5 steps to designing the life you want | Bill Burnett | TEDxStanford
TLDRLife design expert Bill Burnett shares five key concepts from design thinking to help people build meaningful, purposeful lives. These include connecting personal beliefs and work to find meaning, avoiding unsolvable problems, envisioning multiple potential life paths, testing ideas before fully committing, and making thoughtful choices. With curiosity, experimentation, and tools to get "unstuck," anyone can design a joyful, well-lived life.
Takeaways
- 😀 Design thinking is an innovation methodology for designing products, services and even your life
- 💡 Connect your life and work views to make your life feel meaningful
- 🚫 Avoid getting stuck on problems you aren't willing to solve - just accept them
- 🤔 Most people don't have a single identifiable passion; interest is better principle for life design
- ⏰ You're not late figuring out your life - start from where you are
- 🔢 Do three alternate life plans, not just one - more ideas lead to better solutions
- 🗣 Prototype conversations and experiences before making big life changes
- 🎲 Pay attention and keep peripheral vision open to notice unexpected opportunities
- 📝 Narrow down choices - too many makes it hard to choose
- 💖 Your 'gut feeling' is key for good decision making
Q & A
What is design thinking and how can it help design your life?
-Design thinking is an innovation methodology that provides mindsets and processes to help approach problems in new ways. It can be applied to life design by helping people get unstuck, reframe problems, ideate solutions, prototype ideas, and make better decisions.
What are some common dysfunctional beliefs that hold people back?
-Common dysfunctional beliefs covered in the talk include: you need to have a passion to guide your life direction, you should have everything figured out by a certain age, and you should strive to be the best version of yourself.
What are gravity problems and how should they be handled?
-Gravity problems are situations you cannot change. Since you cannot solve problems you are unwilling to address, the only option with gravity problems is to accept them and then decide if you can reframe the circumstance or need to remove yourself from it.
Why is it important to ideate multiple life paths?
-Ideating just one life plan limits your vision. Generating multiple ideas leads to more creative solutions. Designing three parallel lives helps people realize they have more options than they thought and brings forgotten interests back into their main plan.
What are two types of prototypes for life design?
-The two prototyping methods are prototype conversations - meeting people already living your desired lifestyle, and prototype experiences - immersing yourself in a potential new situation.
How can you set yourself up to get lucky?
-Being lucky is not just chance, it's about paying attention. Keep your peripheral vision open to notice unexpected opportunities.
Why narrow down your choices before deciding?
-Too many choices leads to choice overload paralysis. Reduce your options to 5-7 good possibilities before deciding.
Why is it important to engage both logic and emotion when making decisions?
-Your emotions provide important gut feelings to inform decisions. Relying purely on logic limits the data you consider when choosing.
What happens if you make your choices reversible?
-Research shows that keeping your options open drastically reduces happiness with your selected outcome. Decide and move forward without second-guessing.
What creative skills can you build through life design?
-The life design process builds creative confidence by enhancing your ability to reframe problems, ideate solutions, and prototype ideas.
Outlines
😊 Introducing the concept of life design
Bill Burnett introduces the concept of life design, which applies design thinking principles to design your ideal life. He explains that life design focuses on growing into who you want to become next instead of figuring out what you want to be. Design thinking involves adopting mindsets like curiosity, reframing problems, radical collaboration, process mindfulness, and taking biased action.
😩 Understanding why people get stuck in life design
Bill explains that people often get stuck when designing their lives and don't have the tools to get unstuck. Designers have processes to get unstuck. People also have dysfunctional beliefs like needing a singular passion, deadlines for figuring life out, and pressure to maximize human potential. These beliefs are not helpful for life design.
😊 Ideating multiple possible life paths
Bill introduces the idea of ideating multiple possible lives instead of trying to identify a "best" option. Research shows people have about 7.5 viable life paths. Designing 3 alternate lives makes people realize they have more options and brings forgotten interests back into their main plan.
😊 Prototyping possible futures before fully committing
Bill explains prototype conversations where you talk to someone already living your possible future life to learn from their experiences. Prototype experiences involve safely exposing yourself to a possible future path before fully committing to see if it meets your expectations.
😊 Choosing your life design wisely
Bill shares a process for making life design choices well - gathering options, narrowing down to avoid overload, consciously deciding, and letting go of FOMO. He says involving emotions in decisions leads to greater happiness rather than just using rationality.
😊 Conclusion and encouragement
Bill concludes that life design boils down to getting curious, talking to people already living an aspirational life, and trying small experiments to move towards what you want. He encourages the audience that they can design joyful, well-lived lives.
Mindmap
Keywords
💡design thinking
💡passion
💡meaning
💡gravity problems
💡prototype
💡multiples
💡lucky
💡letting go
💡confidence
💡curiosity
Highlights
Design thinking is an innovation methodology that works on products, services, and even your life design.
As designers, we start with curiosity and lean into what we're curious about.
We reframe problems because most of the time, people are working on the wrong problems.
If you can connect your life view and work view together in a coherent way, you start to experience your life as meaningful.
You can't solve a problem you're not willing to have, so gravity problems must be accepted.
Do three plans for your life, never just one - it leads to more creative ideas.
Prototype conversations let you learn from people already living the future you want.
Making decisions reversible lowers your chance of being happy by 60-70% - let go and move on.
Connecting life and work views creates meaning, staying away from unsolvable problems enables progress.
Multiple plans tap into creative potential; prototype before committing to see if ideas fit.
Talk to people already doing what you want to try; let go of reversible decisions to enable happiness.
Curiosity and reframing drive innovation; collaborate, ideate alternatives, test assumptions.
Accept what you can't change; imagine parallel futures, then sneak up on goals through low-risk trials.
Pay wide-angle attention to enable serendipity; limit choices and listen to your emotions when deciding.
With empathy, prototyping and action, anyone can lead an inspired, fulfilling life of their design.
Transcripts
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