Start where you are
Picture four fuel gauges for health, work, play and love, and mark how full each one is today. The authors say you can't work out where to go until you're honest about where you are now.
Career
Designing Your Life
by Bill Burnett and Dave Evans
Can you design a life?
Bill Burnett and Dave Evans run a popular Stanford class called Designing Your Life. Students arrive asking what to do with their lives. As designers, the two tell them to stop hunting for the perfect plan and start building rough versions of a life to test.
Hear a sample · read by Laura
What you'll learn
- Start where you are
- Gravity problems
- Write three Odyssey Plans
- Prototype before you leap
The key ideas in Designing Your Life
Gravity problems
If you can't do anything about it, Burnett and Evans don't count it as a problem. They call it a gravity problem. Poets earn little, and no amount of worrying will change the market for poetry. Accept the circumstance, then design around it.
Write three Odyssey Plans
Sketch three different five-year plans. Life one is the path you're on. Life two is what you'd do if that path disappeared tomorrow. Life three is what you'd do if money and what others think didn't matter. Each is a real option.
Prototype before you leap
The quickest way to test a career is to talk to people already in it. Burnett and Evans call these prototype conversations. Before you quit to open a bakery, buy a baker a coffee and ask about their week. Better still, spend a Saturday working in one.
Lines worth underlining
Passion
Most people don't know their passion yet. It usually grows out of trying things.
Gravity problems
If you can't do anything about it, it's a gravity problem. Stop pushing and work around it.
Energy
Keep a Good Time Journal to notice which parts of your day give you energy and which drain it.
Odyssey plans
Sketch three very different versions of your next five years. Any one of them could be a good life.
Prototypes
Test a new direction with small experiments, like a chat with someone doing the job, before you leap.
Hot take · true or myth?
What you studied at university decides the work you'll end up doing.
See the book's answer
Myth. Most graduates end up working in something unrelated to their degree, the authors point out. Your subject is one starting point among many.
One thing to try
Book one prototype coffee
Pick a job you daydream about and find one person who does it, through a friend or an old classmate. Ask for twenty minutes to hear their story, and what an ordinary Tuesday looks like. Don't ask for a job.
There's more to Designing Your Life
Knotd has the key ideas from 250+ non-fiction books, each in a few minutes, in plain words. Designing Your Life comes with a Hot Take round to make it stick.
Get the whole book on KnotdOpen in the appQuestions about Designing Your Life
What is Designing Your Life about?
Can you design a life? Bill Burnett and Dave Evans run a popular Stanford class called Designing Your Life. Students arrive asking what to do with their lives. As designers, the two tell them to stop hunting for the perfect plan and start building rough versions of a life to test.
What are the key ideas in Designing Your Life?
Start where you are; Gravity problems; Write three Odyssey Plans; Prototype before you leap.
What's one thing to try from Designing Your Life?
Pick a job you daydream about and find one person who does it, through a friend or an old classmate. Ask for twenty minutes to hear their story, and what an ordinary Tuesday looks like. Don't ask for a job.
Is Designing Your Life on Knotd?
Yes. Knotd has the key ideas from Designing Your Life in a few minutes, in plain words, plus a Hot Take round to test them. It's one of 250+ non-fiction books in the app.