Recommended Read: ‘Designing Your Life’
by Bill Burnett & Dave Evans
My next significant read on my career odyssey was a book that was recommended to me twice (shout outs to my dear friend Harriet and colleague Michael Walter). This book is, of course, ‘Designing Your Life: Build the Perfect Career, Step by Step’ by Bill Burnett & Dave Evans in which the duo advocate for the application of design thinking principles to the tired, well-trodden path of job-hunting and present an alternative paradigm for exploring future career options.
First of all, what is design thinking?
Great question. It’s basically a creative and exploratory methodology for solving complex problems that we don’t know the answer to. Key to design thinking understanding human needs, then with these needs in mind, brainstorming ideas, prototyping and testing quickly and iteratively until a good solution is found. Removing bias is another important trope in any design thinking approach. According to IDEO, a global design agency and pioneers of design thinking:
“Design thinking is a process for creative problem solving. Design thinking has a human-centered core. It encourages organizations to focus on the people they’re creating for, which leads to better products, services, and internal processes.”
Design thinking prompts us to:
Ø Be curious and explore
Ø Try new stuff, a.k.a learning by doing
Ø Reframe problems to get unstuck
Ø Trust the process in all it’s messiness
Ø Collaborate & ask for help
And this is exactly the approach Bill Burnett and Dave Evans urge you to apply to your career exploration. It’s resonant of Roman Krznaric a few blog posts ago (read here) and my initial inkling that there must be a different way (read here).
“As a life designer, you need to embrace two philosophies: 1. You choose better when you have lots of good ideas to choose from. 2. You never choose your first solution to any problem.”
Why is ‘Designing Your Life’ such a good read?
Many reasons. Firstly, Bill & Dave essentially take you through a design process; first of all researching (figuring out your needs/wants/desires as well as deeper values), then “ideating” (coming up with ideas for your future career based on your needs), next “prototyping” (testing them out, whether it’s through “Life Design interviews” or other IRL experiences ).
This process is not only deeply insightful but also a lot of fun. Or at least, I had a lot of fun. I love these kinds of things. Things like this (see below) which examine your life view and your work view and encourage an introspective look at your values and outlook:
I found this activity really helpful as I quickly identified some cognitive dissonance between my inner world and my outer world. Note to self.
“A coherent life is one lived in such a way that you can clearly connect the dots between three things: who you are, what you believe, what you are doing.”
Talking of mindsets and mistaken ideas, the book is interspersed with re-framing dysfunctional beliefs, many of which I was victim of…until now!
“Many people operate under the dysfunctional belief that they just need to find out what they are passionate about. Once they know their passion, everything else will somehow magically fall into place. We hate this idea for one very good reason: most people don’t know their passion.”
There’s also a brilliant section called “How to not get a job” which vindicates my entire process and reason for writing this blog. Awesome. I wish more career advisers, recruiters, and well, everyone, would read this as it really deconstructs our current reality and lays the foundations for a better future for everyone. Vive la revolution!
Also worth mentioning before I wrap up this post, they have also published a ‘Designing Your Life’ Workbook which sits alongside this book and provides space for the multitude of musings, exercises and activities which they present as part of the journey. I haven’t bought it (yet) but it looks like a great complementary tool.
And to conclude, one final thought:
“A well-designed life is a marvelous portfolio of experiences, of adventures, of failures that taught you important lessons, of hardships that made you stronger and helped you know yourself better, and of achievements and satisfactions.”
