How to design a meaningful and joyful life
My friend Niku Sharie recommended a book called Designing Your Life to me a while back when I started working at a thinktank where I felt absolutely miserable. I had difficulties with my boss and the politics of the workplace. I felt defeated because after so many years at trying to do social impact work, I hadn’t found the right fit. This book shifted my perspective on life and helped me be more resilient in the approaches I took towards my endeavors. It showed me there were many different ways I could approach the world – I just needed to open my heart and mind to the possibilities and be willing to experiment. Since reading this book and doing the exercises, I have changed my approach to how I live life. It has become happier and more meaningful. I’d love to share it with you. Hopefully it will help you overcome some bottlenecks, if you have them.
So, why is this book so special?
Bill Burnett and Dave Evans give a fresh perspective on how to use design thinking to help us create a life that is more meaningful and fulfilling, regardless of who or where we are, what we do or have done for a living, or how young and old we are.
In the book they argue that the same design thinking that is responsible for amazing technologies and products, and spaces can be used to design and build your career and your life. A life you will feel joyful about and fulfilled by. It is filled with thought provoking exercises and techniques to help you figure out your next step, here I will share some of the most important lessons I learned:
Life is dynamic
This book helped me understand that I will never truly figure out what life is about – because I will never have a complete picture of where I am or where I’m heading. Life is dynamic and that’s part of the excitement of it. If we all had the answers, there would be nothing new or interesting to look forward to.
To design our lives, we must set a direction → enjoy the process → iterate as we go along.
By understanding this – I was willing to open myself up to new and different kinds of things I could do in life. I even joined classes at the Women’s Business Development Center in LA County for a while and developed a plan to create an urbanist fashion clothing line. I also started taking sewing classes and made amazing friends with some social justice lawyers as a result of this book. We still keep in touch and they even threw me a surprise birthday party a few years ago.
Engagement and Energy
The second big takeaway I had from this book was that I needed to understand what engaged me and filled me with energy. The authors provided tracking mechanisms that I could use to figure out how engaged and energized I felt while doing different activities during the day.
Doing these exercises helped me understand that I felt most engaged when I was learning something new, physically active, having meaningful conversations with others, and doing work I thought was aligned with my purpose. As a result of doing these exercises, I had a better sense of the work environment I would thrive in.
Making Choices in Life
The third thing that I took away from this book was really how I could make better decisions in life. The framework they provide for this is: Gather + Create → Narrow Down → Choose → Let Go.
Gather + Create means to become aware of potential pathways, prototype, and conduct conversations or interviews with people who are already in that space.
Narrow Down means to develop a handful of options from that list and then make decisions where you “can’t lose.” These are decisions that allow you to experiment without making any drastic changes.
Choose – this piece is really about making a choice that aligns with your brain, heart, intuition, and social intelligence.
Let Go – lastly this one is about really accepting our choices fully and to avoid thinking about alternative pathways we could be taking.
I currently use this process to approach how I live my life. Whenever I get stuck or feel constrained in my life – I try to approach my next step using this framework. The pandemic has made this particularly hard – given our choices are so constrained at the moment, but it is still really helpful to use this framework.
If you are feeling stuck or wondering how to approach life in the future – consider exploring this book. It may bring a very thoughtful approach to how you take your next step.
With love,
Arpita
