How To Live A Well Designed Life

This post is my last in a series of recent posts based on reading the book Designing Your Life:  How To Build A Well-Lived, Joyful Life by Bill Burnett and Dave Evans.  They teach how to grow into your life regardless of age or stage.  If you go to their website, they provide numerous resources including worksheets to help you work through their life design mindset.  You can listen to their design mindset by clicking here.

Burnett and Evans conclude that life is not about balance.  Balance is a myth they say that causes grief and frustration for most of us.  I tend to agree with this.

They say “life design is really about being able to answer the question:  How’s it going?”  When I blogged about viewing life as a portfolio, I talked about reviewing the parts of your life

When I blogged about viewing life as a portfolio, I talked about reviewing the parts of your life and asking if you should reallocate your main resources (time, money, and energy).  The key is to make conscious decisions about how you are spending your resources.

I like Burnett and Evans these are summary statements by Burnett and Evans worth remembering:  “A well-designed life isn’t a noun–it’s a verb …”

“A well-designed life isn’t a noun–it’s a verb … Just keep building your way forward.  Design isn’t just a technique to address problems and projects–it’s a way of living.  In life design we only take on the question of how to design your life–not what life you should live or why one life is better than another.”

In conclusion, keep these five things in mind as you design your life for any age and any stage:

• Be curious (curiosity)
• Try stuff ( bias toward action-experiment and explore)
• Reframe problems (reframing, change your perspective)
• Know it’s a process (awareness) and
• Ask for help (collaboration–don’t go all alone)

And remember that a coherent life is one where–

who you are, what you believe, and what you are doing –are aligned as much as possible.

So, how is it going?  

What changes might you make going forward?  

When will you have more time than you have right now?