# Life Design A well-designed life has much more potential to be a happy one. Life Design is the idea that you can be *intentional* and *strategic* when it comes to making decisions about the life you want to live and your own future. Most people accept the default path laid in front of them (e.g., by their current circumstances, society, family, etc). Few realize that their future is almost always in their own hands. Life Design is a holistic approach. It's not only about your career. Work is important and has a huge impact on how you live your life, but it's just one of the many areas to think about. Life Design is all about taking a step back and examining all the aspects of your life: career, relationships, health, happiness, dreams, daily routines, etc), and making *deliberate choices* about how you want to spend your finite amount of time on earth. Being intentional about this is of the utmost importance, since we only have one life, and it's short (cfr [[We only have 4000 weeks|4000 Weeks]]). The intentional choices that you make to your life compound and can lead to huge transformations over time. It all happens [[Gradually, then suddenly]]. Note that effective Life Design requires [[Mindfulness]], being self-aware about your values, principles, strengths, weaknesses, what makes you truly happy, what fulfills you, etc. Assuming you know about all that, then it's all about making conscious choices, and aligning those with your actions. Interestingly, Life Design can be approached through the lens of [[Design Thinking]] using the [[Design Thinking Process]], as popularized by [[Bill Burnett]] and [[Dave Evans]] through their courses at Stanford and their books, [[Designing Your Life (book)]] and [[Designing Your New Work Life (book)]]. ## My own story A while ago, I’ve realized that I now care much more about *life design* than I did in the past. That wasn’t even a thing for me in the past. When I was 20-30, I cared most about my family, learning, and working on interesting projects. I also focused on enjoying my free time as much as I could. I was satisfied with the constraints of my life. I accepted those without ever questioning those, and didn’t even notice that a big part of my life revolved around work and was heavily impacted by it. The schedule I was imposed, where I had to go to work, the commute every day, what projects I could work on, when I could take vacation, who I got to work with, how I had to organize my projects and my work, etc. There were countless imposed constraints. Now I pay much more attention to the *landscape of my life*, and I want to consciously and carefully *design* it. I don’t want long commutes anymore. I don’t want to have a boss anymore. I want more responsibility, more control, and much more freedom. I’m not interested in the classical 9 to 5 anymore. Not at all. I prefer to be fully in charge of my own life, to choose what I spend my time on based on what I feel is right/relevant, to have full control over my schedule, etc. That’s a very different perspective, and it has a huge impact on my plans for the future. For instance, my position as an employee is definitely a great safety net, but it’s not part of my long-term plans. It’s actually a constraint that I want to remove in my life and a big reason why I’m building alternative sources of income. I experimented with consulting, but it wasn't for me. And while it was a necessity for a while, I've gotten rid of it. Freelancing gave me more freedom, but depending on the clients, I was still imposed many constraints that I wasn't interested in. This highlights a clear fact: **plans for the future need to be reviewed regularly because we* *change all the time**. ## Related - [[Life design (2021 edition)]] ## References