Book Review: Designing Your Life
Burnett, Bill. Designing Your Life: How to Build a Well-Lived, Joyful Life. Alfred A. Knopf, 2016.
During my last year of college, I woke up one afternoon and realized that I would be graduating soon. I had no job and no idea how to get a good one. I had no life plan. This is not unusual. Millions of recent graduates do not know how to find a meaningful job or how to design a purposeful life. For those already mid-career, 66% are unhappy with their jobs. And many successful professionals at the end of their careers want to downshift into a position with social impact, but lack the skills to make the transition.
In Designing Your Life, Bill Burnett and Dave Evans of the Stanford University Design Program advise using the principles of design thinking to create a life that is creative, productive and constantly evolving. They explain that design is a process of experimentation. As they explore, designers create prototypes, building on them when successful and discarding them when not. As designers try new things, they build their way forward.
To create your own ideal life, Burnett and Evans recommend “starting where you are,” improving the life that you are already living, without making disruptive structural changes like resigning your job or moving to another city. Assessment tools included in the book help clarify current work/life situations, then show how to customize existing jobs or careers to make them more engaging. For those who feel stuck, options can be developed by reframing problems and finding fresh solutions. There is more than one answer to creating a good life.
Burnett and Evans include an avalanche of examples from students who have taken their class at Stanford. Their writing style is informal; some illustrations are scribbles. I recommend this book despite these style elements. A second key book about personal wayfinding is Clayton Christensen’s excellent How Will You Measure Your Life?
Designing Your Life is also available as an eBook on OverDrive, an audiobook on OverDrive, and on Business Bestsellers Kindles at the Ford Library.
© Meg Trauner & Ford Library – Fuqua School of Business.
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