Cover of Designing Your Life

Designing Your Life

Bill Burnett and Dave Evans

3 ideas

  1. Odyssey Plans: Three Five-Year Lives

    Instead of seeking the single correct life path, draft three distinct five-year plans: the current trajectory taken further, what you'd do if that path vanished, and what you'd do if money and image were irrelevant. Holding multiple viable futures simultaneously reveals that there is no one right life and surfaces options the default plan obscures.

  2. Gravity Problems Are Not Problems

    A gravity problem is a circumstance you cannot change — like the fact that gravity exists — so treating it as a problem to be solved only traps you in futile effort. The move is to accept it as a fixed condition and redirect energy toward what is actionable around it, since you can only design for things that can actually be acted upon.

  3. Wayfinding Through Engagement and Energy

    Track daily activities by noting which ones produce engagement (flow, full absorption) versus drain you, and which generate energy versus deplete it. These two signals act like a compass when no destination is visible, letting you navigate toward more of what works by following felt experience rather than abstract goals.

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