Designing Your Life: How to Use Design Principles to Get What You Want in Work and Life | Bill Burnett, Revisited

7 snips

Nov 25, 2025

In this engaging conversation, Bill Burnett, an award-winning designer and director at Stanford's Life Design Lab, shares insights on using design principles for a fulfilling career. He discusses the importance of curiosity, reframing problems, and avoiding the sunk-cost fallacy. Bill emphasizes the need for a design mindset rather than rigid planning, advocating for small wins and enjoying the present. He also offers management advice on hiring adaptable employees and suggests rethinking work-life balance with a holistic dashboard approach.

Ask episode

AI Snips

Chapters

Books

Transcript

Episode notes

INSIGHT

Design Life Around Purpose

Designing your life starts with asking how to create meaning and purpose, not just how to get a job.
That shift gives people agency and reduces feeling stuck by focusing on choices they control.

ADVICE

Use Curiosity And Prototyping

Start with curiosity: explore possible futures instead of overanalyzing imagined data.
Use radical collaboration and prototyping to test experiences in the world and learn quickly.

INSIGHT

Reframe To Reveal Hidden Needs

Reframing problems reveals vastly different solutions than the initial stated problem.
Focusing on the real need (experience, community) can transform a product or career path.

Get the Snipd Podcast app to discover more snips from this episode

Get the app

From kitchen tables to self-driving cars, everything around us was designed to solve a problem. Bill Burnett, award-winning Silicon Valley designer, believes we can use the same approach to design careers that bring fulfillment and joy. By using curiosity, reframing, collaboration, and other tools, Bill shows how to enjoy the present while shaping a better future. In this revisited episode, Dart and Bill discuss how to adopt a design mindset for life and work, tackle the sunk-cost fallacy, rethink work-life balance, and share practical management advice.

Bill is an award-winning designer, New York Times bestselling author, adjunct professor, and Executive Director of the Life Design Lab at Stanford University. Throughout his career, Bill has designed everything from the first slate computer to Hasbro Star Wars action figures, assisting and advising Fortune 100 companies and start-ups alike.

In this episode, Dart and Bill discuss:
- The design mindset you need to build the life you want
- The problem with hyper-focusing on one goal
- How to reframe problems to discover new solutions
- Avoiding the sunk-cost fallacy
- Enjoying what you have while building a brighter future
- Management advice for interviewing and hiring adaptable employees
- An antidote for the work-life balance problem
- And other topics…

Bill Burnett is an award-winning Silicon Valley designer and New York Times best-selling author. He currently serves as the Adjunct Professor and Executive Director of the Life Design Lab at Stanford University, and over 350 universities now use his curriculum on how to design your life. Throughout his career, he has designed everything from the first slate computer to Hasbro Star Wars action figures in the toy industry, assisting and advising Fortune 100 companies and start-ups alike.

Bill is the co-author of the bestselling book Designing Your Life and recently published Designing Your New Work Life, both of which have garnered significant acclaim. His impact on design, education, and professional development continues to shape industries and inspire aspiring designers worldwide.

Resources Mentioned:
Designing Your New Work Life, by Bill Burnett and Dave Evans: https://www.amazon.com/Designing-Your-Work-Life-Happiness/dp/0593467450
Designing Your Life, by Bill Burnett and Dave Evans: https://www.amazon.com/Designing-Your-Life-Well-Lived-Joyful/dp/1101875321

Connect with Bill:
www.DesigningYour.Life

Work with Dart:
Dart is the CEO and co-founder of the work design firm 11fold. Build work that makes employees feel alive, connected to their work, and focused on what’s most important to the business. Book a call at 11fold.com.