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An emerging conceptual and applied framework
Working Public Framework — v0.1
The living system beneath everyday life.
Every sol has a structure.
01
Conditions.
02
Relationships.
03
Resources.
04
Places.
05
Rhythms.
06
Institutions.
07
Meanings.
08
Recurrent activities.
Together, they form the configuration through which life functions.
That configuration can be observed, studied, worked with, and changed.
What can be changed, by whom, at what cost, and on what timeline depends on power, access, resources, authority, risk, scale, and circumstance.
01 — Definition
What Is a sol?
A sol is the living configuration beneath everyday life—the conditions, relationships, resources, places, rhythms, institutions, meanings, and recurrent activities that shape how life works and what it allows.
Pronunciation
sol is pronounced like “soul.” The framework is grounded in observable conditions and does not depend on a spiritual worldview.
02 — Terminology
Why Give It a Name?
Lifestyle asks how someone lives. sol asks what system is making that way of living possible, difficult, supported, or unsustainable.
sol is not merely another word for lifestyle, mindset, habits, wellness, culture, environment, or wellbeing. Each of those terms describes a slice of experience or behavior. sol names the underlying configuration that produces that experience—the arrangement of conditions, relationships, resources, and institutions that makes a given way of living possible, difficult, supported, or unsustainable in the first place.
Why another term?
Existing vocabulary tends to describe experience. sol is a working term for the structure behind it—so that structure can be examined on its own terms.
The conceptual spine
01
Principle
Wherever life is lived, life is organized.
No life unfolds outside a structure. Even the most ordinary day rests on an arrangement of conditions, relationships, and resources that someone — or something — put in place.
02
Pattern
Every sol takes form as a configuration.
Pattern is not habit. A habit is one repeated action. A pattern is the fuller shape formed by conditions, relationships, resources, places, rhythms, institutions, meanings, and activities acting together over time.
03
Practice
A sol can be observed, interpreted, evaluated, and worked with.
Once named, a sol becomes something a person, household, or institution can actually study — asking what is present, what is missing, and where there is room to act.
04 — Working Categories
Eight preliminary domains
01
Embodiment and functioning
The body’s capacities, health, and daily physical functioning within a given configuration.
What does this sol ask of the body, and what does it return?
02
Time and rhythm
How days, weeks, and seasons are structured, and who controls that structure.
Whose schedule is this life actually organized around?
03
Relationships, care, and support
The people and networks that give and receive care, and how reliably they can do so.
Who is actually available when something goes wrong?
04
Activity, roles, and responsibility
What a person actually does day to day, and what obligations that activity carries.
Who decided this was someone’s job?
05
Resources and access
Money, time, information, and the ease or difficulty of reaching what one needs.
What is available, and what does it cost to reach it?
06
Place and environment
The physical and built settings that shape what is possible, safe, or convenient.
What does this place make easy, and what does it make hard?
07
Meaning, identity, and culture
The stories, values, and belonging that make a way of living feel coherent — or not.
What does this life mean to the person living it?
08
Institutions, rules, and power
The formal and informal authorities that set terms — schools, employers, landlords, agencies.
Who has the authority to change the terms here?
These are working categories. They are still being researched and may be revised, divided, combined, renamed, or expanded.
05 — Forces Running Through the System
Cross-cutting dimensions
These are not additional domains. They are forces that run through every domain at once.
Agency
Power
Access
Scale
Time
Practice
Consequences
Each dimension changes how workable a domain is — the same institution can feel navigable to one household and immovable to another.
06 — Working With What You Don’t Control
A sol may be workable even when it is not directly controllable.
Consider a family navigating a landlord’s policies, a household negotiating a school system, or a community working around unreliable transportation. In each case, the larger structure is not chosen — but it is not entirely fixed either.
01
Direct alteration
02
Negotiation
03
Adaptation
04
Exit or substitution
05
Collective action
06
Institutional action
07
Long-term capacity building
08
Acceptance and accommodation
Constraint and agency can exist at the same time.
07 — Scale
sol across scale
A sol at one scale influences, reproduces, constrains, supports, and sometimes transforms the sol at another.
Person
01
Household
02
Organization
03
Community
04
Institution
05
Culture and society
06
Influence moves both up and down this chain — a household is shaped by its culture, and enough households can reshape that culture in turn.
08 / 09 — Current Standing
What sol proposes, and what it does not yet claim
What sol currently proposes
That everyday life rests on an observable configuration, not just individual choices.
That this configuration can be described across a consistent set of working domains.
That agency and constraint can co-exist, and that a sol can be workable even where it is not fully controllable.
That naming this configuration makes it easier to study, evaluate, and work with deliberately.
What sol does not yet claim
An established scientific theory, or a claim of empirical validation.
A finished measurement system, or a replacement for existing academic frameworks.
A claim that every person has equal power, access, risk, or capacity to change their configuration.
A universal prescription for how everyone should live.
This is intellectual honesty, not insecurity — a framework worth trusting should be clear about its own limits.
10 — Looking Ahead
Seeing the system is the beginning of working with it.
A separate sol Audit is being developed — a practical instrument for looking at one’s own configuration across the eight domains before deciding where to act.
Explore the sol Audit — Coming Soon
11 — Working Public Framework v0.1
sol is being developed in public.
Domain refinement and terminology review
Underway
Working papers on cross-cutting dimensions
Planned
Academic and practitioner workshops
Planned
Diagram and visualization development for scale and dimensions
Underway
Applied pilots with community and household partners
Early stage
The sol Audit — a self-assessment instrument
In development
12 — An Open Invitation
Help develop the sol framework.
This framework benefits from rigor it cannot yet claim on its own. We’re inviting academics, researchers, and practitioners to help test, challenge, and refine it.
Academics & researchers
Sociologists & psychologists
Public-health thinkers
Family researchers
Planners & designers
Systems thinkers
Community-development practitioners
Organizational researchers & evaluators
Join the sol Working Group
Contributor coordination is organized through Team of Helpers.
Every life has a sol.
The life we want requires systems capable of holding it.
sol is an emerging conceptual and applied framework being developed through The Full Life Project.