Weave the Life: The Life-as-Activity Approach (v4.0) and Personal Knowledge Ecology (Possible Book, v1, 2026)

Table of Contents

by Oliver Ding

April 30, 2026

I began studying Activity Theory around 2015. In 2020, I worked on the Activity U project, which resulted in two book drafts and the initial development of the Project Engagement approach. From 2021 to 2022, I created the Anticipatory Activity System (AAS) framework and applied it to explore life strategy. In 2023, I designed the Activity Analysis & Intervention (AAI) Program. In 2024, I revisited and refined the Project Engagement approach, developing version 3.1. In November 2025, I released the book draft Developmental Projects: The Project Engagement Approach to Adult Development, marking a significant milestone — and updating the approach to v4.0.

Yet the Project Engagement approach is only one among many activity-centered creations I have developed over the years. How to curate these diverse knowledge frameworks — diagrams, models, canvases, theoretical approaches — into a coherent whole has been an ongoing challenge.

In September 2025, I decided to reuse "Life as Activity" to name my activity-centered creations. This idea dates back to 2020, when, during the Activity U project, I developed version 0.3 of the Life-as-Activity framework. Since my primary interest lies in individual development and creative life, I use Life-as-Activity to highlight my direction of exploration in the field of activity-centered social theories.

In my own work, I treat Life as encompassing both individual life and social life. While I emphasize individual creative agency, many of my frameworks also address the structural dimensions of social life, since understanding these complexities is essential for identifying potential opportunities for action.

I used "Weave-the-Life" to name a Weave diagram for the Life-as-Activity approach in October 2025. Later, on April 26, 2026, I released the Weave-the-Life Model (v3.0), which also marked the v4.0 of the Life-as-Activity approach.

In this book, "Weave-the-Life" also refers to a new model of the actor, serving as a shared foundation across my theoretical enterprises, including the Life-as-Activity Approach, the Anticipatory Cultural Sociology (ACS) approach, and the Strategic Developmental Psychology (SDP) approach.

This possible book re‑presents the recent work through a unified symbolic system — the Weave form — and, for the first time, organizes the full territory of the Life‑as‑Activity Approach (v4.0) around the concept of Personal Knowledge Ecology. 

This is the TOC of the book. More details can be found in Introduction to Weave the Life: The Life-as-Activity Approach (v4.0) and Personal Knowledge Ecology.

This book is organized into five parts, each taking "Weave" as its organizing theme — but each meaning something different by it.

Introduction

The Introduction outlines the background of this book. It presents the Activity—Enterprise—Attachance triad as the theoretical principle of the Life-as-Activity Approach (v4.0), developed through the triadic method inherited from Activity Theory's predecessors. It also introduces the Create—Curate—Weave triad, establishing Weave-the-Life as a new model of the actor that serves multiple theoretical enterprises. The remaining parts of the book address two long-standing foci: Adult Development and Theoretical Activity. After revisiting earlier work on developing tacit knowledge, the Introduction proposes Personal Knowledge Ecology as a new term that integrates these two directions under a single thematic space.

Highlights

• Activity, Enterprise, and Attachance
• Create, Curate, and Weave
• Personal Knowledge Ecology

Full article

Part 1. Weave the Activity

Part 1 presents the theoretical foundations of the Life-as-Activity Approach (v4.0) and its key knowledge frameworks — a comprehensive display of the activity-centered creations developed over many years.

Chapter 1 introduces the Weave-the-Life Framework (v3.0) as a new model of the actor, the Living Coordinate as its dynamic expression, and Attachance as the mechanism of movement between thematic spaces. It also introduces the World of Life model (the HLS Framework v3.0) — the social ontology that provides the larger landscape within which all movement takes place. Articles on Attachance and Thematic Space can be found in the Appendix.

Chapters 2–4 offer a full display of the Life-as-Activity Approach (v4.0) as a knowledge system. Chapter 2 organizes the knowledge frameworks from v3.2. Chapter 3 focuses on frameworks related to Project Engagement. Chapter 4 focuses on Enterprise-related frameworks — addressing complexities at a level above the individual project, territory not covered in v3.2.

Chapter 1: Weave the Life (v3.0)

• Life-as-Activity: The Weave-the-Life Framework (v3.0)
• The Living Coordinate Model (2026)
• World of Life: The History{Life[Self(Body)]} Framework (v3.0) — Part 1, Part 2, Part 3
• Weave the Culture: One Meta-Framework and Four Mechanisms of Cultural Development
• Weave-the-Life: A Model of the Actor

Chapter 2: Life-as-Activity (v4.0)

• The Life as Activity Approach (v3.2, 2025)
• The Project Engagement Toolkit (2022)
• The Life-History Topology
• Self-referential Activity
• The Activity Circle (Oliver Ding, 2017)
• The SET Framework
• The Anticipatory Activity System (AAS) Framework

Chapter 3: Project Engagement

• The Landscape of Project Engagement (v3.1, 2024)
• The Concept of "Projectivity"
• Developmental Project Model
• The Concept of "Developmental Project"
• Developmental Projects: The Project Engagement Approach to Adult Development (book, v1, 2025)
• Design-oriented Project Engagement

Chapter 4: Enterprise Development

• The Concept of "Enterprise"
• The Enterprise Development Framework
• The “Theory as Enterprise” Framework (v1, 2025)
• The Cultural Projection Model (2025)
• The Achievement Chain (2022)
• The Indirect Activity Model (2024)
• The Platform-for-Development (P4D) framework

Part 2. Weave the Development

Adult Development has been a sustained focus of this work. In November 2025, the book draft Developmental Projects: The Project Engagement Approach to Adult Development marked a significant milestone in this direction. Part 2 collects new knowledge frameworks and case study articles created from November 2025 to the present.

Chapter 5 introduces several important new theoretical concepts in personal development — including a project-oriented ecology of adult development, Supportive Self-Actualization, the L3D Model, and the concept of Past Selves — opening new research directions for further exploration.

Chapter 6 presents eight case studies of Significant Themes in life development. The Weave-the-System framework brings together three foundational models — the Activity System model, the Developmental Project model, and the AAS framework — and applies them to concrete cases: cutting the flow, blooming the center, becoming a mother, aging and caring, and others.

Chapter 7 focuses on identity development, with particular attention to the recently developed Creative Identity Cascade model.

Chapter 8 brings learning into the scope of the Life-as-Activity Approach as a component of the L3D Model, which has been further developed through Supportive Life Discovery.

Chapter 5: Adult Development

• Toward a Project-Oriented Ecology of Adult Development
• Supportive Self-Actualization as Anticipatory Activity
• The L3D Model: A Knowledge Framework for Supportive Life Discovery
• Revisiting, Rebuilding, Re-engaging with Past Selves

Chapter 6: Significant Themes

• The Significant Themes Framework (2026)
• Cutting the Flow (2026, v1)
• Blooming the Center (2026, v1)
• Rescue the Center (2026, v1)
• Flourishing the Circle (2026, v1)
• Study Abroad and Repatriation (2026, v1)
• Becoming a Mother (2026, v1)
• Inheritance and Transcendence (2026, v1)
• Aging and Caring (2026, v1)
• A Creative Note
• Revisiting and Rebuilding: The Significant Themes Framework (2015–2026)

Chapter 7: Creative Identity Cascade

• Agency Cascade and the Transformation of Self
• Engaging with Others for Developing Anticipated Identity
• The Thematic Identity Curation Framework
• The Creative Identity Engagement Framework

Chapter 8: Learning Landscape

• Learning Landscape: Revisiting from the World of Life Perspective
• Personal Orientation of Cultural Projection
• Cognitive Container of Cultural Projection
• World of Life: Four Negative Frontiers of Knowledge Engagement

Part 3. Weave the Strategy

The Anticipatory Activity System (AAS) Framework is a flagship framework of the Life-as-Activity Approach. First applied to life strategy exploration in 2022, this direction has since developed into Strategic Life Theory (2025) and Strategic Developmental Psychology (SDP, 2026), forming a sustained theoretical enterprise. Part 3 collects recent articles alongside related work from 2025.

Chapter 9 collects articles on Dramatic Life Pattern — the structural configurations that recur across creative lives and can be recognized, named, and strategically engaged. The Creative Watershed and Revisiting–Rebuilding patterns are the primary cases.

Chapter 10 introduces analytical models for ecological action opportunities and several types of action opportunities.

Chapter 11 begins with the House of Project Engagement canvas, designed in 2024 based on Project Engagement v3.1, and its application to life narrative and strategic narrative. This work led to the Mapping Strategic Moves method, whose four themes — Situation, Project, Journey, and Landscape — subsequently developed into the Weave-the-Decision model. The same method later inspired the Weave-the-Strategy model.

Chapter 9: Dramatic Life Pattern

• Toward Dramatic Life Pattern
• Revisiting and Rebuilding: A Journey of Developing a New Practice
• Revisiting and Rebuilding: The LARGE Method (2018-2026)
• A Watershed of Creative Life
• A GAP Project and a Generative Confluence Journey

Chapter 10: Ecological Action Opportunity

• World of Life: Four Positive Frontiers of Project Engagement
• The “Difference — Conversion — Opportunity” Schema
• Creative Life Coordinate (2025)

Chapter 11: Mapping Strategic Moves

• The House of Project Engagement
• The "Mapping Strategic Moves" Method
• Weave the Decision: The “Curativity” Perspective on Decision-making
• Weave the Decision: A Case Study
• The Weave-the-Strategy Framework

Part 4. Weave the Theory

Part 4 turns the analytical lens on theoretical activity itself — the special kind of activity involved in building knowledge frameworks, developing concepts, and curating theoretical enterprises.

Chapter 12 introduces the theoretical platform and the concept of Theoretical Activity, including the Weave-the-Theory framework and the toolkit that supports its use.

The cases collected here focus on the author's own theoretical work over the past several years, including the creative process of developing the Life-as-Activity Approach itself — a direct presentation of a personal knowledge ecology in its actual form. Chapter 13 presents "mini-theory" cases such as individual Dramatic Life Patterns. Chapter 14 presents "grand theory" cases developed over years. Together, they demonstrate that Weave-the-Theory is not only the author's special case: while most people do not develop grand theories, many can benefit from developing small theories about their own lives.

Chapter 12: Theoretical Platform and Theoretical Activity

• The Genidentity of Activity Theory
• The Double Platform Framework
• Creativity, Curativity, and Theoretical Activity

Chapter 13: Weave the "Mini" Theories

• Case Study: Building the Weave-the-Culture Framework
• Weave the Theory: A Case Study of the Revisiting-Rebuilding Practice
• Dramatic Life Pattern: The Watershed I Lived By

Chapter 14: Weave the "Grand" Theories

• Weave the Curativity: When Advancing Dances with Analyzing
• Weave the Theory: A Case Study of the AAS Framework Development
• Weave the Theory: Unfolding the Way of Curation

Part 5. Weave the Method

The Weave knowledge system is a family of diagrams, frameworks, and analytical tools developed between September and December 2025.

At its foundation is the Weave Basic Form: a structure defined by two diachronic dimensions and two synchronic dimensions, whose intersections generate four weave-points.

Every derived framework—Weave-the-Theory, Weave-the-System, Weave-the-Narrative, Weave-the-Culture, and others—is a specific instantiation of this structure. In each case, domain-specific concepts are curated into the four lines and four points, producing a distinct analytical and generative space.

Chapter 15: The Weave Knowledge System

• Weave 42: Building Knowledge Ecologies Across Scales
• The "Weave” Basic Form
• The World of Activity Approach in a large diagram

Appendix

The Weave-the-Life Framework (v3.0) and the Activity—Enterprise—Attachance triad draw on two foundational concepts: Thematic Space and Attachance. Readers can find additional articles on both in the Appendix.

• The Journey of Building Thematic Space Theory
• Thematic Space Theory: An Ecological Approach to Social Cognition
• Building Attachance Theory
• Attachance Theory: The Weave-the-Whole Framework

v1.0 - April 30, 2026 - 1,235 words