Methods

Throughout this process, I found myself frequently drawing on the Revisiting–Rebuilding (RR) strategy to advance various knowledge frameworks — returning to earlier work, reactivating dormant concepts, and rebuilding them from a more developed theoretical standpoint.

The present case study documents six weeks of systematic development in which a single structural discovery — the Double Square diagram — served as the engine of an entire theoretical expansion.

If Lake 42 documents the Generative Confluence pattern — the development of Creative Life Theory v3.0–v3.1 through the convergence of multiple streams — then the development of ACS from v1.0 to v1.1, across January and February 2026, documents a different pattern: Spatial Heuristics.

This collection of essays is built around exactly that missing dimension. It begins not with Possible Selves but with Past Selves — the creative identities a person has actually enacted across the succession of projects, roles, and engagements that constitute a creative life.

An experimental exploration of an overlooked creative cognitive process.

This article, originally written on October 15, 2024, was featured in my 2024 book draft, Strategic Moves: Mapping Knowledge Engagement and Structural Choice.

Andrew Abbott introduces a typology of methods in his 2004 book Methods of Discovery: Heuristics for the Social Sciences.

I use Slow Cognition to describe my favorite methods such as Howard E. Gruber’s evolving systems approach to creative work.