5 steps to designing the life you want | Bill Burnett | TEDxStanford
Why Hacker News recommends it
HN recommends it as a short intro to the Designing Your Life approach when people ask about career direction and finding meaningful work.
What it is
TEDxStanford talk by Bill Burnett, executive director of Stanford's design program, on applying design thinking to your own life and career. He offers five practical tips such as getting curious, talking to people and trying things.
Recommended by 2 HN commenters across 3 different months, 2017 to 2022.
What Hacker News said
Strong rec JSeymourATL · 2021-03 · on “Ask HN: Hit a wall with our product team. What next?”
> But who is “your” company and how do we pick the “niche”? Turns out, this is a common problem. Friendly Challenge: imagine 3 very different future niches for your team. Leveraging your interests, experience/expertise. Mix in the Clients you'll serve, Products you build, and Problems you solve. Each version would have a 5 year plan. Start a discussion -- which one energizes your team? More on this subject by the authors of Design Your Life > [this video] Highly recommend their book! PM me if you want to discuss.
Recommends JSeymourATL · 2021-06 · on “I'm good in my profession and I'm tired of it”
Turns out, the most interesting design problem is designing your life. Bill Burnett has a brilliant book on the subject. > [this video]
Recommends samh748 · 2022-04 · on “Ask HN: How to think about direction in life/career?”
A great great book that helped me with this: Designing Your Life by Bill Burnett and Dave Evans ( [LINK] ). I first got exposed to it during a career navigation workshop that showed us this video: [this video] They also published a follow-up called Designing Your Work Life but I haven't read that one.
Cites 16961714b · 2017-10 · on “Ask HN: How do I find meaningful work?”
This might sound cheesy, but first of all: Know yourself. - What are your values? - What do you stand for? - What do you want in work and life? A design thinking approach, how to find a meaning in your work (and life) is through a simple 3 step process, provided by Burnett and Evans ( [LINK] or [this video] ): 1. Get curious 2. Talk to people 3. Try stuff Simple as that... Nevertheless, I think that work defines us and it becomes our identity (e.g. Joseph the Carpenter, Bob the Builder), but at the same time there is so much more in you than just work. From what you are writing, I could identify what you don’t stand for and don’t want :-) this realization is a good starting point. However, now is