A well-designed life
is a life that is generative-- it is constantly creative, productive, changing,
evolving, and there is always the possibility of surprise. You get out of it more than you put in.
Here's the big
truth: there are many versions of you, and they are all "right".
Designers don't
think their way forward. Designers build
their way forward.
A well-designed life
is a marvelous portfolio of experiences, of adventures, of failures that taught
you important lessons, of hardships that made you stronger and helped you know
yourself better, and of achievements and satisfactions.
Our problems become
our story, and we can all get stuck in our stories.
If it's not
actionable, it's not a problem. It's a
situation, a circumstance, a fact of life.
If you become
openminded enough to accept reality, you'll be freed to reframe an actionable
problem and design a way to participate in the world or things that matter to
you and might even work.
This is where all
good designers begin. This is the
"You Are Here" or "Accept" phase of design thinking. Acceptance.
That's why you start where you are.
Not where you wish you were. Not
where you hope you are. Not where you
think you should be.
You can't know where
you are going until you know where you are.
Once you design
something, it changes the future that is possible.
Worry, analysis, and
speculation are not our best discovery tools, and most of us have, at one time
or another, gotten incredibly lost and confused using them.
If you discover and
are able to articulate your philosophy of work (what it's for and why you do
it), you will be less likely to let others design your life for you.
A coherent life is
one lived in such a way that you can clearly connect the dots between three
things: who you are, what you believe, what you are doing.
Logging when you are
and aren't energized will help you pay attention to what you're doing and
discover what's working.
Flow is play for
grown-ups.
Prototyping the life
design way is all about asking good questions, outing our hidden biases and
assumptions, iterating rapidly, and creating momentum for a path we'd like to
try out.
Being happy means
you choose happiness.
Options only
actually create value in your life when they are chosen and realized.
Imagined choices
don't actually exist, because they're not actionable.
Failure is just the
raw material of success.
Life is not about
winning and losing. It's about learning
and playing the infinite game.
Living in reality
means looking at and accepting where you are right now. Life design is really about being able to
answer the question "How's it going?"
Unlearning things is
often harder and more important than learning things.