The purpose of Designing Your Existence is to demonstrate to readers how design thinking can assist us in living a purposeful and happy life. Regardless of who you are, where you are, what you have done for a living, or your age, you can succeed. You can create and build your job and your life using the same design thinking that has produced incredible technologies, products, and spaces. Your life can be brimming over with happiness and contentment. Additionally, it can be consistently productive and creative.
Bill Burnett
The Stanford Design Program’s Executive Director is Bill Burnett. He earned both his BSc and MSc in Product Design from Stanford, and he has worked on a number of cutting-edge projects as a professional. These projects include the original Hasbro Star Wars action figurines and award-winning Apple PowerBooks. Bill serves on the board of VOZ, a socially conscious high fashion start-up, in addition to his responsibilities at Stanford. He also offers advice to a number of Internet start-up businesses.
Dave Evans
Dave Evans is the Co-Founder of the Stanford Life Design Lab and holds a BSc and MSc in Mechanical Engineering from Stanford. Early in his career, he worked for Apple, where he led the mouse-design team and introduced laser printing to the masses. He then helped found the pioneering interactive and game software developer Electronic Arts.
Start Where You Are
Unhealthy Beliefs
Every aspect of our lives involves dysfunctional beliefs. But this does not imply that they are useful. The writers instead emphasize how dysfunctional ideas impede you from creating the life you want. As a result, you must learn to recognize and reframe unhealthy ideas. One dysfunctional belief, for instance, contends that it is too late for you to realize your objectives. In truth, it’s never too late to create the life you want.
A Well-Designed Life
A well-designed life takes back and consciously reframes problematic assumptions. The path to passion is one of experimentation, discovery of your passion, and mastery. Therefore, by making a good life design, you may promote the development of passion.
Gravity Issues
Gravity issues are never something you should priorities. Instead, they are merely universal truths. For instance, let’s say you decide you want to study medicine for seven years in the UK but are concerned about the cost. The fact that you must study for this time period in order to become a licensed doctor is simply a truth. Therefore, there is no way to resolve this issue. The authors refer to these as gravity issues. Humans frequently engage in impossible conflicts in an effort to overcome various gravity-related issues.
You should strive to develop acceptance rather than fighting gravitational issues. The writers specifically advise starting where you are instead than where you wish you or the world were. You can reframe the circumstance by using this strategy.
Building a Compass
Indicators: The Four
Your compass should be made up of a number of significant indicators that affect your life. The authors emphasise four significant metrics that must be optimised for success.
Health Gauge: Boost your physical, mental, and spiritual well-being. You won’t be able to improve your other indicators until you first focus on improving your health.
Work Gauge: Work is more than just a 9 to 5 job. Let’s say you consult others or volunteer; this is also considered employment. Importantly, caring for others, maintaining a home, and raising children all qualify as employment. Develop a healthy balance between the various work types you do.
Play gauge: Anything that makes you happy counts as play. These activities must, however, also be carried out purely for enjoyment. The aspect of this action that makes you happy shouldn’t be the result. It should be your enjoyment of participating in this activity.
Love Gauge: You must surround yourself with individuals who love you in addition to loving others. The most significant affection you can experience is frequently found in your family and close relationships. You might, however, also need the love of your family, close friends, and neighborhood.
Work and life perspectives
The authors contend that creating your personal compass requires figuring out how the concepts highlighted in your job and life connect.
Your capacity to engage in reflective activity will be key to understanding your work perspective. The writers advise you to compose a response of roughly 250 words to the following questions:
How come we work?
What does job entail?
What qualifies as quality or meaningful work?
What connection exists between labor and finances?
What connections does labor make between a person and society?
What are the connections between fulfilment, experience, and growth?
Take a similar stance when contemplating your life philosophy, but have the following questions in mind:
What brings us here?
What constitutes good and evil?
What is the significance of life?
Where do society, the nation, and family fit in?
Does a higher power exist, and if so, how does it affect my life?
What purpose can happiness, grief, justice, equity, love, and peace serve in life?
Coherency
Your capacity to align each of the following three key criteria will determine the degree to which your job vision and life view become coherent:
Your identity
What you hold as true
How you act
Your clarity and capacity to lead a meaningful life can both improve if you can bring these two life perspectives into alignment. Your compass or True North is this coherence.
Come to know
There is no need for a map in wayfinding. Instead, all that is needed for navigating is a compass and a direction. You must determine your direction after creating your compass. By taking into account two distinct aspects of your life, you may determine your direction.
Engagement
There is no need for a map in wayfinding. Instead, all that is needed for navigating is a compass and a direction. You must determine your direction after creating your compass. By taking into account two distinct aspects of your life, you may determine your direction.
According to the authors, a flow state is defined by:
full participation in an activity.
a feeling of elation.
a very clear inner self.
complete tranquilly and tranquility.
an impression of time being still
Energy
All of our daily actions either replenish or deplete our energy. In truth, there are various activities that can give us greater energy. You can redesign your life to maximise the activities that maintain or boost your energy levels by keeping track of your energy flows. There will be certain required energy-sucking actions. Despite this, the writers provide suggestions for how to balance various pursuits.
Place more stimulating activities around those that drain your vitality.
After completing energy-sucking activities, treat yourself.
Always make sure you have ample sleep and energy.
You can use the AEIOU approach to categories your actions in an efficient way. Consider first what you were doing and the role you were playing.
Then, think about the surroundings of the activity and how they affected your energy levels. Remember the interactions you had after that. Lastly, list the users that were present with you and the items that were being used. You should be able to better categorise your tasks and modify your life’s plan as a result of each of these five elements.
Ideation
Ideation is the process of generating several ideas. The advantage of coming up with more ideas is that they act as a never-ending cycle. More ideas encourage the production of even more. Importantly, having such a wide range of thoughts will enable you to locate somewhat better possibilities to produce your life design. Leaving judgement at the door is one approach to unlock your creative potential. Stop being your own worst critic and let all ideas come to the surface. Because it restricts your possibilities, judgement kills creativity and doesn’t truly help you make better decisions. In spite of this, the authors make it quite obvious that you shouldn’t fall in love with your initial concept. After enabling ideas to arise, you still need to effectively compare and analyze them.
Mind Maps
One of the best ways to promote ideation is by using mind maps. The authors provide a simple three-step method for creating mind maps:
Pick a subject.
Create a mind map.
Create concepts and auxiliary links.
Mind mapping’s success comes from its capacity to go past your internal speech censor. Your connections and thoughts are immediately recorded without the chance for criticism. The authors advise that you should never work on a mind map for longer than five minutes in order to ensure that the inner censor is overridden.
One plan for your life is not a sufficient strategy. There is a tremendous amount of strain added to your life when you tell yourself there is just one good plan for your life. Additionally, this strategy restricts your options. The writers advise that you instead choose three different life strategies. The following definition applies to these plans, which are known as Odyssey plans:
- The thing you already do ought to be your first plan of action. Basically, picture moving your existing course of life forward. As an alternative, if you feel like you need to make a change, think about your current strategy and make it your top priority.
- What you would do if your first life objective suddenly vanished should be the second strategy. This is your backup strategy in the event that your first life goal no longer generates any income.
- Your ultimate strategy should be based on the actions you would take if money and other people’s opinions didn’t matter.
The authors advise making a thorough overview for each of these plans. This plan should take each scenario into account for the next five years of your life. The plan ought to contain:
- a graphic timeline.
- A headline of six words would sum up what this existence would be like.
- assumptions made by this life.
- a dashboard listing all the tools you’d need to succeed in this world.
- The location of your home, your weekend activities, and other optional elements.
Prototyping
When trying to solve a problem, people frequently start with what they already know.
However, while planning your life, this is the wrong strategy. Prototyping should be used instead. Prototyping relies on tangible experiences in the actual world as opposed to thinking about what you already know. These encounters ought to make it easier for you to picture potential career possibilities.
Demonstration Conversations
The simplest type of prototyping, according to the authors, is having a conversation. You speak to someone who is already living this life before deciding to start living this alternate life. Pay attention to their strategies and what they have to say about this alternate life. Make sure to specifically ask this person for the following information:
- The aspects of this alternative life that people love and dislike.
- What this person’s typical day looks like.
- their chosen employment path that led them to this unconventional lifestyle.
- Whether they think they will continue to perform this work in the future.
During these talks, be sure to use active listening and refrain from talking about yourself.
prototype encounters
Through a direct interaction, prototype experiences enable us to live a portion of our alternate existence. Prototype experiences frequently take the form of a three-month internship, a week of unpaid employment, or a day spent observing a relevant professional.
Creating Your Ideal Job
The majority of ideal employment are off-limits online. Large corporations frequently only advertise their open positions internally, thus you may not have access to all available positions in your alternate life. Despite this, the prototype talks give you a chance to network and gain a deeper understanding of these covert vocations.
After engaging in a sample conversation and expressing interest in a company, you should try to expand your network. Referrals are the most typical technique to build a professional network. Investigate your prototype network as a result, and request introductions to powerful individuals. Additionally, use the internet to connect with influential people by displaying an interest in their hobbies.
Once you have identified your ideal position, you should identify related positions. Expand your search to include the jobs you consider your dream job if you want to receive as many job offers as possible.
Defeat Immunity
Failure is a given. This does not imply that it is impossible to be impervious to failure, though. Consider failures as opportunities to learn and improve your life strategy. Failure-related pain will never last because life is a process rather than an outcome. The authors refer to failure as the building block of success. So, instead of viewing failure as a setback, we should view it as the best possible outcome for our long-term success.
By using the exercise below, you can reframe your failures:
- Record your mistakes by putting them in writing. Always reflect on your past failures and how they have shaped who you are today.
- Sort your mistakes into easy ones and weak points. Your flaws are the errors that you must come to terms with. They are a component of who you are.
- Find growth insights, or areas where you could expand considerably if you made progress.
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