How to design your life

While "design thinking" has become an overused catchphrase among consultants, it is also a real thing, a formal methodology for solving difficult problems. Bill Burnett, the executive director of Stanford's Design Program where they take design thinking very seriously, and his colleague David Evans, who co-founded Electronic Arts and teaches a very popular Stanford course called "Designing Your Life," have written a new book based on the class titled "Designing Your Life: How To Build A Well-Lived, Joyful Life". Above is the trailer for the book. From the New York Times:

They say the practices taught in the class and the book can help you (in designing-your-life-speak) "reframe" dysfunctional beliefs that surround life and career decisions and help you "wayfind" in a chaotic world through the adoption of such design tenets as bias-for-action, prototyping and team-building....

The book includes things that are not in the class, like what Mr. Burnett and Mr. Evans call "anchor problems" - overcommitted life choices that keep people stuck and unhappy. A common mistake that people make, they said, is to assume that there's only one right solution or optimal version of your life, and that if you choose wrong, you've blown it.

That's completely absurd, Mr. Evans said: "There are lots of you. There are lots of right answers."

"Designing Your Life: How To Build A Well-Lived, Joyful Life" (Amazon)