Designing Your Life

BILL BURNETT is the executive director of the Design Program at Stanford. DAVE EVANS is an adjunct lecturer in the Product Design Program at Stanford, a management consultant, and a co-founder of Electronic Arts www.designingyour.life

Designers imagine things that don't yet exist, and then they build them, and then the world changes. You can do this in your own life. You can imagine a career and a life that don't exist; you can build that future you, and as a result your life will change. If your life is pretty perfect as is, life design can still help you make it an even better version of the life you currently love living. When you think like a designer, when you are willing to ask the questions, when you realize that life is always about designing something that has never existed before, then your life can sparkle in a way that you could never have imagined. That is, if you like sparkles. It's your design, after all. What Do We Know? In Stanford's Design Program, we have taught more than a thousand students design thinking and how to design their lives. And we'll let you in on a secret-no one has ever failed our class. In fact, it's impossible to flunk. We have more than sixty years of combined teaching experience, and we have taught this approach to high school students, college students, graduate students, Ph.D. students, twenty-somethings, mid-career executives, and retirees wanting an "encore" career. As teachers, we have always guaranteed our students "office hours for life." This means that if you take a class from us we are there for you, forever. Period. We've had students come back to us over the years since they've graduated, and they've told us how the tools, ideas, and mind-sets that we teach have made a difference for them. We're quite hopeful-and, frankly, pretty confident- that these ideas can make a difference for you, too. But don't take our word for it. Stanford is a very rigorous place. Though anecdotes are nice, they don't count for much in academia. To speak authoritatively, you need data. Our class is one of the few design thinking classes that have been scientifically studied and have proved to make a difference for students on a number of important measures. Two doctoral students did their dissertations on the course, and what they found was pretty exciting.2 They found that those who took our class were better able to conceive of and pursue a career they really wanted; they had fewer dysfunctional beliefs (those pesky ideas that hold you back and that just aren't true) and an increased ability to generate new ideas for their life design (increasing their ideation capability). All of these measures were "statistically significant," which, in nongeek-speak, means that the ideas and exercises we lay out in our course and are going to walk you through in this book have been proven effective; they can help you to figure out what you want and show you how to get it. But let's be perfectly clear right from the start. Science or no science, this is all highly personal stuff. We can give you some tools, some ideas, some exercises, but we can't figure it all out for you. We can't give you your insights, change your perspective, and provide you with nonstop "aha" moments, all in ten easy steps. What we can tell you is that if you actually use the tools and do the life design exercises, you will generate the insights you need to have. Because here's the big truth: there are many versions of you, and they are all "right." And life design will help you live into whatever version of you is now playing at the Cineplex. Remember, there are no wrong answers, and we're not grading you. We will suggest you do some exercises in this book, but there are no answers in the back to tell you how you did. We've added a recap of the exercises at the end of each chapter that has them-a Try Stuff box-because we suggest that you, well, try stuff. That's what designers do. We're not measuring you against anyone, and you shouldn't measure yourself against anyone, either. We're here to co-create with you. Think of us as part of your own personal design team. In fact, we suggest you go out and get a design t