Designing Your Life
Around 2016 while living in the San Francisco Bay Area, I found myself in a role that no longer challenged me, holding financial debt, and was physically and mentally not in the best place, later finding out I had Crohn’s disease and Narcolepsy. That's when I came across the book "Designing Your Life" by Bill Burnett and Dave Evans. I was immediately drawn to the "Designing Your Life" principles and put them into practice. As a result, I made the necessary changes and was able to pivot my career and lifestyle.
As many of you return to the job market, you may take this opportunity to pivot careers or dig deeper in your current field. Designing Your Life is a concept that has the potential to transform your life for the better by creating the life that you want. So let's look at the fundamental principles and tips for designing the life you want!
Design Thinking Approach: Design thinking is a problem-solving methodology that involves empathizing with the user, defining the problem, ideating, prototyping, and testing. When designing your life, this means understanding what you want, identifying the obstacles preventing you from achieving your goals, brainstorming solutions, and testing those solutions in the real world.
Embrace Curiosity: The second principle of designing your life is to embrace curiosity. To design your life, you need to be curious about the world around you and be willing to try new things. This means experimenting with different careers, hobbies, and lifestyles to see what works best for you. Curiosity is the key to discovering what you truly love and what you want to do with your life.
Growth Mindset: A growth mindset is a belief that you can improve and develop your abilities through hard work and dedication. To design your life, you need to be willing to learn, grow, and adapt to new challenges. This means being open to feedback, embracing failure as a learning opportunity, and focusing on the process rather than the outcome.
Prioritize and Balance Your Life: To design your life, you need to know what is important to you and prioritize your time and energy accordingly. This means setting goals, creating a schedule, and being intentional about how you spend your time. It also means finding a balance between work, play, and rest.
Take Action: To design your life, you need to take action and make things happen. This means setting goals, creating a plan, and taking small steps toward achieving those goals. It also means being accountable to yourself and staying motivated and focused on your goals.
If you want to learn more about designing a life that is fulfilling, meaningful, and purposeful for you, go check out Designing Your Life.