Bill Burnett Quotes

Dysfunctional Belief: Happiness is having it all. Reframe: Happiness is letting go of what you don’t need.

Living coherently doesn't mean everything is in perfect order all the time. It means you are living in alignment with your values and have not sacrificed your integrity along the way.

It doesn’t matter where you come from, where you think you are going, what job or career you have had or think you should have. You are not too late, and you’re not too early.

You can't know where you're going until you know where you are.

Our minds are generally lazy and like to get rid of problems as quickly as possible, so they surround first ideas with a lot of positive chemicals to make us “fall in love” with them. Do not fall in love with your first idea.

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.

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. But right where you are.

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. There is a lot more than “lather, rinse, repeat” in a well-designed life.

You can’t change employers’ perceptions. Instead of changing how they think, how about working on changing how you appear to them?

As a life designer, you need to embrace two philosophies: 1. You choose better when you have lots of good ideas to choose from. 2. You never choose your first solution to any problem.

Many people operate under the dysfunctional belief that they just need to find out what they are passionate about. Once they know their passion, everything else will somehow magically fall into place. We hate this idea for one very good reason: most people don’t know their passion.

We interrogate the world by making.

We are always growing from the present into the future, and therefore always changing. With each change comes a new design. Life is not an outcome; it’s more like a dance.

Dysfunctional Belief: I should already know where I’m going. Reframe: You can’t know where you are going until you know where you are.

Dysfunctional Belief: To be happy, I have to make the right choice. Reframe: There is no right choice—only good choosing.

It's worth emphasizing that failures and hardships are a part of every life, even the well-designed ones.

You can imagine a career and a life that don't exist; you can build that future you, and as a result your life will change.

In fact, in the United States, only 27 percent of college grads end up in a career related to their majors.

It’s unlikely that health, work, play, and love will divide neatly into four equal parts. But when life is really out of balance, there can be a problem.

We believe that people actually need to take time to develop a passion. And the research shows that, for most people, passion comes after they try something, discover they like it, and develop mastery—not before. To put it more succinctly: passion is the result of a good life design, not the cause.

Decision making is stressful, so the best time to prepare for good choosing is when there’s no choice at stake. That’s when you can invest in your emotional intelligence and spiritual maturity so that those muscles are strong and trained when it’s decision or game time. The best time to get ready for step three is months or years before the choosing. That means the best time is right now—today is the best day to start making that investment.

These are all gravity problems—meaning they are not real problems. Why? Because in life design, if it’s not actionable, it’s not a problem. Let’s repeat that. If it’s not actionable, it’s not a problem. It’s a situation, a circumstance, a fact of life. It may be a drag (so to speak), but, like gravity, it’s not a problem that can be solved. Here

We also tend to get mired in what we call gravity problems. “I’ve got this big problem and I don’t know what to do about it.” “Oh, wow, Jane, what’s the problem?” “It’s gravity.” “Gravity?” “Yeah—it’s making me crazy! I’m feeling heavier and heavier. I can’t get my bike up hills easily. It never leaves me. I don’t know what to do about it. Can you help me?” This

When you finally get down to making a choice from your narrowed-down list of alternatives, and you’ve cognitively evaluated the issues, and emotionally and meditatively contemplated the alternatives, it may be time to grok it. To grok a choice, you don’t think about it—you become it. Let’s say you’ve got three alternatives. Pick any one of them and stop thinking about it. Choose to think for the next one to three days that you are the person who has made the decision to pick Alternative A.

Dysfunctional Belief: You should focus on your need to find a job. Reframe: You should focus on the hiring manager’s need to find the right person.

Dysfunctional Belief: I should know where I’m going! Reframe: I won’t always know where I’m going—but I can always know whether I’m going in the right direction.

The key is to reframe your idea of options by realizing that if you have too many options, you actually have none at all. If

If it’s not actionable, it’s not a problem. It’s a situation, a circumstance, a fact of life. It may be a drag (so to speak), but, like gravity, it’s not a problem that can be solved.

It’s not hard to imagine that if we added up all the hours spent trying to figure out life, for some of us they would outweigh the hours spent actually living life. Really. Living. Life. We

That’s the problem with letting go—it’s more of an inaction than an action, and your brain just hates that, the same way nature abhors a vacuum. So the key to letting go is to move on and grab something else. Put your attention on something—not off something.

Because in life design, if it’s not actionable, it’s not a problem. Let’s repeat that. If it’s not actionable, it’s not a problem. It’s a situation, a circumstance, a fact of life. It may be a drag (so to speak), but, like gravity, it’s not a problem that can be solved.

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. There is a lot more than “lather, rinse, repeat” in a well-designed life. How

Similarly, the HWPL dashboard will tell you something about the four things that provide energy and focus for your journey and keep your life running smoothly.

we suggest you go out and get a design team right off the bat—a group of people who will read the book with you and do the exercises alongside you, a collaborative team in which you support one another in your pursuit of a well-designed life.

Start small, set the bar low, and try something.

As teachers, we have always guaranteed our students “office hours for life.” This means that if you take a class from us we are there for you, forever. Period.

All through the process of life design, we will be right here with you. To guide you. To challenge you. We’re going to give you the ideas and tools you need for designing your way through life. We’re going to help you find your next job. Your next career. Your next big thing. We’re going to help you design your life. A life that you love.

response to a gravity problem is acceptance. And 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. But right where you are.

here’s the big truth: there are many versions of you, and they are all “right.

In truth, most people are passionate about many different things, and the only way to know what they want to do is to prototype some potential lives, try them out, and see what really resonates with them.

Designers study aesthetics for years in order to make these industrial products the equivalent of moving sculpture. That’s why, in some ways, aesthetics is the ultimate design problem. Aesthetics involves human emotion—and we’ve discovered that when emotions are involved, design thinking has proved to be the best problem-solving tool.

How do I find a job that I like or maybe even love? • How do I build a career that will make me a good living? • How do I balance my career with my family?

Work is often the largest single component of most people’s waking lives, and over a lifetime it occupies more of our attention and energy than anything else we do.

Our minds are generally lazy and like to get rid of problems as quickly as possible, so they surround first ideas with a lot of positive chemicals to make us “fall in love” with them. Do not fall in love with your first idea. This relationship almost never works out. Most often, our first solutions are pretty average and not very creative. Humans have a tendency to suggest the obvious first. Learning to use great ideation tools helps you overcome this bias toward the obvious and helps you regain a sense of creative confidence.

Happiness is love. Full stop.

The reframe for the question “What do you want to be when you grow up?” is this: “Who or what do you want to grow into?” Life is all about growth and change. It’s not static. It’s not about some destination. It’s not about answering the question once and for all and then it’s all done. Nobody really knows what he or she wants to be.

Reframe: Three-quarters of all college grads don’t end up working in a career related to their majors.

Dysfunctional Belief: Your degree determines your career.

Everything that makes our daily living easier, more productive, more enjoyable, and more pleasurable was created because of a problem, and because some designer or team of designers somewhere out there in the world sought to solve that problem.

Work. By “work” we mean your participation in the great ongoing human adventure on the planet. You may or may not be getting paid for it, but this is the stuff you “do.” Assuming you’re not financially independent, you usually are getting paid for at least a portion of your “work.” Don’t for a minute reduce work only to that which you get paid for. Most people have more than one form of work at a time.

Designing your life is actually what life is, because life is a process, not an outcome.

Designers love to ideate broadly and wildly. They love the crazy ideas as much as or more than the sensible ones. Why? Most people think that designers are just “out there” and prefer crazy stuff because they’re edgy, avant-garde, dark-sunglass-wearing kinds of people (think berets, cool shoes, and the hippest restaurants). That may be true, but it’s not the point. Designers learn to have lots of wild ideas because they know that the number one enemy of creativity is judgment. Our brains are so tightly wired to be critical, find problems, and leap to judgment that it’s a wonder any ideas ever make it out! We have to defer judgment and silence the inner critic if we want to get all our ideas out. If we don’t, we may have a few good ideas, but the majority will have been lost—silently imprisoned behind the wall of judgment our prefrontal cortex has erected to safeguard us from making mistakes or looking foolish.

You choose better when you have lots of good ideas to choose from. 2. You never choose your first solution to any problem.

Renewing and Repairing things • Sustaining and Supporting things • Creating New-New things

Do not fall in love with your first idea. This relationship almost never works out.

Don’t make a doable problem into an anchor problem by wedding yourself irretrievably to a solution that just isn’t working. Reframe the solution to some other possibilities, prototype those ideas (take some test hikes), and get yourself unstuck.

There is no one idea for your life. There are many lives you could live happily and productively (no matter how many years old you are), and there are lots of different paths you could take to live each of those productive, amazingly different lives.

Building a Team 1. Make a list of three to five people who might be a part of your Life Design Team. Think of your supporters, your intimates, your mentors or possible mentors. Ideally, these will be three to five people also actively engaged in designing their lives. 2. Make sure everyone has a copy of the book (or buy books for everyone), so all the members of your team understand how life design works and have reviewed the team roles and rules. 3. Agree to meet regularly and actively to co-create a well-designed life as a community.

Why work? • What’s work for? • What does work mean? • How does it relate to the individual, others, society?

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

Designers don’t agonize. They don’t dream about what could have been. They don’t spin their wheels. And they don’t waste their futures by hoping for a better past. Life designers see the adventure in whatever life they are currently building and living into.

the kind of people he’d want to work with would view his post-cancer ski adventure as a demonstration of boldness rather than irresponsibility. As for how other people would see it—well, that was their problem.

哲學家詹姆斯·卡斯（James Carse）寫過一本有趣的書，叫《有限與無限的遊戲》（Finite and Infinite Game）。[18]卡斯說，我們生命中做的每一件事，幾乎都是有限或無限的遊戲。如果是有限的遊戲，我們會照規則走，以求獲勝。如果是無限的遊戲，我們會為了享受一直玩下去的樂趣，而實驗規則。化學拿A是有限的遊戲。學習世界由什麼組成、自己要如何在世上安身立命，則是無限的遊戲。指導兒子贏得拼字比賽是有限的遊戲。讓兒子相信你無條件愛他，則是無限的遊戲。生命同時充滿有限與無限的遊戲。（「遊戲」二字，不帶有「不重要」或「幼稚」的意涵。這裡所說的「遊戲」，只是我們如何在世上採取行動，以及我們多重視自己的行動。）每個人隨時隨地都在玩有限和無限的遊戲，沒有哪種遊戲比較好。

Gravity problems: If it is not actionable it is not a problem

Who doesn’t want to be immune to failure? Unfortunately, there’s no vaccine, and it’s impossible never to fail.

answer. Donald’s dysfunctional belief was related to Janine’s, but he’d held on to it for much longer—a life of responsible and successful work should make him happy. It should be enough? But Donald had another dysfunctional belief: that he couldn’t stop doing what he’d always done. If only the guy in the mirror could have told him that he was not alone, and he did not have to do what he had always done. In the United States alone, more than thirty-one million people between ages forty-four and seventy want what is often called an “encore” career—work that combines personal meaning, continued income, and social impact. Some of those thirty-one million have found their encore careers, and many others have no idea where to begin, and fear it’s too late in life to make a big change. Dysfunctional Belief: It’s too late. Reframe: It’s never too late to design a life you love. Three people. Three big problems. Designers Love Problems Look around you. Look at your office or home, the chair you are sitting on, the tablet or smartphone you may be holding. Everything that surrounds us was designed by someone. And every design started with a problem. The problem of not being able to listen to a lot of music without carrying around a suitcase of CDs is the reason why you can listen to three thousand songs on a one-inch square object clipped to your shirt. It’s only because of a problem that your phone fits perfectly in the palm of your hand, or that your laptop gets five hours of battery life, or that your alarm clock plays the sound of chirping birds. Now, the annoying sound of an alarm clock may not seem like a big problem in the grand scheme of things, but it was problem

One of the best things about designers is that they love to explore crazy ideas. They embrace crazy ideas because they know the biggest creativity destroyer is judgment. If we want to create all possible ideas needed in our lives, we must first silence the critical voice in our head. Making mistakes is totally normal and expected. It is natural. And even though that crazy idea may not be what we end up with, it may help us create other creative possibilities. PART 7: WHAT IS MIND MAPPING?

Designers don’t agonize. They don’t dream about what could have been. They don’t spin their wheels. And they don’t waste their futures by hoping for a better past. Life designers see the adventure in whatever life they are currently building and living into. This is how you choose happiness.

Our problems become our story, and we can all get stuck in our stories. Deciding

When was their daughter going to turn magically into a geologist?

The key is not to get stuck on something that you have effectively no chance of succeeding at.

If it’s not actionable, it’s not a problem. It’s a situation, a circumstance, a fact of life. It may be a drag (so to speak), but, like gravity, it’s not a problem that can be solved. Here’s a little tidbit that is going to save you a lot of time—months, years, decades even. It has to do with reality. People fight reality. They fight it tooth and nail, with everything they’ve got. And anytime you are arguing or fighting with reality, reality will win. You can’t outsmart it. You can’t trick it. You can’t bend it to your will. Not now. Not ever.

the research shows that, for most people, passion comes after they try something, discover they like it, and develop mastery—not before. To

These are all gravity problems—meaning they are not real problems. Why? Because in life design, if it’s not actionable, it’s not a problem. Let’s repeat that. If it’s not actionable, it’s not a problem. It’s a situation, a circumstance, a fact of life. It may be a drag (so to speak), but, like gravity, it’s not a problem that can be solved.

The key is not to get stuck on something that you have effectively no chance of succeeding at. We

When an activity is done to win, to advance, to achieve—even if it’s “fun” to do so—it’s not play. It may be a wonderful thing, but it’s still not play. The question here is what brings you joy purely in the doing.

When designing your life, you start with who you are (chapters 1, 2, and 3). Then you have lots of ideas (rather than wait and wait to have the idea of the century) and you try things out by doing them (chapters 4, 5, and 6), and then you make the best choice you can (chapter 8). As you do all this, including making choices that set you on one path for a number of years, you grow various aspects of your personality and identity that are nurtured and called upon by those experiences—you become more yourself. In this way, you energize a very productive cycle of growth, naturally evolving from being, to doing, to becoming. Then it all repeats, as the more-like-you version of you (your new being) takes the next step of doing, and so it goes.

We mostly use cognitive knowing—all that good, objective, organized, informational kind of knowing—the sort of knowing that gets you A’s in school. But we also have other ways of knowing, including the affective forms of intuitive, spiritual, and emotional knowing. Add to those both social knowing (with others) and kinesthetic knowing (in our bodies).

The key to step three is to make discerning decisions by applying more than one way of knowing, and in particular not applying just cognitive judgment by itself, which is informed but not reliable on its own. We aren’t suggesting making only emotional decisions, either. We all have examples of emotions getting people in trouble (though usually those are impulse emotions, and that’s a very different thing), so we’re not saying to swap your brain for your heart or your gut. We’re inviting you to integrate all your decision-making faculties, and to be sure you make space so your emotional and intuitive ways of knowing can surface in the process. In other words, don’t forget to listen to your knee or your gut or your heart, too.

• Possible considerations ° Geography—where will you live? ° What experience/learning will you gain? ° What are the impacts/results of choosing this alternative? ° What will life look like? What particular role, industry, or company do you see yourself in? • Other ideas ° Do keep in mind things other than career and money. Even though those things are important, if not central, to the decisive direction of your next few years, there are other critical elements that you want to pay attention to. ° Any of the considerations listed above can be a springboard for forming your alternative lives for the next five years. If you find yourself stuck, try making a mind map out of any of the design considerations listed above. Don’t overthink this exercise, and don’t skip it.

Odyssey Plan 1. Create three alternative five-year plans, using the worksheet provided. 2. Give each alternative a descriptive six-word title, and write down three questions that arise out of each version of you. 3. Complete each gauge on the dashboard—ranking each alternative for resources, likability, confidence, and coherence. 4. Present your plan to another person, a group, or your Life Design Team. Note how each alternative energizes you.

Most exciting • The one we wish we could do if money were no object • The dark horse—probably won’t work, but if it did… • Most likely to lead to a great life • If we could ignore the laws of physics…

Dysfunctional Belief: Networking is just hustling people—it’s slimy. Reframe: Networking is just asking for directions.

Dysfunctional Belief: I am looking for a job. Reframe: I am pursuing a number of offers.

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.

As you begin to think like a designer, remember one important thing: it’s impossible to predict the future. And the corollary to that thought is: once you design something, it changes the future that is possible.

Design doesn’t just work for creating cool stuff like computers and Ferraris; it works in creating a cool life. You can use design thinking to create a life that is meaningful, joyful, and fulfilling. It doesn’t matter who you are or were, what you do or did for a living, how young or how old you are—you can use the same thinking that created the most amazing technology, products, and spaces to design your career and your life.

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.

The reframe for the question “What do you want to be when you grow up?” is this: “Who or what do you want to grow into?” Life is all about growth and change. It’s not static. It’s not about some destination. It’s not about answering the question once and for all and then it’s all done.

When you understand who you are, design your life, and then go live your life, you cannot fail. It does not mean that you won’t stumble or that a particular prototype will always work as expected. But failure immunity comes from knowing that a prototype that did not work still leaves you with valuable information about the state of the world here—at your new starting point.

Yet most jobs are built around tasks to get done and transactions to manage, and most managers aren’t comfortable talking about meaning and impact. When you become the designer of your work life, you can help your boss and your company make your job the job you want.

The mind-sets are: curiosity, bias to action, reframing, awareness, radical collaboration, and—the bonus—storytelling.

Be curious. Get curious, about people, work, and the world, because a designer always starts with a beginner’s mind and asks “Why?” Curiosity is your natural human state, and it is the source of the energy you need to get started and get out and meet people who are interesting. Curiosity is the most important mind-set of a designer, because it drives inquiry and action and is the start of almost all design activities. Leave your rational skeptic at home (she’ll come in handy later when you need to evaluate all of your wonderful options) and get curious. It is a very interesting world out there! And when you’re sincerely interested in people and things (i.e., curious), people are happy to engage with you. Remember—interested is interesting.

Dysfunctional Belief: If I comprehensively research the best data for all aspects of my plan, I’ll be fine. Reframe: I should build prototypes to explore questions about my alternatives.

The idea is to try to become as precise as possible; the clearer you are on what is and isn’t working for you, the better you can set your wayfinding direction. For instance…What you initially logged as “Staff Mtg—Enjoyed it for once today!” might, after you’ve looked at it again, be more accurately restated as “Staff Mtg—Felt great when I rephrased what Jon said and everyone went ‘Ooooh—exactly!’ ” This more precise version tells a much more useful story about what specific activity or behavior engages you. And it opens the door to developing even greater self-awareness. When your entries have that kind of detail in them, your reflections can be more insightful. When journaling your reflection on the log entry about that staff meeting, you might ask yourself, “Was I more engaged by artfully rephrasing Jon’s comment (getting the articulation dialed in just right) or by facilitating consensus among the staff (being the guy who made the group’s ‘Now we get it!’ unifying moment happen)?” If you conclude that artful articulation was the real sweet spot of that staff meeting moment for you, that important insight can help you be on the lookout for content-creation opportunities over group facilitation opportunities. Take this sort of observation and reflection as far as you find helpful (and no further—you don’t want to get stuck in your journal).

It’s the AEIOU method3 that provides you five sets of questions you can use when reflecting on your Activity Log. Activities. What were you actually doing? Was this a structured or an unstructured activity? Did you have a specific role to play (team leader) or were you just a participant (at the meeting)? Environments. Our environment has a profound effect on our emotional state. You feel one way at a football stadium, another in a cathedral. Notice where you were when you were involved in the activity. What kind of a place was it, and how did it make you feel? Interactions. What were you interacting with—people or machines? Was it a new kind of interaction or one you are familiar with? Was it formal or informal? Objects. Were you interacting with any objects or devices—iPads or smartphones, hockey sticks or sailboats? What were the objects that created or supported your feeling engaged? Users. Who else was there, and what role did they play in making it either a positive or a negative experience?

Mining the Mountaintop Your past is waiting to be mined for insights, too—especially your mountaintop moments, or “peak experiences.” Peak experiences in our past—even our long-ago past—can be telling.

Good Time Journal 1. Complete a log of your daily activities, using the worksheet provided (or in your own notebook). Note when you are engaged and/or energized and what you are doing during those times. Try to do this daily, or at the very least every few days. 2. Continue this daily logging for three weeks. 3. At the end of each week, jot down your reflections—notice which activities are engaging and energizing, and which ones are not. 4. Are there any surprises in your reflections? 5. Zoom in and try to get even more specific about what does or does not engage and energize you. 6. Use the AEIOU method as needed to help you in your reflections.

Dysfunctional Belief: I’m stuck. Reframe: I’m never stuck, because I can always generate a lot of ideas.

She had spent a long time trying to do the right thing instead of doing what was right for Sharon.