I wish I had been diligent enough to write down my mental models of the world and publish them in book form. Luckily, in "Designing Your Life", Burnett and Evans have already done all the hard work for me! The nuggets-to-fluff ratio is pretty high and they hit most of the high points. This is required reading for all college students.The key idea of the book is that you have lots of dysfunctional mental models that are holding you back. Here are the key takeaways:* Forget your "passion". You hav...

I approached this book with a healthy dose of skepticism, reserved for all books in the 'self-help' genre. I was curious to give this book a try as it was based on a very popular Stanford course. True to its reviews, this is quite an exceptional book. Though, none of the ideas written here are particularly revolutionary, they are just written in such a approachable, easy, and convincing manner you can't help but be engaged. I already see myself thinking differently about my future and life choic...

Try StuffHealth/Work/Play/Love dashboard1. Write a few sentences about how it's going in each of the 4 areas2. Mark where you are (0 to Full)3. Ask yourself if there's a design problem you'd like to tackle4. Now ask yourself if it's a problem of 'gravity' (not one that's gonna change).Counsel vs AdviceSomeone helps you figure out what you think vs telling you what to doIntegrity -Coherence among - Who you are- What you believe- What you are doing.Good Time Journal1. Complete a log of daily activ...

The concept behind this book was great - applying Design Thinking to designing your own life. But The actual content was fairly light, fairly uninstructive, and, to be frank, quite unaware of its own privilege. To apply the concepts in this book, you have to have the financial and personal capacity to put the ideas into action. The issue that the book displays no awareness of this fact.

What an excellent read! This is going to be my "Christmas of 2016" gift for friends and family. There's the reframe of a dysfunctional belief or Life Design tip for everyone inside. It's especially timely for the recent grad, the restless mid-career professional, or the encore passion seeker ready for a change. Admittedly, I've been a Design Thinker for awhile, so the concepts here were not too foreign to me, but the application of them for my personal life very much was. Curiosity and prototypi...

This book is excellent at *what it does*, which is providing a framework for thinking and working through major career changes. Even though I'm not looking for a new job, I found plenty of useful exercises to sink my teeth into, allowing me to imagine my way forward into new approaches within the job I do have.So why only three stars? Poor expectation management: It's not entirely clear from the title or the blurb that this book is exclusively about designing your career, and when I started read...

Only two Stanford academics could sell theidea that one designs a life the way one designsa car. Life surprises, daunts, accepts gratefullyand surrenders grudgingly--mostly those thingsthat people strive toward. Sometimes there aresurprises, by-ways, tunnels and dead-ends wedeal with on a case-by-case basis. Mostly, ourcharacter is fate, as Nietzsche said. I guess it wasthe fate of Stanford to hire life designers and tolet their classes become popular. The rest of usjust have to muddle through s...

Provided good advice on how to design/build/frame your life. Brings up potential set backs and what to do about them. What you want to do, what you should do, what you've always wanted to do, what you've always wondered to do, which to choose?This book helps focus in on what's most important to you and what will actually work. I picked up this book and put it down so many times but I've finally finished it lol

While I can come up with a few groups who might not benefit from this book, I would think in general most would take away something to help them in their approach to life. The authors provide helpful anecdotes, exercises, and insight to guide the reader on the path of living intentionally.As a Christian, I understandably found the lack of spirituality and reliance on self didn't fully align with my worldview. However, this book is a framework, and I think with thoughtfulness can be used by peopl...

One of the most amazing books I have ever readI give it 5 stars because the concepts and ideas in it are so powerful and positive. Majority of them aligned perfectly well with even my faith.There are concepts and ideas that when you learn will make life interesting to you just by knowing that there are actually people who think a certain way or have a certain point of view on the same things that once seemed daunting for you which will make the same things exciting for you.I was so excited and h...

This book counts towards my literary genius JULY book challenge Read 6 non-fiction books this year. Book 1 of 6 (audible version) I don’t know why authors choose to release audio versions of their books but fail to hire professional narrators. I’ve yet to listen to a book in which the author read his/her own work & I thought the performance couldn’t have been improved upon. This was an especially bad decision for this book. The authors are university professors & their performance (imo) felt lik...

I actually thought this was going to be more about life rather than focusing on just work. Dschool and DT apologists will insist that this stuff can be applied to life too, but that's a farking load of steaming hot BS. It's about work. Full stop.And, sure, okay, the method in the book probably works for that...or at least a fairly narrow sub-set of highly skilled and highly valued workers in large urban areas. People who are basically on track for a good career no matter what. For people who a)

While this book offered helpful advice, I found by the end that it was difficult to read and complete the activities. As someone who works with designers (and lives with one), I found it difficult to suspend my disbelief and accept the idealized vision of designers and design thinking in this book. I don't know any designers who are as put together as this book makes it sound like they are, nor do I know any designers who actively use all the steps of "design thinking". I also found the business...

Hearing a story about this book on NPR motivated me to purchase Designing Your Life: How to Think Like a Designer and Build a Well-Lived, Joyful Life. In all, I am pleased to have purchased and read this book. First, it gave me a different lens by which to view my life. Second, it allowed me to look at my youngest child and see how she is a natural born designer, and increased my desire to nurture her approach to life. The book is to-the-point and easy to read, combing ideas with real life stori...

There is nothing new in terms of basic wisdom. Thus the plus value here could be that it is based on a college course, so maybe it's good for young people like Stanford students, except that I don't know that Jacques Cousteau, for example, is especially of the moment.

I absolutely loved this book. I would recommend this book to everyone, but especially those preparing to go through a life transition. If anyone is reading through this book and wants to talk through some of the exercises, please reach out :)

"Dysfunctional Belief: Happiness is having it all. Reframe: Happiness is letting go of what you don’t need." Everything is written in an closed system, containing author's belief that work for your life, winning over the popular beliefs we usually have that don't actually work. If you use every single practice and exercise given in the book together or separately, your life would become much more balanced. It would feel like you have to just snap your fingers and boom, you get your results. O

I was excited to read this book as I have hope that it will give me a step-by-step guidance on how to design the life I want.Yes, it did give me that.But I find that the explanation leans more towards mechanical process and how to, to an extent that it lacks the warmth of story-telling that I love. They do share examples of experiences and stories of other people related to the topic of discussion but for me, the stories didn't stick.However, let me share a few interesting notes in the book that...

I read this book alongside a Life Designing course which I attended out of interest. I liked the reframing of perspective to help you with situations in which you might feel stuck and have to creatively think of new solutions. However, there is a lot of unacknowledged privilege in this book. The starting point of almost every advice given here is that you're financially secure because the recommended steps involve unpaid efforts and quite a lot of time which is in most people's lives frankly unr...

Designing Your Life offers some useful tips in regard to making changes. While it can apply to other areas, the majority of the book focused on career applications which is practical, since the majority of us tend to spend most of our time at work. There was useful information throughout the book that I think can apply to most people seeking some type of change - small or drastic, but I personally didn't think the tips were groundbreaking or crazy game changers. Just ways to reframe some of the