DESIGNING YOUR LIFE by Dave Evans and Bill Burnett | Core Message

I recently read the book Designing Your Life by author Bill Burnett and Dave Evans Burnett and Evans teach a class at Stanford to help people find their dream jobs. Most students attend his classes because they feel completely lost or miserable in their current career. A student named Jeanine. was a successful lawyer in her 30s who had everything she wanted, she got her college degree, her law degree, had a good marriage and a career at a major law firm, doing important and influential work, but after driving home from the law firm, He often sat on his porch at night and cried because he had the

life

he once wanted, so why wasn't he happy that another student named Elise decided to quit her job several years ago and fulfill

your

dream of opening an Italian delicatessen with a small shop?

Brown inside like those seen in Tuscany. She rented a renovated building. She stocked it with the best Italian food and then opened it to the public. It was a success. Her business was making money and her dream had come true, but Elise was. She was miserable, she hated the daily experience of managing staff, tracking inventory, and doing all the little things necessary to keep the business running. These two women are not alone in the United States. Polls show that two-thirds of workers are dissatisfied. with their jobs and 15% actually hate their jobs, how do so many people end up in a career they despise and how could you and I avoid the same fate?

The first way to avoid getting stuck in a career you hate is to challenge the dysfunctional belief. that you and I have only one calling in

life

, a passion that if we do not follow it we will end up miserable and full of regret. The truth is that there are several different paths that you can take from this moment on and they all lead to a satisfying and fulfilling life. Once you start to see and design some promising lives you could live, you need to dive into each of those lives to test what it could be like before you dive into the most important principle in

designing

your

life is that you really don't know what you want until you do it. you experience, so you and I need to find a way to simulate experiences before we commit to helping you discover at least three possibilities of good lives you could live over the next five years. imagine walking into a movie theater and watching these three movies the first movie is called your optimized life in this life you redesign your current career so that you spend more time doing tasks that attract you and give you energy and less time doing tasks that make you feel disconnected and exhausted in the book there is a civil engineer named Michael Michael hated his job and wanted to change his family recommended that he get an MBA and go into finance, but authors Bill Burnett and Dave Evans recommend that Michael reflect on his day and Find moments when you were excited, focused, and having a good time at work and wrote down exactly what you were doing during those moments in the book the authors write.

Michael realized that he loved his work as a civil engineer when he worked on complex and difficult engineering problems. The moments that exhausted him and made him miserable were those when he was dealing with difficult personalities and performing other administrative tasks that had nothing to do with the intricate task of engineering, simply figuring out when he was having fun at work and what caused that your energies would increase. and the fall, Michael discovered that he had actually enjoyed civil engineering, it was the people who wrote the proposal at the fina goshi a shion's that he hated, he just had to find a way to design his work so he could do more of what he loved and less than what he hated instead of business school, which probably would have been a disaster and expensive, plus Michael decided to double down on engineering, ended up entering a PhD program and is now a civil and structural engineer high-level guy who spends his time alone mostly working on the kind of complex engineering problems that make him really happy and has become so technically valuable that no one asks him to do administrative stuff anymore on good days, he goes home with more energy than when you go to work. in the morning and that's a very good way to work like Michael, you have to realize that there are moments during the day, even days that you hate, when you are excited and focused and having a good time to capture those moments, it begins what the Authors call a good journal at the end of each day for the next three weeks write down the times during the day when you were completely immersed in what you were doing and felt energized afterwards try to be as specific as possible use the a e i o u technique What activities did you do?

Making what environment you were in, who you were or weren't interacting with, what objects you reused, and what users you helped. Was there a specific person you were working for if you complete your good times journal at the end of each day? Over the next three weeks you begin to see a consistent pattern of activities that engage and energize you. Now imagine a life for the next five years in which you find a way to do more of what engages you like Michael pulled out a piece of paper. and draw five boxes that represent the next five years.

Make simple sketches with Stickman and basic objects and key words to illustrate what those five years could be like. Now you enter the second movie theater and watch your second life unfold. This is the alternative life. the life you would have if your current career simply disappeared, whether I took over and your job was done by robots at a much cheaper price or the market suddenly disappeared overnight, what industry would you try to transfer your skills and do work that attracts you and gives you energy If you are an author and you make a living writing novels, imagine that suddenly everyone stops reading novels and there is no longer a way to make money writing novels, what would you do again?

Use the items from your good times journal to create a five-year journal. life sketch number two of the year, now enter the third movie theater and see how your third life unfolds for the next five years in this life, what I will call your fascinated life, you see yourself doing what you would like to do if If you had money and image was not a problem A few years ago I suspended my fear of being judged and the fear of not making money immediately and decided to sketch out what my life would be like if I did what fascinated me;

That exercise led me to the life that I am. In today's life of an online teacher and content creator, if I hadn't looked past the fear of judgment and the fear of not making money, I would have missed out on a deeply fulfilling life. So what would you love to try if money and image were not a problem and you were guaranteed to be successful and make a living doing what fascinates you again take out a sheet of paper draw five boxes and draw what this life would be like during the Next five years at this point you could see a life that you really want to follow, you may feel like committing to one life and doing everything you can, but that would be a big mistake.

Elise, the owner of the deli, dangerously assumed that she would enjoy the day-to-day experience of running it. store, she ended up being a miserable owner because she compromised before testing her assumption. Elise should have conducted what the authors call prototype conversations. Prototype conversations are conversations with people who are living the life you want to live during a prototype conversation that asks the person on the other end. from you about your life story and getting them to relive their experiences as they relive their experiences you get a sample of what their life is like this sample will help verify and validate your life designs for Elise, she could have walked into a deli in another city and asked the deli manager if he could buy her a coffee and learn about her experiences running the deli, after talking to three satisfied and three dissatisfied deli owners, she would have had a clear idea what it entailed to run a store and he would have realized it. that she wasn't really willing to start a prototypical conversation, just search your extended network on LinkedIn and look for people who are living the lives you want to live, then reach out to them and ask them if they'd be willing to share their story with you through From a quick Skype call or a coffee nearby, the information you can learn in a prototypical conversation can save you years of misery working in a career you shouldn't have pursued, so if you're feeling stuck in your career and want to make a change career Start by outlining three lives you could live over the next five years Build these lives around the few critical things that engage and energize you at work Then conduct prototype conversations to test the questions and assumptions inherited in each of those lives if you follow these steps, you'll have a much better chance of defining and pursuing a career that you'll truly love, rather than a career that you think you'll love but end up hating; that was the central

message

I got when

designing

your life. by Dave Evans and Bill Burnett this is a great guide to finding the career you love.

I highly recommend it if you would like a one page PDF summary of the insights I got from this book, just click the link below and I will be happy to email it to you if you have already subscribed to the free email newsletter about the productivity game. This PDF is in your inbox. If you like this video, please share it and, as always, thanks for watching and have a productive week.