Designing Your Life: How to Build a Well-Lived, Joyful Life

Bill Burnett & Dave Evans

About the Authors

Bill Burnet

Bill Burnett is an Adjunct Professor at Stanford University, where he is the Executive Director of the Life Design Lab. He has a Bachelor of Science and a Master of Science in Product Design from Stanford. He has also worked in start-ups and Fortune 100 companies.

He has designed broadly, including award-winning laptops at Apple and Star Wars action toys. He holds a number of mechanical and design patents and design awards. In addition to his work at Stanford, he advises several of his students’ startup companies.

Dave Evans

Dave Evans is a lecturer and part of the Product Design Program at Stanford. He is also a management consultant and the co-founder of Electronic Arts. He holds a Bachelor of Science and a Master of Science in Mechanical Engineering from Stanford and a graduate diploma in Contemplative Spirituality from San Francisco Theological Seminary.

He worked at Apple, where he led product marketing for the mouse team and introduced laser printing to the masses. Dave also works with start-up teams, corporate executives, non-profit leaders, and countless young adults.

Source: designyour.life Website

Our one-sentence summary

Life design is a never-ending learning framework that provides the mindsets, tools, and strategies to navigate disruption and create new life opportunities.

Publisher’s Summary

What exactly is a well-designed life? It’s a rich portfolio of experiences, adventures, and failures that teach us important lessons; that result in hardships that makes us stronger; that help us know ourselves better; it’s a life of achievements and satisfactions.

In Designing Your Life, Bill Burnett and Dave Evans put forth the questions about life that we all ask about one’s meaning and purpose in the world; questions such as: How do I find a job that I like or maybe even love? …How do I balance my career with my family? …How can I make a difference in the world?

We all want the answers to these questions. We’re just not sure how to go about finding them, or where or how to begin. And we feel that we don’t have the tools to find our way.

Designers love questions, but what they really love is reframing questions. The reframing for the question “What do I want to be when I grow up?” is “What do I want to grow into?”

This is what Designing Your Life promises to show us –how to find what we want to do now, at any age, and how to answer who we want to grow into tomorrow.

Source: Designing Your Life Book Jacket

**Detailed Designing You Life Book Summary**

Introduction: Life by Design

Three dysfunctional beliefs prevent people from designing the life they want. We need to learn to reframe them.
- “Dysfunctional belief: Your degree determines your career.”
  - “Reframe: Three-quarters of all college graduates do not end up working in a career related to their majors.” (p. x)
- “Dysfunctional belief: If you are successful, you will be happy.”
  - “Reframe: True happiness comes from designing a life that works for you.” (p. xi)
- “Dysfunctional belief: It’s too late to make any changes.”
  - “Reframe: It is never too late to design a life you love.” (p. xii)
- Everything we see was designed by someone. We can design our lives too.
- Designing is not the same as engineering. Similar to designing aesthetically, a well-designed life will have a feel of its own.
- Design thinking will help you solve your own life design problems.
- “A well-designed life is a life that is generative. It constantly changes, evolves, creates, and is productive. There is always the possibility for surprise.” (p. xvi)
- Designers love questions, but most importantly, they love reframing questions:
  - How do I find a job? How do I build a career? How do I balance my career with my family? How can I make a difference in the world?
  - Reframing is among the most important skills that a designer should develop.
    - A reframe when we consider new information about a problem that allows us to restate it in a different point of view. Then we think and prototype.
    - The biggest reframe you need to make is viewing life as something that can’t be perfectly planned. But, more importantly, whatever the problem in your life, there never is just one solution.
  - Designers imagine things that don’t exist, build them, and only then the world changes.
  - “Designers don’t think their way forward; they build their way forward.” (p. xxv)
  - Design thinking involves five simple mindsets:
    - Be curious. Curiosity leads to exploration, making everything new.
    - Try stuff. With a bias to action, you can test things out, and create prototypes.
    - Reframe problems. Learn to get unstuck by changing your point of view.
    - Know it’s a process. Sometimes prototypes end up in the trash, and other times they become new things (e.g., Play-Doh).
    - Ask for help. Have mentors, build a community, and collaborate.
  - Forget about passion. Most people don’t know their passion and they give it too much power. We need to understand that passion comes from a good life design.
    - Passion is not the cause of a good life; it is the consequence of a good life design.
  - A well-designed life is a life that makes sense. But remember that failure is part of life, even if well-designed.

Chapter 1: Start Where You Are

Design thinking can help you move forward, regardless of what problems you have.
The first step is to decipher what design problem you are trying to solve. It is not always easy to understand what the problem really is.
- In Dave’s (author) case, his problem was he was so focused on his own idea of the problem that he couldn’t look at the real problem: he shouldn’t be majoring in Biology, as his idea of it had been misguided since before, he started college.
- If Dave had been curious, he would have asked biologists about his experience, or he could have interned or volunteered at a biology institution.
- If Dave had tried stuff, he could have spent some time on the open sea and discovered whether his idea was as glamorous as he thought.
Sometimes, we get stuck on gravity problems.
- Just as gravity never disappears, there are problems that aren’t actionable; they aren’t real problems because we cannot change or resolve them.
  - Some examples of gravity problems include: “Poets don’t make enough money,” or “It is hard to find a job after five years of being out of work,” or “I will never be an executive in this family-owned organization where I have worked for over five years,” or “I want to go back to school and be a doctor but it’ll take me at least ten years, and I don’t have the time and resources at this stage of my life.”
  - These are situations that are facts of life. Like gravity, they can’t be solved.
  - In a fight between you and reality, reality will always win.
- To free yourself from getting stuck on gravity problems, accept the unchangeable situation, and reframe:
  - Going back to the example above about the family-owned business, reframe the company’s desire for legacy as being a source of job security for you, with a decent income, in a dependable organization.
  - In the example of going back to school to become a doctor, consider other health-care positions that do not require a 10-year degree and credentialing process.
- The only response to gravity problems is acceptance. But, to accept, you need to start where you are and not where you want to be. To start from where you are, assess the following four areas:
  - Assess if you’re healthy and well in more than just your body; also consider your emotional, mental, and spiritual wellbeing.
  - Whether you get paid for it or not, work here refers to what you do. Volunteer work, housework, and taking care of children or parents, etc., all fall under work.
  - Any activity you do that brings you joy. It is not play if it is something you enjoy but that you are actually doing it to compete, advance, achieve, or earn money etc.
  - This refers to the people in your life, including your primary relationship, kids, parents, friends, community, and even pets.
- We all need to remodel at least one of these areas. To figure out which one(s) you should focus on, try the following exercise.
  - “Dysfunctional belief: I should already know where I am going.”
    - “Reframe: You can’t know where you are going until you know where you are.” (p. 17)
  - Using the image below, asses your health and the ways you work, play, and love.
    - We all have different mixes at different times of our lives.
    - Like a car dashboard that will light up to indicate a problem or emergency, use the diagram as an indicator that something might not be right.
  - Once you are done, ask yourself if there’s a design problem that you would like to tackle in any of these areas. Then, ask yourself if the problem is a gravity problem

DYL Love Play Work Health Dashboard Worksheet v21 1

Source: Designing Your Life (p.27)

Chapter 2: Building a Compass

What is your quest? To answer this question, you need a compass.
You need two things to build your compass:
- Workview: Articulate your philosophy of work (what is work for and why you do it).
- Lifeview: Articulate your ideas about the world and how it works.
Your Workview and Lifeview will change as you grow. But you don’t need to figure out the rest of your life right now. You just have to create a compass.
Because our society is filled with idealized models telling us how life is supposed to be lived, we all run the risk of using someone else’s compass and living someone else’s life. To avoid this, we need:
- “A coherent life is one lived in such a way that you can clearly connect the dots between who you are, what you believe, and what you are doing.” (p. 32)
- To live coherently, live in alignment with your values without sacrificing your integrity. It doesn’t matter if everything isn’t perfect all the time.
To build your compass, you need to write a reflection about your Workview and your Lifeview. Take thirty minutes and write around 250 words per each.
- For your Workview, answer the following questions:
  - Why work? What’s work for? What does work mean? How does it relate to the individual, others, society?
  - What defines good or worthwhile work? What does money have to do with it? What do experience, growth, fulfillment have to do with it?
  - Remember, this is not a job description – it is not what work you want but why you work.
- For your Lifeview, answer the following questions:
  - Why are we here? What is the meaning/purpose of life? Where do family, country, and the rest of the world fit in?
  - What is good and what is evil? Is there a higher power, God, or something that impacts your life?
  - What is the role of joy, sorrow, justice, love, peace, and strife in life?
- Then, read your Workview and your Lifeview and write down your thoughts on the following:
  - Where do your views on work and life complement one another? Where do they clash? Does one drive the other? How?
  - This reflection can result in the editing of one or both of your views.
- Through this exercise, you will find your True North. Then you can start your quest.
- Anytime you start to feel life is not working, or you’re going through a major transition, calibrate your compass. Do this exercise again. Consider doing it once a year too so that you can make sure that your views still align.
- “Dysfunctional Belief: I should know where I am going.”
  - “Reframe: I won’t always know where I’m going –but I can always know whether I’m going in the right direction.” (p.39)

Chapter 3: Wayfinding

“Dysfunctional belief: Work is not supposed to be enjoyable; that’s why they call it work.”
- “Reframe: Enjoyment is a guide to finding the right work for you.” (p.42)
Wayfinding is an exercise that will help you figure out where you’re going even if you don’t know your destination yet.
- The first thing you need is a compass (not a map). Pay attention to what’s in front of you. Measure your engagement and your energy levels in your everyday routine.
Flow is that state of being in which time stands still because you’re deeply engaged in an activity. This happens when the challenge matches your skill.
- It is important to get good at capturing moments in a state of flow.
We are constantly engaging in some sort of activity. Try to keep track of the activities that sustain your energy and the ones that drain it. Keep in mind that boredom is easier to recover from compared to something that de-energizes you.
A key element in wayfinding your life is following the joy, i.e., what brings you alive. It might not be what you think, so you need to pay close attention.
To wayfind your life, you need a Good Time Journal. There are two elements to this journal:
- Activity Log: where you record when you’re engaged and energized.
  - It might take a while to get the hang of this because, but make sure you make log entries daily.
- Reflections: where you discover what you are learning.
  - Analyze your log looking for trends, insights, surprises – anything that is a clue to what works and doesn’t work for you.
  - Write down your reflections weekly.
- This exercise can help you figure out the activities you can double up on. It will also help you point out the areas of your life that need a redesign so that energy-negative activities can be reduced (as possible).
After a couple of weeks, take the exercise to the next level. Become as precise as possible.
- The clearer and more specific you are, the better you can define your direction.
- As part of the curiosity mindset, use the AEIOU method to become more precise:
  - Activities – what were you actually doing? What was your role?
  - Environment – consider how the place made you feel.
  - Interactions – who did you interact with? How many people?
  - Objects – were you interacting with objects? Did they help you feel engaged?
  - Users – who else was there? What role did they play?
- If you are between jobs or just getting started on your professional life, you can do this exercise based on past peak experiences.

Chapter 4: Getting Unstuck

Designers know you don’t go for your first idea – you choose better when you have several options. However, most people get stuck trying to make their first idea work.
“Dysfunctional belief: I am stuck.”
- “Reframe: I’m never stuck because I can always generate more ideas.” (p.64)
“Dysfunctional belief: I have to find the one right idea.”
- “Reframe: I need a lot of ideas so that I can explore a lot of possibilities.” (p.65)
Most people look for jobs that they think they can get. That’s the worst way to get a job. This is not design thinking.
Designers get stuck all the time but being stuck can fuel creativity. Generate a lot of ideas and possibilities by:
- Accepting the problem,
- Getting stuck,
- Getting over it and ideating.
Believing that only one idea will work leads to a lot of pressure and indecision. In life design, you need a lot of ideas. More ideas = more access to better ideas = better design.
The archnemesis of creativity is judgment. While it comes naturally, we need to learn to overcome premature judgment. To do so, you need to understand:
- You choose better when you have a lot of ideas to choose from.
- You never choose your first solution to any problem.
Our minds are lazy and like to ger rid of problems as quickly as possible. Our minds want to make us fall in love with our first ideas, but we must not. To help us avoid this tendency, use mind mapping. This is a technique that uses word association to generate solutions. Try the following exercise:
- On a piece of paper, pick a topic and write it down in the center.
- Make a mind map by drawing branches from the main topic, writing the first five to six words that come to mind.
- Then create more branches from these new words by writing down three or four more words that come to mind.
- Repeat this process until five minutes are up.
  - Make sure to time the exercise to reduce judgment.
- Highlight things that might be interesting and put them together into concepts.
Anchor problems are those that hold us in one place just as a physical anchor would.
- Sometimes, when we have a problem, we anchor ourselves to one solution that is not working. When this happens, you need to reframe to get an array of possibilities.
- Then, prototype ideas. Test the waters. This helps reduce risk, fear, and anxiety.
- Remember to fail fast and fail forward.
After your Good Time Journal, practice mind mapping by picking one area from your journal that engages you and another one that energizes The point of this exercise is not to generate specific results but to start ideating. That way, you’ll be working with a designer’s mindset.

Chapter 5: Design Your Lives

A common mistake is thinking that you need to come up with the one perfect plan for your life and it’ll be smooth sailing from there. People think that if they make the right choice, they’ll have a blueprint for the rest of their life.
“Dysfunctional belief: I need to figure out my best life, make a plan, and execute it.”
- “Reframe: There are multiple great lives (and plans) within me, and I get to choose which one to build my way forward to next.” (p.87)
To design your life you first need to design your lives.
Create an Odyssey Plan: write 3 different versions of the next five years of your life. Even if you already have a plan and are executing it, write something called an Odyssey Plan.
- These are multiple prototypes. One idea leads to the refinement of the same idea. But three ideas lead to more ideas. You need options.
- Try not to think of the Odyssey Plan as “Plan A,” “Plan B,” and “Plan C” where A is the good plan, B is the ok plan, and C the tolerable plan. All are plan A.
Create three alternative lives that are very different from each other. Don’t think of two versions of the same life plan, but make sure they are different options.
If you need help coming up with ideas quickly, try describing:
- Life One – what you already have in mind.
- Life Two – if your life one idea is suddenly not an option, what would you do?
- Life Three – if money and image were no object, what would you do?
Now, begin your Odyssey Plan (see image below for guidance). Include:
- A visual and graphic timeline that includes personal and non-career events.
- A six-word title for each option that describes the essence of the alternative.
- A few questions to test assumptions and reveal insights.
- A dashboard gauging resources, plan likability, plan confidence, & coherence.
- Other considerations include:
  - Where would you live?
  - What experience or learning will you gain?
  - What are the impacts of choosing this alternative?
  - What would life look like?

Graphical representation of the Odyssey Plan Template.

Source: Designing Your Life

Chapter 6: Prototyping

“Dysfunctional belief: If I comprehensively research the best data for all aspects of my plan, I will be fine.”
- “Reframe: I should build prototypes to explore my alternatives.” (p.111)
Couple ideas with the bias-to-action mindset to get a lot of building and thinking.
When designing your life, you don’t usually have a lot of data. You have to accept that a traditional cause-and-effect approach won’t work.
Prototyping means asking questions, discovering hidden biases, and creating momentum for a possible path you first need to try out.
Good prototypes:
- Isolate one aspect of a problem,
- Design an experience that allows you to try out something,
- Help visualize alternatives in an experiential way,
- Provide an opportunity to understand what a career path might feel like,
- Build a community of people with similar interests,
- Might turn into unexpected opportunities,
- Allow you to try and fail rapidly without overinvesting.
Keep prototypes simple, but make sure they involve physical experiences in the world.
A good starting point is having a conversation: a Life Design Interview.
- Talk to people about what they love and hate about their jobs. Ask them about how they got there (don’t forget the journey).
- When asking someone for this interview, clarify it is not a job interview, as it might bias the type of conversation you will have. Be clear about your goal.
Then start prototyping experiences. Simply start learning through a direct encounter. You could shadow a professional, work on an exploratory project, or secure an internship.
Seek prototypes that let you do stuff, not just observe or hear.
To design prototype experiences, you need design brainstorming. Go back to your Odyssey Plan and analyze it. What are your questions? What would you like to understand?
Brainstorming is a method of idea generation, usually with a group of people.
- First, frame questions correctly.
  - Make sure questions are open-ended.
  - Be careful not to include the answer in the questions.
  - Be careful not to frame a question so broadly that it becomes meaningless.
- Second, have your group warm up and make them feel creative. Have a list of exercises or games (e.g., give them Play-Doh to play with while brainstorming).
- Third, start brainstorming.
  - All participants should have a pen and notepad to write down their ideas.
  - Establish rules:
    - Go for quantity and not quality.
    - Defer judgment and don’t censor ideas.
    - Build off the ideas of others.
    - Encourage wild ideas.
  - Fourth, name and frame outcomes.
    - Count the ideas,
    - Group similar ideas into categories and frame the results based on the question,
    - Give each category a description and name that captures its essence.
    - Vote on what idea is:
      - More exciting,
      - The one we could do if money was no object,
      - The dark horse – probably won’t work, but if it does…
      - Most likely to lead to a great life,
      - Unconstrained by reality, e.g., if we could ignore physics…
    - After voting, make decisions on what to prototype first.

Chapter 7: How Not to Get a Job

About 90% of us use a method that only works 5% of the time: job posting on the Internet. The problem is that 52% of employers have admitted that they respond to fewer than half of the applications they receive. This method also fails because it assumes your perfect job is waiting out there for you. But that view is mistaken.
Keep in mind that companies will most likely post a job listing only after an attempt to fill the position through word of mouth or their networks has already been done. So you won’t find great jobs on the internet.
If you still want to try this method, you need to understand:
- The job description on a website is typically not written by the hiring manager or someone who really understands the job. Therefore it almost never captures what the job actually requires.
- Job qualifications are often too generic and don’t tell you a lot about the job.
- The description of the skills required is usually based on the skills of the previous jobholder. It is historical and doesn’t consider how the job will change in the future.
- They often ask for superhero qualifiers that no one can meet.
Tips to make your Internet job search more effective include:
- Many companies use software to collect and scan resumes. For yours to be discovered, use the same words that the company used in the job description.
- If you have a specific skill that is posted as required, put it in your resume exactly as it is written in the Internet posting.
- Bring a printed version of your resume to the interview.
- In the screening phase, don’t talk about other talents or skills that are not part of the description. You might come across as unfocused.
Be wary of the super-job description. This is when companies want to replace the previous employee with a better version of that person.
- To find out if the posting is a super-job description listing, research how long the job has been posted and how many people have already been interviewed. Too many people and too long of a post is a sign that this might not be a great place to work.
Be wary of phantom job listings too. This happens when managers already have someone in mind but need to comply with certain requisites. They will publish the listing for the minimum time required, have a few cursory interviews, and then hire the person they wanted from the beginning.
If you want to work at a cool company (e.g., Google), keep in mind that these businesses have many amazing candidates and would rather risk false negatives than false positives.
- A false positive is when they hired someone who appeared a great candidate but turned out to be not so good. Bad hires are incredibly expensive and painful.
- Companies will do anything to avoid false positives, even if that means potentially losing a good candidate that did not appear as strong at first glance.
  - This is a gravity problem.
- If you really want to work at a cool company, try to get connected to people inside the company via the prototype discussions covered before.
“Dysfunctional belief: You should focus on your need to find a job.”
- “Reframe: Focus on the hiring manager’s need to find the right person.” (p. 145)

Chapter 8: Designing Your Dream Job

“Dysfunctional belief: My dream job is out there waiting.”
- “Reframe: Design your dream job by actively seeking and co-creating it.” (p.145)
There is no dream job. But there are a couple of good jobs in nice places with good co-workers. You can make them close enough to perfect and really love them.
As explained before, mining the Internet for a job is not the best approach. In the US alone, only 20% of all the jobs available are posted online. To break into the hidden job market, the best technique is prototyping.
- Look for prototype conversations and connect with people. These conversations might lead to job offers. And, it may actually come from the other person offering.
- If the other person does not naturally offer anything, try asking “What steps would be involved in exploring how someone like me might become part of this organization?” If they can’t offer anything, they might refer you or recommend you to another company or organization.
“Dysfunctional belief: Networking is just hustling people. It’s slimy.”
- “Reframe: Networking is just asking for directions.” (p.150)
- Networking means entering a community that’s having a particular conversation.
- The network exists to sustain the community of people getting the work done. That’s why this is the only way to gain access to the hidden job market.
  - Remember, people are naturally wired to enjoy helping others. Think of it as asking for directions. If someone is lost and asks for directions, people are almost always happy to help. Asking for referrals, networking, is the professional equivalent of asking for directions.
- “Dysfunctional belief: I am looking for a job.”
  - “Reframe: I am pursuing a number of offers.” (p.153)
  - Traditionally, looking for a job means focusing your behavior toward getting the job you think you are good for and convincing the institution to hire you. You might fake your enthusiasm and feel like you’re lying.
  - When you reframe to the idea that you are looking for offers, you don’t have to be deceptive. You can genuinely be curious about the job because it is true that you want to evaluate the offer.
- If you make a lot of connections, you will be able to develop more prototypes, and you will have more opportunities that will turn into offers.

Chapter 9: Choosing Happiness

Designing a career and life requires a lot of options and alternatives, but also the ability to make good choices. First, you need to learn to not second-guess yourself.
- In life design, being happy means choosing happiness.
  - It isn’t about making the right choice – it is about learning to choose well.
  - Hard work can be undone by poor choosing. Most often, it is not that we made the wrong choice but that we think wrongly about your choosing.
- “Dysfunctional belief: To be happy, I have to make the right choice. “
  - “Reframe: There is no right choice – only good choosing.” (p. 158)
- The choosing process has four steps:

Gather and create. Write your Workview and your Lifeview, create mind maps, do your three Odyssey Plans, and prototype conversations and experiences.
Narrow down. Sometimes, we have too many options. Even if lack of information is a real problem, most of the time the problem we face is having too many options.
- Reframe: If you have too many options, you have none at all.
- Break down your list. If you can’t easily do that, start by creating smaller sub-lists. Then, make a choice. Only after choosing can you realize your preference.
Choose discerningly. Apply more than one way of knowing.
- Research suggests emotional intelligence, having a feeling, and your intuition can all properly guide your decisions. So, integrate all of your decision-making faculties.
- Grokking means to understand something so deeply that you become one with it. Grok your choice. If for some reason you can’t decide, live out your alternatives –don’t think about your options, act as if you were living them for a few weeks.
Let go and move on. Don’t agonize. Sometimes It seems like the right choice will lead to happiness, but it is impossible to make the right choice ahead of time. You will never have all the information. And, imagined choices don’t exist.
- Get better at building by letting go of the options you don’t need.
- To let go, move on. Grab on to something else.
  - Put your attention on something –not off
- “Dysfunctional belief: Happiness is having it all.”
  - “Reframe: Happiness is letting go of what you don’t need.” (p.174)
- Don’t dream of what could have been. Don’t waste your future hoping for a better past.

Chapter 10: Failure Immunity

Never failing is impossible. But it is possible to become immune to the feelings that come from failure. By using the tools presented in this book, you can reduce your failure rate. But you should also be after failure immunity.
Research shows that grit is a better measure of potential success than IQ. When you take a life design approach, you’re going fail. It’s important to understand that in this process, failure means something different.
- As a life designer, you can’t fail. You can only be making progress and learning.
- Designing your life is a great way to succeed sooner because you failed more often.
- Enjoy the process of learning via the prototype encounters that others call failure.
- Failing fast and learning the value of the failure allows its sting to disappear.
“Dysfunctional belief: We judge our life by the outcome.”
- “Reframe: Life is a process, not an outcome.” (p.184)
James Carse once said that life is either a finite game or an infinite game.
- In a finite game, we play by the rules to win.
- In an infinite game, we play with the rules for the joy playing.
In life design, you are always playing an infinite game of becoming yourself. You start with who you are, and then you have ideas, and then you make a choice. In the process, you learn, you grow, but you don’t fail.
- “Dysfunctional belief: Life is a finite game with winners and losers.”
  - “Reframe: Life is an infinite game, with no winners or losers.” (p.187)
- Here is a three-step exercise for reframing failure:

Log your failures. Write down each time you think you have messed up.
Categorize your failures into:
- Screw-ups – simple, honest mistakes you usually get right.
- Weaknesses – identify your weakness and decide whether you can work on improving them or avoid the situations that prompt them.
- Growth opportunities – Identify the mistakes that shouldn’t happen next time.
Identify growth insights. Ask yourself: what is there to learn here? What went wrong? What can be done differently in the future?

Failure immunity comes from knowing that a prototype is for learning. Whatever did not work still leaves you with invaluable information.

Chapter 11: Building a Team

“Dysfunctional belief: It’s my life, I have to design it myself.”
- “Reframe: You live and design your life in collaboration with others.” (p.199)
Life design is a communal effort. If you do the exercises presented in this book, you should engage with a lot of people. However, you also need to develop a team:
- Supporters: Those go-to people you can count on who encourage you.
- Players: The active participants in your life design projects and prototypes.
- Intimates: Your family and friends. Even if they can’t help you design, keep them informed.
- The team: The people who know the specifics of your life design project and will track with you on those projects over time.
- A healthy team is more than two people but no more than six.
Your team members should all be respectful, confidential, participative (they shouldn’t hold back), and generative (they should be constructive, not skeptical nor judging).
Mentors play a very important role in life design.
- Counsel is when someone helps you figure out what you
- Advice is when someone tells you what he or she
  - If you’re getting advice, get to know the advisor’s values, priorities, and points of view. Or, make sure the person has indisputable expertise.
- Counsel is more helpful.
  - Counsel relies on questions aimed at understanding what you are saying and what you are going through.
- Good mentors listen and offer possible reframes so that you can generate ideas. They will resist telling you what to do and will be cautious not to overinfluence you.
Also build a community. A community should have:
- Kindred purpose. Healthy communities are about something – not just getting together to get together.
- Regular meetings.
- Shared ground, values, or points of view.
- A focus on the people – to know and to be known.
A community doesn’t have to be made up entirely of intimates, but there should be some level of personal disclosure about what each person is up to and how it’s going.

Conclusion: A Well-Designed Life

“Dysfunctional belief: I finished designing my life; the hard work is done, and everything will be great.”
- “Reframe: You never finish designing your life – life is a joyous and never-ending design project of building your way forward.” (p. 219)
Keep building your way forward. Design isn’t just a technique to address problems and projects – it’s a way of living.
The reframes offered in this book may be disruptive. Unlearning things is often harder but it is also more important than learning things.
A good life design should lead to a release of the best of you.
Remember, at the beginning of this book, you were presented with five important mindsets. Make sure you embrace them:
- Be curious. There is always something interesting about everything.
- Try stuff. With a bias to action, you won’t be stuck.
- Reframe problems. Change your perspective of things. Almost all problems require a perspective switch.
- Know it is a process. Awareness of the process will help you avoid getting frustrated or lost.
- Ask for help. Build a team and create a community.
Beyond the five mindsets, there are two more things to keep in mind all the time:
- Your compass. Recalibrate your compass at least annually.
- Your personal practices. Build prototypes and find practices that help you live your own well-designed life: meditating, exercising, praying, whatever works for you.
Life design is a way of life. It will transform how you look at life and how you live it.
“The end result of a well-designed life is a life well lived.” (p.230)