This article explores the idea that learning can be best understood as a life project. This entails recognition that socio-experiential (being), cognitive (knowing) and behavioural (doing) dimension are crucial, and that the future is of central importance -- more than the past -- in teaching and learning processes. Based on the concepts of "affinity space" and "activity ecology", it is also suggested that teaching and learning processes are across settings and time. This proposition is illustrated through two worked examples linked to biographical processes of identity construction in the field of art and the acquisition of English as a foreign language. The article concludes considering the need to recontextualize the school within the perspective outlined here.