Strategic Exploration: You can’t swim in the same river twice

And you are a different swimmer every time you take a dive

Getting in the habit of recycling what you learn opens new possibilities for further creative development. Source: Unsplash

The “Thematic Conversation Project” that I’ve come to share with

Oliver Ding

prompts me to continue the Strategic Exploration work and discover different possibilities to make my exploration meaningful.

Thematic Conversation project about “Strategic Exploration”

I have to thank Oliver for summarizing all of this into a diagram so well! It helped put things into perspective and move to the next part. So far, I’ve used a few methods of Building Meaning that coincide with the different dimensions highlighted by Oliver for our Thematic Space:

1. Diagramming — Meta
2. Storytelling — Thinking
3. Collaborative Learning — Doing

In the previous post, I touched on the connections between Strategic Exploration and Strategic Design (more concretely, the role as Strategic Designer). Still, I’ve left out Creation since it was not crystalized enough as a conscious process yet. But now, looking back at the Field of Meta-Learning, it’s becoming clearer that some of the drivers for Creation are hidden in plain sight.

One particular activity that I’ve been experimenting with since the start of 2023 is Decluttering, which proved to be an extremely powerful boost in productivity. Decluttering happens mostly at the Doing level (specifically on the “Working” side) as I begin to preserve or channel energy into more relevant activities. Decluttering helps me achieve two main objectives:

1. Make Space for learning
2. Explore different modes of Creation

Declutter is not a way of learning, but it can be used as a method of Creation by recycling mental waste, which is the addition I want to make to the diagram. Waste puts, in contrast, unmediated narratives between Self-Development and Creation. As displayed in the previous diagram, they are mediated through the elements in the Field of Meta-Learning.

But I want to entertain an ambitious way: the possibility of Building Meaning out of Waste.

In other words, it is possible to recycle certain knowledge and make Creation and Self-Development emergent in the Meta-Learning field as yet another layer of the previous diagram.

Why is this an important step to continuing the journey?

For now, it is necessary to consider the value of Decluttering because it helps put into perspective the circularity of learning, not just as absorption of new knowledge but as revising or refuting certain knowledge.

Also, by integrating Creation and Self-Development and making them emergent throughout the learning process, the whole exploration more flexible and easier to contain as an immediate experience.

Now it is not the time to conclude the meaning of the project since the direction keeps changing and I do not feel bound to my own conceptions. The priority is to experiment openly for a while (Also, I will not make any moves yet to correlate this exploration to the long-term value it may have).

Activating Meta-Learning (another potential layer to the previous diagram)

With Learn, Relearn, and Unlearn, we may create that circularity inside the Meta-Learning Space.

…And cultivate insight for appreciating knowledge to see if that will improve the format of the exploratory journey.

The appreciation of knowledge will be the next focus in Strategic Exploration.