Bill Burnett

Bill Burnett, co-author of "Designing Your Life" and Stanford's Life Design Lab co-director, shares insights on using design thinking to discover personal talents and navigate life’s roadblocks. He emphasizes that overcoming stagnation requires curiosity and experimentation. Additionally, Robert Armstrong discusses the Silicon Valley Bank collapse, connecting it to lessons in financial mismanagement and public perception shifts since the 2008 crisis. Together, they explore aligning personal values with career aspirations for a more meaningful journey.

Join Stanford design professors Bill Burnett and Dave Evans as they explore how design thinking can lead to a more meaningful life. They share insights from their bestselling books, emphasizing the importance of curiosity, flexibility, and prototyping life choices. Discover the concept of creating multiple life plans to break free from binary thinking and FOMO. The duo discusses the generational shift towards seeking impactful work and equips listeners with practical strategies to navigate choices and discover personal coherence.

This episode features Matt Pitcher, a financial advisor known for helping lottery winners navigate sudden wealth; Anindya Kundu, a sociologist studying the balance between personal agency and structural factors in student success; Jennifer Wallace, a journalist exploring how feeling valued impacts mental health; and Bill Burnett, a Stanford professor teaching life design. They discuss the complexities of control in life, the societal effects of wealth, the importance of support systems, and practical steps to create meaningful life plans.

Join Stanford educators Dave Evans and Bill Burnett as they redefine how to design a fulfilling life. They argue against the age-old advice of 'follow your passion,' advocating instead for applying design thinking to craft purpose. Discover the four keys to meaning—wonder, coherence, flow, and community—and the importance of formative relationships. They emphasize curiosity and mystery as essential to creating daily wonder, and encourage shifting from a 'got to' to a 'get to' mindset, unlocking a richer, more engaged existence.

Show notes: https://designbetterpodcast.com/p/bill-burnettIn the wake of a pandemic and economic catastrophe, many of our friends and colleagues in the world of digital product design are fortunate to have kept their jobs, but there have also been many who were not so lucky. We thought it would be timely to bring in an expert who has been using a designer’s mindset to help people reframe their approach to their careers.Bill Burnett, co-author of the bestselling book Designing Your Life, has written a new book called Designing Your Work Life. Bill has been the executive director of the design program at Stanford for 13 years and has also taught one of the most popular elective classes there (which his first book was named from). He and his co-author Dave Evans have taken what they have learned from teaching and running workshops for adults in the midst of a career or life transition to come up with a framework for using tools like curiosity, reframing, radical collaboration, and a bias to action to transform your work life and find the best job for you.In this interview, we speak with Bill about how adopting a designer’s mindset can help you through your current challenges if you’re searching for work. We also chat about how grit and perseverance maps to happiness at work, and how setting aside time for reflection can help you understand what changes you need to make to find a better job (which may even be in your current company). Takeaways: How setting micro-goals can help you achieve positive change at work. Why you might think about redesigning and iterating on your role at your current company if you’re unhappy. What the idea of “generative quitting” is, and why asking the question “What am I doing wrong?” might be a good idea before you decide to quit. BioBill Burnett is the co-author of the NYT Best-seller Designing Your Life. He’s also co-director of the Life Design Lab at Stanford University. He’s a designer, educator, and an Adjunct Professor at Stanford University. He’s also the Executive Director of the Design Program where he manages the undergraduate and graduate degree-granting programs and advises 70 -100 students annually.