social contribution — these patterns suggest deeper principles of human development that the World of Activity framework is uniquely positioned to illuminate.

Let’s unpack each form of the World of Activity one by one. [More details can be found in Homecoming.]

The Map of My Father’s World

In the first chapter of A Freesoul, I shared three significant memories from my childhood: my father, my father’s maps, and Peifeng Academy.

I was born in 1974 in a small village called Pengdun, which is about 12 miles from Jianyang, a small town near the Wuyi Mountains in northern Fujian (note 1). My father worked as the village administrator, responsible for accounting. Later, he moved to Jianyang to join the county’s economic affairs office. Following that, he took charge of several township enterprises, including a tea farm and tea-processing facility, as well as a public water plant.

When revisiting the autobiography I wrote ten years ago, I suddenly realized that the seed of the World of Activity had already been planted in the section about my father’s maps.

In my childhood home, there was a large, bright red lacquered cabinet with intricate carvings. It was a great source of joy for me. Inside, my father kept the travel maps he brought back from his trips and some of his favorite books.

As a young boy, I loved opening the cabinet doors, pulling out the bottom drawer, and taking out the maps my father had treasured for years. The only maps I still clearly remember are those of Suzhou and Wuxi — two cities he had visited during his youth and kept as souvenirs. He traveled to Beijing, Shanghai, Suzhou, Wuxi, Hangzhou, and Nanjing, but never beyond those places. Although my father seldom took these maps out to look at, I could sense how deeply he cherished these keepsakes from the Jiangnan region.

As I grew older, I had the opportunity to travel extensively and developed a passion for exploration. In 2003, I visited Suzhou and imagined following my father’s footsteps. Beyond the old gardens depicted on those vintage maps, I saw a city transformed — with the Suzhou New District, the Singapore Industrial Park sprouting like new wings, the then-world-leading company UTStarcom, and BenQ, a brand championing joyful technology. While my father’s vision was forever locked within the small drawer holding the old Suzhou map, my vision of Suzhou was far broader than just a few gardens.

My father could never have imagined that I would travel so far, nor does he know how much further I will go. The unknown world now beyond his imagination, yet my desire for the unknown will always be kindled by those old maps of Suzhou.

My father died before I wrote the autobiography. His World of Activity has been permanently closed. His world — the places he could reach, the maps he treasured — defines the boundaries of his life course. For him, those cities and the journeys were the full extent of his lived experience.

In contrast, my own World of Activity has expanded far beyond those limits, both geographically and conceptually. The maps that once contained my father’s world now serve as a springboard for my own exploration of unknown territories — physical, intellectual, and cultural.

This contrast highlights a fundamental insight of the World of Activity approach: each person’s World of Activity is shaped by what they can engage with, influence, and imagine. It is not fixed but evolves as we move through life, driven by curiosity and the expanding boundaries of our experience.

As the World of Activity model shows, each person’s World of Activity could connect with others through shared focuses, centers, and circles. My father’s maps — what I now call Thematic Objects — have traveled from his World of Activity to mine.

Ten years ago, I didn’t use the term World of Activity in A Freesoul. However, I was already reflectively conveying the message, based on practice.

Ten years later, I reflected on the autobiography and my life course in a theory-based manner. I invite you to join me as we explore the unfolding journey through the seven forms of the World of Activity.

Notes

Pengdun (彭墩), about 12 miles from Jianyang (建阳), is a small town near the Wuyi Mountains (武夷山脉) in northern Fujian (福建).

v1.0 - September 7, 2025 - 3,332 words

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