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Designing Your Life Dave Evans and Bill Burnett
Designing Your Life Dave Evans and Bill Burnett
from Designing Your Life by Dave Evans and Bill Burnett
“In America, two‐thirds of workers are unhappy with their jobs. And 15 percent actually hate their work.” ‐ Dave
Evans and Bill Burnett
How can you be one of the rare few who is happy at work?
Step #1: Design Your Lives
“We know you’ve got at least three viable and substantially different possibilities in you. We all do. Every single one of the thousands of people
we’ve worked with has proved us correct in this. We all have lots of lives within us. Of course, we can only live out one at a time, but we want
to ideate multiple variations in order to choose creatively and generatively.” ‐ Dave Evans and Bill Burnett
Life #1: Your Optimized Life
In your ‘Optimized Life’ you find a way to optimize your current career path so that you are doing more activities that make you feel
engaged and energized, and fewer activities that make you feel bored and exhausted.
To find the building blocks for this life you need to start a “Good Time Journal.”
The goal of your “Good Time Journal” is to uncover the (A.E.I.O.U.) activities, environments, interactions, objects (i.e., tools you use to
perform tasks), and users (i.e., people you help) that make you feel engaged while working. At the end of the day for the next three
weeks, reflect on the times you were focused and lost track of time. Write down the A.E.I.O.U. components of those experiences. Then,
next to each item, rate the energy you felt afterward on a scale of ‐5 to 5. For example, a client meeting might be engaging but it drains
your energy and makes you feel exhausted afterwards.
After three weeks you'll start to see a consistent set of experiences that make feel engaged and energized. How could you craft your
current career so that you can have more of these experiences (more training, new assignment, remote work arrangement, etc.)?
Take out a piece of paper, draw five boxes to represent the next five years, and do simple sketches for each year (use stick‐men, basic
objects, and keywords to illustrate what each of the next five years might look like).
Live #2: Your Alternate Life Live #3: Your Fascinated Life
In your “Alternate Life,” the career path you were on In your “Fascinated Life,” you are doing what you would do if money
vanishes. Either your market collapsed (ex: the phonebook and image were no object.
market in the 90's), or Artificial Intelligence can do your job
better than you. Is there something that you're fascinated with and always wanted to
do but were afraid you wouldn't make enough money or people
What industry would you transfer your skills to? Go back to would laugh at you for doing it?
your "Good Time Journal" and see what engaging and
energizing experiences you could experience while working Take out a piece of paper and sketch out the next five years of "Your
in another industry. Complete a five‐year sketch for this life. Fascinated Life." It's OK if it seems a bit crazy. The more you design it,
the more realistic it will appear.
Step #2: Sample Your Lives
After you've sketched out your three lives, you might discover a life you want to commit to. Don’t! Hold
back and test your assumptions first. Most common assumption: “You’ll enjoy the day‐to‐day experience
of your future life.”
The most efficient way to test your assumptions and have a sample experience of a future life is to
conduct prototype conversations. Prototype conversations include reaching out to people on LinkedIn
or finding someone at a conference which is doing what you want to do and asking them if you could buy
them coffee or have a 15‐minute Skype call so that you can hear their story.
There are hundreds of people online who are living a life similar to the life you're considering. If you can
get them to meet for a 15‐minute video call or a 15‐minute coffee, ask about their story, and absorb the
good and bad parts of their life, you're far less likely to commit to a life that you’ll later regret.
The most important principle to remember when 'designing your life' is that you don't know what you want until you experience it.
“You can't connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backward." – Steve Jobs
www.ProductivityGame.com