Mapping the Domain

Welcome to another episode of Halftime Talks. My name is Rahim Rasul, and you listen to the podcast that recognizes that in the middle of your game of life, whether up by 10 or down by 20, we all need halftime talks to uplift us, to inspire us and challenge us to bring that level of performance you and I both know it’s gonna take to win the game.

Hey, I’d like to welcome you back, you your eyes, your ears, your presence and your total awareness. To another episode of halftime talks, where we just try to elucidate and bring perspective to these ideas. In our previous episode, we talked about the reward of reps, and in this episode, we’re going to take it even further by talking about mapping the domain. I have to admit, this is one of my favorite activities. It’s a thanking man’s game and a system in which we can continue to discover how to navigate and chart keyword chart our way from where we are to where we want to be, and in time, that map becomes obsolete, because we ultimately know the territory like the back of our hand, even as it evolves.

So I hope in this episode you hear a few nuggets, jot down a few notes, and challenge yourself and then your understanding that you currently hold that it could expand its perimeter. So without further ado, we’re going to jump right into this episode. Here we go.

As a serial philosopher and contemplator, I derive a lot of joy in mapping domains. These are these kind of maps that you can use in all occasions. Before I jump into too much specifics, let me ask the rhetorical question is, what value do maps have? What is a map? Typically? Maps are a representation of geographic reality. It expresses landmarks, distance between two things. It shows the back roads, it shows the highways, it shows the streams it strolls, shows the elevation, it shows all of these things and its value, especially if we are not fully entrenched in the air, if we’re not a resident of the area and we don’t know The area like the back of our hand.

Maps become reference tools that allow us to negotiate and navigate the space. For example, I want you to picture where you grew up. I know you know that space like the back of your hand. You know what time to get on the road, and you know what route to take, and you also know alternative routes that can get you to the same space. There isn’t any cognitive load of overthinking how something can be done. You’ve seen it, you’ve lived it. You’ve practiced it. You faced yourself with so many scenarios. If I asked you where your favorite restaurant is, you can give directions off the top of your head.

Now, in contrast to that, I want you to recall a time or imagine one, if there isn’t one that you move to a different home, a different city, a different state, a different country, be it travel or anything, where you have no bearing, no orientation, no compass, awareness of where you are in relationship to anything. You have vague landmarks. You have vague orientation points to give you a general sense of where you are. So when you visit a place, right, and you haven’t fully occupied it, and become a resident, you. Maps are important. Now the analogy that I’m making is that maps are not always geographical.

Maps can represent concepts and domains, and in the same manner that we want to acclimate become a resident, know things like the back of our hands, we must become conceptual cartographers. Now, what does that mean? Conceptual cartography I just made up the term Yes, is taking the time to establish the landmarks in a space. Now these are references that orient you and can help you chart your way through the progressions from where you are to where you want to be. And these maps, let’s not forget that they represent the territory. They show you the terrain where the incline is going to be when you have to go through some bush or forest, versus the highways.

It shows you where you can flow with ease of momentum. And it could also show you where some things you can anticipate, a little bit more friction, tension, pull, traffic, resistance, contrast, but at the same time, we must be able to come back to our Workshop, go into our journal, understand the stimuli that we were faced with. Now to flesh out this idea of maps a little more fully, I myself have been the beneficiary of both explicit and implicit maps. Now my own explicit maps, for example, I’ve mapped out ideas of learning. Now this is helpful to develop a conceptual model, mapping a domain in abstract categories that you face with all the time.

Now, what this has given me and afforded me and can, at the same time afford you, is an understanding that in learning these series of events happen, discomfort overwhelm, questioning why you’re there, questioning your purpose. You you learned just a vague, general sense of overall landmarks, but in the early stage of learning, there’s a lot of data coming at you, and you tend to be overwhelmed, not knowing how to prioritize this. So how many times are you in a position where you’re learning something now, if emotionally, psychologically, if your mindset is being inundated with an overwhelming sense of stimuli. Would it not be in your best interest to have some understanding of how this domain is mapped and so we can map, like I said, emotions, skills, abilities, technical things, niches, and as we cultivate that map, we can add more fidelity to that map.

We can refine it. We can we can add so much specifics that we know it, and it represents our knowledge of it that now it’s, you know, it’s so explicit, and it’s, it’s like we know it like the back of our hand. Now knowing it like the back of your hand will eventually come because you’ve practiced, because you’ve tested your assumptions, because you’ve got out there on the road. Now make no mistake. Please. Make no mistake that the map is not the territory and you. Just like in a restaurant, the menu is not the meal. Thus, as one of my favorite philosophers, Judah Krishnamurti, would say, the description is not the described.

And so there are so many ways that we can cultivate an understanding of the terrain we can experience it, which make all the questions even more relevant. We could also learn from others who have been in the territory, and these masters nowadays are so willing, ready and able to share their stories, but what you’re lacking is the context that allows their message to rise and find you In the relevant space. Maps are powerful tools. It’s also an amazing treat to see these conceptual maps evolve into dynamic maps, where you take what you know about one domain and transfer those skills or combine and watch how the patterns of interaction complement each other.

When you can apply the conceptual model of learning into another domain of like recently, in the last few years, I’ve taken up running and so I can let part of my mind go as I understand and take joy and pleasure and in all the the endorphin rushes of running, I could take pleasure in charging my progress without the condemnation and disorientation and overwhelm of this new lingo, the new body sensations, understanding pace I can become technically proficient while creating a map and running based upon my understanding of Learning and so as we cultivate these mental models, conceptual models, and map the domains and I’m saying all the same thing here is we rely on the strength of the system.

Systems are able to allow us to leverage what we know and who we are in exaggerated form. It is something that we can apply our focus to and yet yield consistent results. I love map making. It’s like a puzzle to see that blank canvas in your charting landmarks along the way, roads of easier paths along the way, terrain that may seem impermanent, you can chart that too. And ultimately, the beauty of the map making is that no two maps describing the same space or conceptual model are the same. There’s diversity, there’s plurality, there’s individuality, because I can scale my response to something in the world.

For example, if I’m not good at x, it seems big and it takes a it over represents itself on my map, where somebody else, where it doesn’t affect it may not. So our maps are personal, but there are general themes. There are common occurrences that will occur on these maps, and we can begin to cultivate this idea of map making, to not only just chart our progress, feel as confident as we can become as expected, as we can become as we are in process. So that was a mapping the domain. My name is Rahim Rasul, thank you for listening. Make sure you go to iTunes or Spotify or whatever platform you’re listening to this and subscribe.

Let me know what you think you can hit me up at, at, R, A, H, I m, R, A, S, U, L on Instagram and other social media platforms. And thank you for your ears, thank you for your time, and thank you for your. Willingness to expose your worldview to a different point of view. My name is Rahim. This is halftime talks, and until next time, peace you.