Summary: Designing Your Life by Bill Burnett and Dave Evans
In a world where many struggle to find purpose and direction, “Designing Your Life” by Bill Burnett and Dave Evans offers a refreshing approach. Drawing from design thinking principles, the book provides practical tools and mindsets for crafting a fulfilling life, one step at a time. This post explores the book's core ideas and how they can be applied to navigate the complexities of modern life, with real-life examples to illustrate each concept.
Design Thinking for Life
Design thinking, a methodology rooted in creativity and problem-solving, is traditionally associated with product design. Burnett and Evans, however, take this powerful tool and apply it to life planning. They suggest that life, like any product, can be designed through ideation, prototyping, testing, and iterating. The beauty of this approach lies in its flexibility—it’s not about having all the answers upfront but rather about being open to experimentation and continuous improvement.
Imagine you’re unhappy in your current job but unsure what to do next. Instead of making a drastic change, design thinking encourages you to explore different career options by experimenting with side projects or freelance work. For instance, if you’re considering a career in graphic design, you might start by taking a short online course and working on small projects for friends. This allows you to test your interests and skills without the pressure of quitting your job immediately.
“You can’t know where you’re going until you know where you are.” – Bill Burnett.
Mindsets that Matter
Burnett and Evans highlight the importance of certain mindsets in designing your life successfully. The “beginner’s mind” encourages curiosity and openness, allowing fresh perspectives. The “bias to action” pushes you from thinking to doing, emphasizing that real insights come from experiences, not just reflection. Lastly, recognizing that “you are not your job” is crucial for separating self-worth from professional identity, leading to a more balanced and expansive view of life.
You’ve always been interested in photography but never pursued it because you’re an accountant. By adopting the mindset that “you are not your job,” you allow yourself the freedom to explore photography as a serious hobby or even a side business. Embracing the “beginner’s mind,” you might take photography classes, join local photography groups, and experiment with different styles, all while maintaining your day job.
Creating Your Life Compass
Creating a life compass is central to the life design process, which involves profoundly reflecting on your worldview and life view. These reflections help clarify what you want from your work and life, ensuring they are aligned. This compass serves as a guide when making decisions, helping you stay true to your values and long-term goals.
A burnt-out teacher might use the life compass exercise to align her worldview and life view. Her worldview might emphasize the importance of nurturing young minds, while her life view focuses on work-life balance and personal growth. This reflection might lead her to seek a role in educational administration, where she can influence curricula without the demands of daily classroom teaching, thus aligning her professional and personal values.
Prototyping and Reframing
The concept of prototyping in life design is about low-risk experimentation. Whether it’s a new career path or a hobby, trying things out on a small scale before making significant commitments allows you to gather valuable feedback and insights. Reframing, on the other hand, helps you see problems from new angles, opening up possibly previously hidden possibilities in your perspective. You can transform obstacles into opportunities.
Suppose you’re considering a career change from marketing to non-profit work. Instead of quitting your job and diving into the non-profit sector headfirst, you could prototype this idea by volunteering at a non-profit organization on weekends. This low-risk experiment gives you a feel for the work and helps you decide if it’s the right fit. Additionally, suppose you’re feeling stuck because you need to earn a specific degree to transition. Reframing the problem might involve recognizing that your marketing skills are highly transferable and valued in the non-profit sector.
“The only way to know what something is really like is to live it.” – Dave Evans.
Mind Mapping and Odyssey Plans
Burnett and Evans introduce mind mapping and Odyssey Plans to help people navigate the various possibilities in life. Mind mapping helps people navigate the multiple options in life and helps you visually explore your interests and ideas. At the same time, Odyssey Plans encourages you to imagine and plan out three different five-year paths you could take. Each plan represents a viable and fulfilling future, giving you a broad view of your life.
If you’re passionate about travel, teaching, and writing, a mind map might reveal various intersections of these interests. From this mind map, you could create three Odyssey Plans:
• Plan A: Continue teaching, but during summers, write a travel blog documenting your experiences.
• Plan B: Transition to online teaching, allowing you to travel more frequently while maintaining a steady income.
• Plan C: Apply for grants to write a book on global education, combining your teaching expertise with your love of travel and writing.
Each plan reflects a different version of a well-lived life, helping you see multiple paths forward.
Embracing Failure and Building Resilience
Failure is inevitable in the design process, and life is no different. The book emphasizes the importance of embracing failure as a learning tool. By doing so, you develop “failure immunity,” a resilience that allows you to bounce back stronger and wiser from setbacks. This mindset is critical for anyone looking to design a life of growth and discovery.
Consider someone who starts a business that eventually fails. Instead of viewing this failure as a personal defeat, they might reframe it as a valuable learning experience. They could analyze what went wrong, what they could have done differently, and how these lessons can be applied to their next venture. Viewing failure through this lens makes them more resilient and better equipped to handle future challenges.
“Fail early, fail often, fail forward.” – Bill Burnett.
Practical Tool: Life Design Assessment Quiz
1. Beginner’s Mind
Do you approach life with curiosity and an openness to new experiences?
• Rarely
• Sometimes
• Often
Example: If you’ve always wanted to learn a musical instrument, do you dive in and start learning, or do you hold back because you’re afraid of being a beginner?
2. Bias to Action
How often do you turn your ideas into action?
• Rarely
• Sometimes
• Often
Example: If you’ve thought about starting a side hustle, do you take steps to test the market or spend more time thinking about it without acting?
3. Workview and Lifeview Alignment
Have you taken time to reflect on your worldview and life view?
• No
• Yes, but not recently
• Yes, regularly
Example: Do your daily actions and decisions align with your beliefs about what makes life meaningful and fulfilling?
4. Prototyping
Do you experiment with new roles, hobbies, or activities before committing?
• Rarely
• Sometimes
• Often
Example: Before switching careers, do you try out the new field in a low-stakes way, such as through freelance work, volunteering, or taking relevant courses?
5. Reframing Problems
When faced with a challenge, do you try to see it from different perspectives?
• Rarely
• Sometimes
• Often
Example: If you’re stuck in a job you don’t like, do you consider alternative solutions like negotiating different responsibilities or looking for internal opportunities, or do you see quitting as the only option?
6. Resilience
How well do you bounce back from failures or setbacks?
• Poorly
• With difficulty
• Easily
Example: After a failed project or rejection, do you learn from the experience and move forward, or do you dwell on the setback and let it hinder your progress?