Designing your life.
I've begun reading a new book that I'd like to write about over the next few days. Designing Your Life: How to Build a Well-Lived, Joyful Life is written by Bill Burnett and Dave Evans who actually teach this course at Stanford University. Their approach to how you live your life is based on what they call "design thinking."
"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."
In other words it's not a "lather, rinse, repeat" kind of life.
One of the first tenets of design thinking is the idea of reframing. They state that, "The biggest reframe is that your life can't be perfectly planned, that there isn't just one solution to your life, and that's a good thing."
The benefits of reframing have to do with getting unstuck. It also allows us to work on the right problem. Often times we put way too much time and energy trying to solve the wrong one. They use the term "gravity problems" to define the things that really can't be changed. Time spent dwelling on the things that can't be changed is not productive, and can become actionable by reframing the problem.
As a retiree I find myself constantly asking, "What should I be doing?" and always coming up short. By simply reframing the question to, "What do I want to be doing?" it suddenly takes on a whole new twist.
If you have been struggling with a problem see if you can reframe it to give you a new point of view. If you cannot take action on your problem then you are not going to be able to find a resolution.
Stay tuned for more about design thinking as we explore curiosity, and the role it plays in designing your life.
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