Designing Your Life: how to build a well-lived, joyful life

Stanford professors Bill Burnett and Dave Evans have created an online course based on their #1 New York Times bestseller and Stanford course for graduates.

By leveraging proven design thinking principles used by leading companies such as IDEO, IBM, and Apple, they will teach you how to apply that same methodology to making your biggest life decisions. Regardless of age, income, or stage in life, their unique approach to designing your life will give you the actionable tools necessary for becoming unstuck and creating a more meaningful life. You will learn how to ask the right questions, eliminate old ideas that are not working and test new approaches to your life.

In this class, you will learn how to: 

  • Closely examine the “life story” that has brought you to where you are today. 
  • Shift your thinking and instead of being part of the society factory, learn how to focus on life as a journey to be experienced fully, rather than a means to an end. 
  • Align your ‘life’ views and ‘work’ view, because more often than not making money and having meaning in your life are not always perfectly aligned. 
  • Fixing dysfunctional attitudes by understanding the root of things that might be blocking you. 
  • Understand what gives you energy and what sucks you dry, so you can design a life that fills you up.

key takeaways

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Design thinking is a genius way to look at your life and any changes that need to be made. It's a process you can use at any point in your life or career.

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You can prototype anything! Whether it's work, relationships, a potential move, using prototyping helps to reduce risk.

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Gravity problems are things we often complain about and push against, but there's nothing we can do about them. By focusing on the things we can do, we get our power back.

Why we like it

  • Gretchen lays everything out in a simple and straightforward way, helping you to get what you need from the course as you dip in and out.
  • Knowing the tendencies of the people around you means better relationships with those people are possible, you can get them to take the free quiz and then use the course resources to build a better understanding of those around you.
  • It's handy to have access to this so you can revisit whenever works best for you. We've come back to this years later and found new and interesting aspects added.