LEADERSHIP LIBRARY

IN BRIEF

Bill Burnett and Dave Evans show how to apply design thinking to one’s personal and professional life through very practical exercises. The tools break down big questions like What should I do with my life? to more actionable questions like Where do I get energy?, What experiments could I do to take micro-steps in the direction I want?, and Who could help me get there? 

Key Concepts

Five Mindsets of Designers

• Curiosity 

• Bias to action (trying stuff) 

• Reframing 

• Awareness (of the process) 

• Radical collaboration (asking for help)

Design Tools

Life Design Assessment—

Rate your current state on Health, Work, Play, and Love to identify potential design problems (focus areas) 

Lifeview / Workview—

Write two short essays (~250 words) to help you clarify what really matters to you: 

• Workview—why you work and what work means to you

• Lifeview—your larger purpose and what gives you meaning

Good Time Journal—

Log your daily activities noting when you’re engaged and/or energized and what you are doing during those times

Mind Mapping—

Pick a topic and take an unstructured approach to writing your thoughts on it, with a goal of expanding your thinking and identifying connections that might not be obvious

Odyssey Plans—

Create 3 bold visions of your future against which you can develop prototypes: something near to what you do currently, something you'd do if that first thing wasn't available, and what you'd do if didn't have to worry about money or image

Life Design Interview—

“The simplest and easiest form of a prototype is a conversation.” (p. 115) “[T]alk to someone who is either doing or living what you’re contemplating” to understand their life and story.

Failure Reframe Exercise—

1. Log your failures.

2. Categorize your failures. (E.g., screwups, weaknesses, growth opportunities)

3. Identify growth insights.

Quotables

“In life design, we reframe a lot. The biggest reframe is that your life can’t be perfectly planned, that there isn’t just one solution to your life, and that’s a good thing.” (p. xx)

“Designers don’t think their way forward. Designers build their way forward.” (p. xxv)

“It has been our experience, in office hour after office hour, that people waste a lot of time working on the wrong problem. If they are lucky, they will fail miserably quickly and get forced by circumstance into working on better problems. If they are unlucky and smart, they’ll succeed—we call it the success disaster—and wake up ten years later wondering how the hell they got to wherever they are, and why they are so unhappy.” (p. 7)

“Beware of working on a really good problem that’s not actually the right problem, not actually your problem.” (p. 8)

“If it’s not actionable, it’s not a problem.” (p. 9)

“If you discover and are able to articulate your philosophy of work (what it’s for and why you do it), you will be less likely to let others design your life for you.” (p. 31)

“Anytime you start to feel your life is not working, or you’re going through a major transition, it’s good to do a compass calibration. We do them at least once a year.” (p. 38)

“Here’s another key element when you’re wayfinding in life: follow the joy; follow what engages and excites you, what brings you alive.” (p. 49)

“As a life designer,  you need to embrace two philosophies: 1. You choose better when you have lots of good ideas to choose from. 2. You never choose your first solution to any problem.” (p. 69)

“Don’t make a doable problem into an anchor problem by wedding yourself irretrievably to a solution that just isn’t working. Reframe the solution to some other possibilities, prototype those ideas...and get yourself unstuck.” (p. 80)

“One of the most powerful ways to design your life is to design your lives.” (p. 90)

“Most great jobs—those that fall into the dream job category—are never publicly listed.” (p. 131)

“It’s a wonderfully happy accident that the very best technique you can use to learn what kind of work you might want to pursue [prototyping]...is exactly the best, if not only, way to get into the hidden job market in your field of interest, once you know what you want.” (p. 146)

“Building is thinking” (p. 111)

“Prototypes should be designed to ask a question and get some data about something that you’re interested in. Good prototypes isolate one aspect of a problem and design an experience that allows you to ‘try out’ some version of a potentially interesting future.” (p. 112)

“The simplest and easiest form of a prototype is a conversation.” (p. 115)

“In life design, being happy means you choose happiness.” (p. 157)