The Concept of "World of Activity"

Last updated on 13 Feb 2026

Birth, Death, Heaven (Language), and Earth (Environment)

by Oliver Ding

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.

In this way, we can define the boundary of the container and curate the items inside.

Four Dimensions of Givenness

The initial diagram of the World of Activity was created on November 18, 2022, in the process of making Creative Life Theory (v1.0). See the diagram below.

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.

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 my recent Kindle book Homecoming: A Thematic Trip and the World of Activity Approach, I mainly focus on the World of Activity Model, also known as the “Flow-Focus-Center-Circle” schema.

As mentioned earlier, 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.

Now, let’s see the landscape of the World of Activity approach in a large diagram.

The Landscape of the World of Activity Approach

Based on the “Variant — Quasi-invariant — Invariant — Invariant Set” schema, I organize knowledge frameworks that are considered members of the World of Activity into a hierarchical system.

Invariant / Basic Forms: 1 (World of Activity)
Invariant Set / Frames: 1 (World of Life)
Quasi-invariant / Derived Forms: 7
Variant / Frameworks: 10 examples

It is not possible to display all variants within a diagram. The diagram below shows the hierarchical structure of the knowledge system with examples.

As a hierarchical system, it is an open structure. While Invariant / Basic Forms and Invariant Set / Frames represent a single, stable element, Quasi-invariant / Derived Forms and Variant / Frameworks are dynamic and changeable.

D1: The “Theory-Practice-End-Means” Schema

The “Theory-Practice-End-Means” schema can be seen as a Derived Form of the Basic Form of World of Activity: the “Birth — Death — Heaven — Earth” schema.

Heaven → Theory
Earth → Practice
Birth → Means
Death → End

As an independent knowledge element, the fundamental meaning of the “Theory-Practice-End-Means” schema can be examined as follows:

The four thematic areas are associated with the following gaps:

The THEORY — PRACTICE Gap
The INDIVIDUAL — COLLECTIVE Gap
The END — MEANS Gap
The THEME — CONCEPT Gap

These issues have guided my creative journey over the past several years, shaping my approach to knowledge discovery and conceptual development.

Further details are discussed in Castle and Forest: A Metaphor for the Contemporary Knowledge Ecosystem.

A Derived Form can generate many Frameworks, including their Situational Diagrams. A major application of the Theory-Practice-End-Means schema is the Knowledge Discovery Canvas (D1F1).

While the Theory-Practice-End-Means schema defines the four thematic areas, other aspects of the canvas are defined by other themes such as the “Enter — Exit” pair and the “Individual — Collective” pair.

The canvas also features two nested squares, dividing the thematic space into two sub-spaces: INNER space and OUTER space. For Developing Tacit Knowledge, the INNER space is all about personal knowing activities while the OUTER space is related to social interactions.

More details can be found in [Frame for Work] The “Theory-Practice-End-Means” Schema.

D2: The Universal Reference Model

The Universal Reference Model was initially created on November 11, 2022. A week later, on November 18, the same diagram was reused in the context of Creative Life Theory, under the name “World of Activity.” While the diagram content is identical in both cases, the naming reflects different applications.

It is the same diagram in both cases. However, while the World of Activity emphasizes the “Birth — Death — Heaven — Earth” schema as four boundaries at the ontological level, the Universal Reference Model is used as an operational tool.

For the Universal Reference Model, the Vertical group refers to the Degrees of Abstraction of “Knowledge”.

The “Theory — Practice” dimension is shared with the following pairs of concepts:

The “Heaven — Earth” dimension
The “Langue — Space” dimension
The “Episteme — Empeiria” dimension

The Horizontal group refers to the Situations of Activity of “Engagement”.

The “Means — End” dimension is shared with the following pairs of concepts:

The “Birth — Death” dimension
The “Attach — Detach” dimension
The “Self — Other” dimension

An application of the Universal Reference Model is “Knowledge Engagement,” which refers to the creation and curation of knowledge, as shown in the diagram below.

An example of the above canvas is the Landscape of Sociological Knowledge (D2F1).

More details can be found in Diagram: A Universal Reference for Knowledge Engagement.

In 2023, the diagram led to a series of conceptual innovations on several concepts, including the concept of “concept” itself. The landscape of “Theme(Concept)” is presented on the large diagram as an example (D2F2), as shown in the diagram below.

There are two types of Researchers who hold two views of concepts:

Concept-as-Object
Concept-as-Process

There are two types of Actors. They hold two views of themes:

Creative Themes
Situational Themes

The four types of actors and four types of terms form a matrix of meaning.

More details can be found in Themes of Practice: Concept, Activity, and Cognition. I also applied the same method to discuss the conceptS of Mindset, Life(Self), and Context (Mind).

In June 2025, I discovered a deep structure of social practice while reflecting on my early engagement with Web 2.0 in the early 2000s.

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 (SSF), 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 “Significant Social Forms” framework identifies the following schema and uses them to name several deep structures of social life:

SSF in general: [Beginning — End — Language — Environment]
SSF of interpersonal interaction: [Self — Other — Present — Future]
SSF of Sociotech: [Tech — Tool — Culture — Project]
SSF of Cultural Innovation: [Ideation — Validation — Application — Reflection]
SSF of Creative Life: [Whole — Pieces — Solid — Fluid]

The “Beginning — End — Language — Environment” schema is a Derived Form of the Basic Form of the World of Activity: the “Heaven — Earth — Birth — Death” schema.

The “Self — Other—Present—Future” schema was discovered in 2021. Later, it led to the Anticipatory Activity System framework and a book draft titled Advanced Life Strategy.

The “Whole — Pieces — Solid — Fluid” schema was discovered in February 2023, when I created the “Hermeneutics of Creative Life” framework.

The recent development of SSF has focused on two fields: Sociotech and Cultural Innovation. Later, in September, I made the Sociotech Landscape Canvas (D3F1) to further explore it, as shown in the diagram below.

I also created the Frame for Work Canvas (v1, 2025), guided by the “Ideation — Validation — Application — Reflection” schema.

D4: Creative Life Theory (v2.0, v3.0)

While D1 to D3 focus on the boundary of the World of Activity, D4 and the following branches focus on the internal aspects of the World of Activity. D4, especially with a focus on Creative Life Theory (v2.0), initiated this line of exploration in 2023.

The sign below was introduced to represent Creative Life Theory (v2.0) in April 2023. It consists of three elements:

The Square
The Circle
The Sandglass

At that time, I associated these elements with three knowledge frameworks:

The Square: The World of Activity for Knowledge Engagement
The Circle: The Knowledge Center Approach (the Project Engagement approach)
The Sandglass: The S-T-O Tendency (the Creative Thematic Curation framework)

Later, in October 2023, I also used it as a situational model to edit a book draft: Creative Life Theory (v2, book, 2023). The book was divided into five parts:

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

In v2.0 of Creative Life Theory, the concept of the “World of Activity” was considered a core concept of the Creative Course Framework, a meta-framework of Creative Life Theory.

From 2023 to the present, these frameworks have evolved into new versions with advanced development. Moreover, the concept of “World of Activity” was detached from the Creative Course Framework and was understood as an independent concept for further development in 2025.

In June 2025, I curated several newly developed knowledge frameworks into the thematic space of “World of Activity” and formed a toolkit.

The diagram above uses the sign of Creative Life Theory (v2, 2023) to represent the World of Activity Toolkit (v1, 2025), which includes seven sub-frameworks. More details can be found in GO Theory: Chronos Space, Aion Space, and World of Activity.

Two examples of these frameworks are the Creative Life Curation framework (D4F1) and the Aion — Chronos — Karios schema (D4F2).

The Creative Life Curation framework was introduced in my 2022 book draft, Creative Life Curation: Turning Experiences into Meaningful Achievements. Later, I detached the framework from the Creative Life Curation method and turned it into a general framework with a new name: Creative Thematic Curation.

The Creative Thematic Curation Framework explores the concept of “Theme” within the Developmental Project model from the “Self” perspective. More details can be found in World of Activity #5: The Creative Thematic Curation Framework.

The “Aion-Chronos-Kairos” Schema defines three types of spaces for two types of meta-curation: time curation and space curation. They are related to Exploratory Decision-making and Identity Development within the World of Activity.

I also applied four types of Decision Containers — Situation, Project, Journey, and Landscape — to examine the dynamic complexity embedded within these two temporal thematic spaces.

More details can be found in [Frame for Work] The “Aion-Chronos-Kairos”.

The World of Activity Toolkit (v1, 2025) is considered the core of Creative Life Theory (v3.0).

D5: Thematic Room

Starting in May 2024, I worked on a new application of Thematic Space Theory, using the concept of “Thematic Room” to design thematic maps that turn knowledge frameworks into interactive tools for life narrative engagement.

Each thematic map is designed as a museum with many thematic rooms, and users can move between different rooms. In this way, these maps offer a method for mapping moves within the World of Activity.

For example, the diagram below represents 17 Moves in my journey of engaging with Activity Theory using the House of Project Engagement (D5F1).

Each thematic room is constructed around three key elements: Boundary, Symbol, and Key Term.

The seed of this idea is the sign of Creative Life Theory (v2.0), as shown above.

The Square is used to design 12 thematic rooms for the House of Project Engagement. To reflect additional aspects of human life and the social landscape, I introduced various symbols inspired by the Developmental Project Model diagram.

As a Map for strategic narratives and life narrative practices, I use simple words as Key Terms to highlight the uniqueness of each thematic room. There are no strict rules for interpreting these key terms; they are meant to trigger recall, association, and discussion.

More details can be found in World of Activity #3: The House of Project Engagement.

While my early work focuses on knowledge engagement, especially transforming knowledge elements into knowledge systems, my recent work expands this focus to three-dimensional space: building a knowledge enterprise.

The “Mental — Social — Material” schema and related models have been developed to capture the new complexity beyond pure cognitive mental work.

The “Mental — Social — Material” schema is derived from the Evolving Knowledge Enterprise model, which I developed in November 2023. Since then, this schema has been applied to several knowledge projects.

Its full version, the Evolving Knowledge Enterprise model (D6F1), is shown below.

More details can be found in [Frame for Work] The “Mental — Social — Material” Schema.

The “Mental — Social — Material” schema also relates to three concepts: Thematic Spaces, Project Engagement, and Social Landscapes.

The map below, titled the Multi-layered map of Project Engagement (D6F2), integrates these concepts.

It was developed for a case study about Supportance-based Development. More details can be found in [Frame for Work] A Multi-layered Thematic Map and Project Engagement.

D7: The “Weaving” Ecological Metaphor

The “Weaving” Ecological Metaphor was inspired by a recent conversation with AI.

I recently shared five diagrams and the stories behind them with AI and asked it, “Do These Five Diagrams Present a Meaningful Creative Journey?”

At the end of the report about AI’s responses, I felt emotionally encouraged by ChatGPT’s closing words:

Thus, the five diagrams are not just outputs but landmarks of a developmental journey, showing how lived experience, theoretical reflection, and visual curation weave together into an ongoing Creative Life.

It inspired me to revisit a creative theme I made in 2023. See the thematic card below.

From June 24 to July 3, 2023, I had a wonderful 10-day road trip with my wife and two little sons.

During the busy trip, I couldn’t take detailed notes. To record exciting moments, I used short, meaningful keywords to capture some insights while taking pictures. These short, meaningful keywords are Situational Themes of my life.

After returning to Houston, I listed 21 situational themes of the trip and made 21 thematic cards. One of them is “Weaving the Mind.”

On June 27, 2023, we visited the Museum of the Cherokee Indian. I saw a large unfinished basket that represents the Cherokee weaving history. I immediately recalled my childhood in a small village where people wove baskets. I also thought about Tim Berners-Lee’s 1999 book Weaving the Web: The Original Design and Ultimate Destiny of the World Wide Web.

I realized that there was an interesting difference in spatial structure between a basket and a web, even though they share the same weaving technique. A basket is a Container, while a web is a Network.

So, I came up with a new theme: Weaving the Mind. I used it as a metaphor and associated it with the Curated Mind project. More specifically, I wanted it to represent my own approach to developing an interdisciplinary epistemological framework.

Later, in 2024, I released the “Weaving the Mind” thematic card on Possible Press with a thematic brief.

The reflection inspired me to develop a new creative theme:

Weaving the Frame

It anticipates a new possible project: conducting a case study on developing a social science framework.

A related idea is the Spiral of Creative Work (D7F1). It refers to the “Whole — Pieces — Solid — Fluid” schema, which I mentioned above.

The “Whole — Pieces — Solid — Fluid” schema was discovered in February 2023, when I created the “Hermeneutics of Creative Life” framework.

This idea also highlights the “Ecological Metaphor” method for developing Thematic Space Theory, especially for creation of concepts and knowledge frameworks. In March 2024, I used the method to curate a series of knowledge frameworks around the basic form of “Creative Dialogue.”

More details can be found in Mapping Creative Dialogue (book, v1, 2024).

F0: World of Life

The concept of “World of Activity” takes the individual subject perspective. It describes what a person sees from their viewpoint.

Now, we treat the “World of Activity” as the “Invariant”; then we need to give a name to the “Invariant Set.”

Finally, I named it “World of Life,” which refers to the network of connected people’s Worlds of Activity.

The “World of Life” is similar to the “Circle” in the “Flow — Focus — Center — Circle” schema. Both can refer to the broader context of a person’s life.

Creative Engagement with Givenness

In the Introduction of Homecoming, I highlight the idea of “Creative Engagement with Givenness” at the end.

Drawing on Maruyama’s ideas on deviation-amplifying systems, creativity researcher Howard Gruber once observed, “Creative people commit themselves to creative tasks. In other words, they hope to make some change in the sum of human knowledge and experience… when deviations occur, they are welcomed and the goal is to explore and elaborate them: They are made a part of the creative person’s hoped-for something new under the sun. Because deviations always occur, the choice is always there to be made.”

From my reflection on early adolescence, we can expand Gruber’s ideas further. People who lead creative lives differ from others in a fundamental way: in their creative engagement with givenness.

My adolescent experience in Fuzhou demonstrates how creative individuals can simultaneously engage with multiple dimensions of givenness. In doing so, they transform apparent constraints into generative resources.

The Cape of Good Hope Poetry Society and my cassette Crossing the River of Dream represent active creative engagement with linguistic inheritance. Rather than passively accepting established poetic forms, I participated in the broader cultural movement to expand Chinese poetic expression. Poetry became the vehicle for transforming the given language into a personal artistic statement, contributing to what would later emerge as thematic enterprises that connect individual creativity to collective cultural evolution.

The Min River system became more than a transportation route — it became a teacher. The concepts of upstream and downstream, knowledge inheritance and knowledge sharing, the convergence of many streams into one great flow — these ideas that would later become central to my theoretical work were first discovered through creative dialogue with the river’s natural patterns.

Interestingly, my recent theoretical exploration also resonates with these two types of creative engagement. My research on the Concept–Diagram connection addresses the givenness of language, while the Ecological Practice Approach — also known as Container Thinking — which focuses on identifying and acting upon potential opportunities offered by environments, corresponds to the second type.

We can find a similar pattern in the evolution of the World of Activity:

I often engage with meta-words as concepts for building knowledge frameworks or designing thematic maps and canvases.
I also explore spatial affordances to design maps, canvases, and develop mapping methods.
The meta-curation framework, including Time-curation and Space-curation, is about Time and Space.
In the Homecoming book, I introduce a special form of World of Activity: Inheritance: Generative Anticipation.

What a surprise discovery!

v1.0 - September 14, 2025 - 3,980 words