Having been a fan of design thinking for over ten years, I decided to apply the principles of to jumpstart my life after a big career setback er…pivot. I was laid off after two decades in the media industry. Hello, Netflix!
At 50, I knew at the core of my being that I didn’t want to go back to a full-time corporate job.
But what else was there?
How could I find the things that light me up, tap into my super powers and let me have some freaking flexibility?
I decided to create and teach a class called “Life Design” based on a collection of tools I’ve used over the past twenty years to help teams and businesses reframe and solve problems.
I started with the book Designing Your Life and added in the work of Simon Sinek – for purpose and mission, Gretchen Rubin – for habits and happiness, Mihály Csíkszentmihályi – for engagement, IDEO – for human empathy and Clayton Christensen – for critical thinking and discipline. Over the past year, I’ve worked with over 60 women to design their lives.
Life design is BEST done in the community of others.
Human centered design is, well…human. It’s a contact sport – and intended to be done through radical collaboration.
A good facilitator creates conditions for vulnerability, possibility and accountability – and lets the magic happen. Don’t worry, there are three things you can do on your own to get started.
Catch yourself having a good time.
What comes effortlessly to you? When are you in a state of flow?
Positive psychologist, Mihály Csíkszentmihályi, recognized and named the concept of flow, a highly focused mental state conducive to productivity. Csíkszentmihályi described flow as "being completely involved in an activity for its own sake. The ego falls away. Time flies…”
How can you track and measure what comes effortlessly? Two clues to pay attention to are engagement and energy.
Engagement: When you’re engaged, you are emotionally involved and committed to the task. You’re excited and focused. Flow is engagement amplified! Time stands still, the challenge of the activity matches your skill perfectly. You’re neither bored because it’s too easy nor anxious because it’s too hard.
Energy: I’ve come to realize that energy management is even more important than time management. Some activities feed our energy and others suck the life out of us and leave us drained for what comes next. Energy and engagement are different. There may be activities that engage you but also exhaust you.
Let’s try it: Look back over the past few weeks and pick out a few high and a few low activities.
Fill in the gages below and consider when and why you were engaged or energized. Were you in flow?
Pull back the camera. What insights do you see?
Want a quick fix? Look for the “worst offenders” or biggest drains. Find some ways to offload those pains in your life. Hello Instacart!
When you “catch yourself having a good time” you learn what engages and energizes you. These insights are great ingredients for your life design work.
Generate Scenarios. There is no one perfect life.
In their book, Designing Your Life, Burnett and Evans share the dysfunctional beliefs we carry about our lives. The belief that “There is one best life for me” really stood out. The reframe: there are actually many great lives within each of us. In fact, Stanford researchers went so far as to quantify this. We each have over seven perfectly fulfilling lives in each of us. Seven. Think about that. How many have you considered? I have become so focused on the perfect one that I haven’t even given the other six a fighting chance!
Generate a range of options. We unlock creativity and make better decisions when we generate and choose from at least three options. Spend 5 minutes each on the three prompts below to get started (from Designing Your Life and Bill Burnett’s TED Talk).
Scenario 1: The life you live now, played out in success! Your business grows, you get that promotion, meet that partner, take that trip…
Scenario 2: The thing you’d do if Scenario 1 wasn’t available to you anymore. This is happening right now with the coronavirus “great pause”. The job, career and life you had is no longer available. What’s your plan B? Time to get creative and come up with something else.
Scenario 3: The Wild Card. What would your life or career be like if money or image were no object? If you knew you could make a decent living and didn’t care what other people think? What would you do?
This exercise is really hard for people. Life designers struggle greatly in “mocking up” three different lives. We are programmed to believe there is ONE answer. The Right answer. The one that follows a logical sequence from school to career to promotion to retirement. Let’s be real. This is life we are talking about! It’s full of twists and turns on a good day.
Invest 5 minutes each to consider three options. A fifteen-minute investment to plan your future! You’ll be surprised what you come up with. In the end, you’ll likely end up with a “mash up” of ingredients combined to make one pretty cool life.
Prototype to de-risk your life.
Prototyping is the most powerful tool of a thoughtfully designed life. Product designers use prototypes to put an early version of their idea in front of consumers for feedback. Prototyping allows designers to iterate early and often – it lowers risk and investment. In life design, we use prototypes to expedite learning. Our impulse is to jump into action– get started applying to school, designing that logo or finding that office space.
Prototyping actually starts with a list of questions.
You know what they are: Can I do this? Will it make me happy? Will my partner, kids, mom approve? Can I make enough money? What is enough money? What if I fail? Do I have the skills and credentials to pull this off? What will people think of me on social media? Am I crazy? And the list goes on…
Make a list of your questions and sort them in priority order – “deal killer” questions first. A deal killer question is the one that sets you back on your heels.
The one you DON’T want to work on first but is the most important one to answer. If the answer to a deal killer question is “no”, you can move on to another option with the confidence that you invested very little in the idea.
If you were starting a business, a deal killer question might be, “will someone pay for my services?” How would you answer this? Not by building a website, finding office space or writing a business plan – but by selling a small piece of work for money.
Among the 60 life designers that I have worked with, the single greatest deal killer question that comes up is “is this a fit for me”? In product design, we call it product / market fit. Is there a market for my product? Does it fit into a gap in the world? Is it viable? “Is this a fit for me” is a great question and prototypes can help.
Prototype conversations and experiences
A prototype conversation or experience is a high return, low risk learning activity. Don’t “go big or go home”…instead, “invest a little to learn a lot”. When you think of way to prototype your idea – spend a some time exploring how you can “shrink it”. What is the smallest, cheapest way to answer your deal killer question?
If you think you want to be a lawyer, shadow one for a day. If you think you need a degree to give you credibility, ask someone in the field.
If you think you want to be in a services job, volunteer for a weekend. Sounds like common sense, right?
It’s not.
We are wired to do what’s comfortable and easy for us and that is NOT to seek feedback. We want to hunker down, build the perfect thing and then “ta da” – launch it into the world with great fanfare.
Be imperfect. Take small risks now to avoid big ones later. Prototype to de-risk your life.
If you’re stuck in a rut, going through a transition or haunted by a sneaking feeling that your life or career doesn’t “fit” anymore – Spend the next week working through these three steps and jumpstart your life design:
Catch yourself having a good time
Generate scenarios
Prototype to de-risk your life
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