1.
Designing Your Life
Adapted from Designing Your Life by Bill Burnett & Dave Evans
Presented by Chris Dito, Executive Director, M.E.T. Program

2.
Authors
Bill Burnett
Co-Director of the Life Design Lab at Stanford University;
Adjunct Professor, Executive Director of the Design Program
Dave Evans
Co-Founder, Stanford Life Design Lab, Lecturer

3.
Dysfunctional Beliefs
These are the myths that prevent many people from designing
the life they want to live.

4.
Reframing Dysfunctional Beliefs
Dysfunctional Belief Reframe
Your degree determines your career.
3/4 of all college graduates end up
working in a career unrelated to their
majors.
If you are successful, you will be happy.
True happiness comes from designing a
life that works for you.
It’s too late. It’s never too late to design a life you love.
The goal of this book is to help you reframe and overcome these
assumptions, and live a well-designed life.

5.
Five Key Designer Mindsets
Designers don’t think their way forward; designers build their way forward.
Curiosity
• Make
everything
new.
• Invite
exploration
and look for
opportunities.
Awareness
• Life design is a
journey.
• Let go of the
end goal &
focus on the
process.
Bias to Action
• Commit to
building your way
forward.
• No bench sitting, -
get in the game.
• Create multiple
prototypes, fail
often, embrace
change.
Reframing
• Getting
unstuck
allows you to
step back,
examine
biases, and
open
solution
spaces.
Radical
Collaboration
• Ask for help -
life is a team
sport
• Be a team
player and
make space
for others

6.
Anti-Passion is Our Passion
Dysfunctional Belief Reframe
Most think they need to find out
what they are passionate about;
once they find their passion,
everything will magically fall into
place.
People need to take time to develop a
passion which comes after you try
something, discover you like it, and
develop mastery - not before.

7.
Gravity problem = unchangeable, irreversible, and long-lasting. Like
gravity, problems exist like a law of nature. They are fixed.
Acceptance is the only response to a gravity problem. Start where you are, not
where you wish you were or where you believe the world should be.
Gravity Problems

8.
How To Find Where You Are
Dysfunctional Belief Reframe
“I should already know where I’m
going”
“You can’t know where you are going
until you know where you are”

9.
Your Work, Play, Love, and Health Gauge
Work Gauge. Assess your work life as a
whole. Forms of “work” will include your 9-
to-5 job, maybe a second job, any consulting
or advising, regular volunteer work, raising
children, taking care of aging parents,
housework, etc.
Health Gauge. Healthy means being well in
your body, mind, and spirit. Health is at the
base of our diagram because, when you’re not
healthy, nothing else in your life works very
well. All the other areas are built on top of it.
Play Gauge. “Play” is any activity that brings
joy, done for the pure sake of the doing. It can
include organized activity or productive
endeavors, but only if they are done for fun and
not merit. “All lives need some play,” highlights
the authors.
Love Gauge. “It is as critical to feel loved by
others as it is to love.” First, come our family
and primary relationship, children typically come
next, and then it’s friends, pets, community, or
anything else that brings affection in our lives.

10.
Work, Play, Love, and Health Dashboard
Complete this Work, Play, Love
& Health worksheet.
Work
Play
Love
Health
Full
Full
Full
Full
0
0
0
0
This exercise will help assess
where you are, and offer help
in getting “unstuck.”

11.
Assessing your Workview & Lifeview
Why am I
here?
Why does
it matter?
What’s the
point of it all?

12.
Write a short reflection about your Workview - don’t do it in your head!
Shoot for 250 words in 30 minutes. A Workview addresses such questions
as:
Workview Reflection Exercise
What defines
good or
worthwhile
work?
What does work
mean?
Why do we
work?
How does
work relate to
the individual
and society?
What’s the
relationship
between work
and money?
What do
experience,
growth, and
fulfillment have
to do with it?

13.
Lifeview Reflection Exercise
What is the
meaning or
purpose of life?
What is good,
and what is
evil?
Why are we
here?
Is there a higher
power and how
does it impact
my life?
Where do
family, country,
and society fit
in?
What is the role
of joy, sorrow,
justice, injustice,
love, peace in
life?
Write a short reflection about your Lifeview - Shoot for 250 words in 30
minutes. A Lifeview reflection addresses such questions as:

14.
Coherency Exercise
Our goal for a well-designed life is
rather simple: coherency.
A coherent life is lived in such a
way that these three things align:
• Who you are
• What you believe
• What you do
Having your Workview and Lifeview in
harmony increases your clarity and
ability to live a consciously meaningful
life.
Write down thoughts on the following:
• Do your views on work and life
clash?
• Do they complement one another?
• Does one drive the other? How?

15.
Wayfinding
There is no single destination in life.
“Wayfinding is the ancient art of figuring out where you are going when
you don’t actually know your destination.”
In wayfinding, you need a compass and a direction - but not a map. To find
your way, pay attention to the clues in front of you. The first clues are
engagement and energy.

16.
Energy Engagement Exercise
Dysfunctional Belief Reframe
Work isn’t supposed to be enjoyable --
that’s why they call it work.
Enjoyment is a guide to finding
the right work for you.
Complete this energy engagement worksheet.
● What activities give you energy?
● Which activities drain your energy?
● What do you notice about your energy patterns?

17.
Energy
We engage in physical and mental activities daily. Some of them sustain and
increase our energy and some drain it. Tracking energy flows, you can start
redesigning activities to maximize your vitality and fun. Ideally, you’ll be living a
life where “work” and “joy” go together.
Dysfunctional Belief Reframe
Work is not supposed to be enjoyable;
that’s why they call it work.
Enjoyment is a guide to finding the right
work for you.

18.
Getting Stuck? - Ideate
Ideation = coming up with lots of ideas, wild ideas, crazy ideas. More ideas unveil
better ideas, and better ideas lead to a better design. More ideas = new insights.
And remember, try not to fall in love with your first idea. Our initial solutions are often
average, obvious, and not very creative.
Dysfunctional Belief Reframe
I’m stuck.
I’m never stuck because I can always
generate new ideas.
I have to find the right idea.
I need several ideas so that I can explore
any number of possibilities for my future.

19.
Ultimate Ideation = Mind Mapping Exercise

20.
Design Your Life
“Each of us has many lives. The life you are living is one of the many lives you will
live.”
The authors found that people (regardless of age, education, or career path) are
narrow in thinking they need to come up with one right plan for their life.
Dysfunctional Belief Reframe
I need to figure out my best possible life,
make a plan, and then execute it.
I have the capacity for multiple great lives
and plans, and I get to choose which one
to move toward next.

21.
Odyssey Planning Exercise
Click here for the Odyssey Planning Worksheet
A. Resources. Do you have the resources -
time, money, skills, contacts - to pull off your
plan?
B. Likability. Are you hot, cold or warm
about your plan?
C. Confidence. Are you feeling confident or
uncertain about pulling this off?
D. Coherence. Does the plan make sense for
your life? Is it consistent with you, your
Workview, and your Lifeview?
Watch this
first!
A B C D

22.
Choosing Happiness
Gather & Create Options
Collecting data about yourself and the world, mind
mapping, and prototyping experiences are the best ways
to begin.
Narrow Down the List
Society idolizes options (“Explore lots of paths! Keep
your options open! Don’t get locked in!”) Too many
options = analysis paralysis.
Choose Discerningly
Discernment is decision-making that employs more than
one way of knowing. Information and knowledge + our
wisdom and intuition = a great combination for good
decisions.
Agonize, Let Go, and Move On.
You can’t know what that best choice is until all the
consequences have played out. The inability to know
whether or not we did the right thing causes anguish.
In life design, the choosing process has four steps.