Designing Your Life (book)

--- status: To Read date_finished: title: Designing Your Life subtitle: How to Build a Well-Lived, Joyful Life description: "#1 NEW YORK TIMES BEST SELLER • At last, a book that shows you how to build—design—a life you can thrive in, at any age or stage • “Life has questions. They have answers.” —The New York Times Designers create worlds and solve problems using design thinking. Look around your office or home—at the tablet or smartphone you may be holding or the chair you are sitting in. Everything in our lives was designed by someone. And every design starts with a problem that a designer or team of designers seeks to solve. In this book, Bill Burnett and Dave Evans show us how design thinking can help us create a life that is both meaningful and fulfilling, regardless of who or where we are, what we do or have done for a living, or how young or old we are. The same design thinking responsible for amazing technology, products, and spaces can be used to design and build your career and your life, a life of fulfillment and joy, constantly creative and productive, one that always holds the possibility of surprise." categories: - Non-fiction - Personal Development authors: - [[Bill Burnett]] - [[Dave Evans]] published_on: 2016-09-20 publisher: Knopf pages: 274 isbn: 110187533X cover: http://books.google.com/books/content?id=RBeICwAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&edge=curl&source=gbs_api local_cover: 50 Resources/51 Attachments/51.03 Public/Designing Your Life (book).jpg link: https://amzn.to/4e6I3KU tags: - type/book - books - summaries - zone/areas - zone/areas/literature_notes created: 2025-06-17T08:57 updated: 2026-04-01T14:42 public_note: true --- # Designing Your Life (book) - Author(s): [[Bill Burnett]], [[Dave Evans]] - Link: https://amzn.to/4e6I3KU ![[50 Resources/51 Attachments/51.03 Public/Designing Your Life (book).jpg|200]] ## Description New York Times best-selling book about Life Design. ## Quotes  ## Key ideas Summary taken from Wikipedia: ### Start Where You Are The book asks the reader to reflect on four areas of life (health, work, play, and love) and to gauge each of them on a scale of 1-10. This self-analysis is done for the reader to get a sense of what aspects of their life need the most (or least) attention. The book also promotes the idea of writing about each of these facets of life and how they intertwine with the uniqueness offered by the individual in the situation who is adhering to the journey within and through the process. ### Building a Compass In this chapter, the book assumes the reader now has a good starting point and is ready to build a "compass" that will help guide them through life. The compass is made up of a workview and a lifeview. The workview revolves on what the reader's perceptions of work are and how important it is to them. The lifeview involves the philosophical questions of what gives life meaning. After assessing the workview and lifeview, the reader is on their way to creating their compass. Wayfinding This chapter includes a journaling exercise, where the reader is asked to write down their day-to-day activities. They are then told to gauge them on engagement and energy. This is done for the reader to gain a sense of what activities are important to them and which ones seem unnecessary Getting Unstuck This chapter places an emphasis on aiding those who feel stuck in life, whether it be an undesirable job or schoolwork. In order for the reader to find interest in life, the book suggests conducting a mind map for day-to-day activities along with the exercise from the chapter before it can help readers find activities that they may find more interesting. Design Your Lives The book encourages using the data that has been accumulated so far to conduct a plan for the future. This plan can be long or short term. The book once again proclaims the power of journaling and offers sample charts on how the reader should plan their future Prototyping The book tells its readers to prototype their future plans. This means gathering information through experiences or conversations with others. This can help the reader realize what needs to be done in order for their future goals to become achieved How Not to Get a Job Here the book shifts its focus from designing future plans to getting a good job. It provides some subtle tips and tricks that can make the reader more hire-able and appear more professional. It proclaims that when finding a job, one should focus on the needs of the employer instead of their own needs Designing Your Dream Job The book acknowledges that not everyone may get their dream job, but that it is important to make good decisions that can lead to something close to that dream job. Journaling once again advised in order for the reader to self reflect and realize what their dream job may be Choosing Happiness The book explains to the reader that happiness does not necessarily mean having everything one could desire. It places an emphasis on getting rid of things that are not necessary. It also helps explain that one should not dwell on past mistakes or bad decision-making, and that they should instead focus on ways to improve their decision-making abilities Failure Immunity Failure is explained as something that is inevitable and that the reader must develop a form of "failure immunity" in order to embrace their mistakes and learn from them. It also recommends logging the reader's failures in their journal so that they can better remember them and think of a way to solve them Building a Team This chapter emphasizes the importance of others. Friends and family are necessary when the reader is in times of need. The book tells the importance of teamwork in order to overcome the toughest of obstacles that may lie in one's way. Building a strong team is vital to success and happiness in life Conclusion - A Well-Designed Life The book closes by explaining that the methods learned throughout the chapters will always be useful. It explains that even after retirement, it is still necessary for one to design their life in order to achieve maximum happiness and satisfaction. It then makes a comparison of life to a design project that constantly needs to be created ## Chapter 1: ... ... ## References - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Designing_Your_Life