“Deciding which problems to work on may be one of the most important decisions you make, because people can lose years (or a lifetime) working on the wrong problem.” (Bill Burnett and Dave Evans, Designing Your Life)
^quote1

“Kindred Purpose. Healthy communities are about something—not just getting together to get together. Dave’s community exists to become people of greater integrity in living out their faith in all aspects of their lives. Bill’s community gathers to support one another in becoming better fathers and more authentic men. The most effective communities have an explicit mission that keeps them directed and moving. It’s just much easier to keep moving if you’re moving toward something. Both Bill’s and Dave’s communities veer into all manner of other stuff—social activities, recreational events, and the like—but there is always that North Star pulling them back to “why we’re here.”” (Bill Burnett and Dave Evans, Designing Your Life)

^bc0b49

“You need two things to build your compass—a Workview and a Lifeview. To start out, we need to discover what work means to you. What is work for? Why do you do it? What makes good work good? If you discover and are able to articulate your philosophy of work (what it’s for and why you do it), you will be less likely to let others design your life for you.” (Bill Burnett and Dave Evans, Designing Your Life)

This informs the Workview

“It turns out that our mind-set about how to make a good decision is as important as which decision we make. It seems obvious that the best way to be happy with a choice is to make the best choice. Simple enough—except it’s impossible. You can’t make “the best choice,” because you can’t know what that best choice was until all the consequences have played out. You can work on making the best choice you can, given what’s knowable at the moment, but if your goal is “make the best choice,” you won’t be able to know if you’ve done it. Your inability to know that keeps you focused on whether or not you did the right thing, and keeps you rehearsing the alternatives not chosen: this is called agonizing. And all that rehashing drains satisfaction with the choice you did make and distracts you from getting energetically ahead on the choice you have made.” (Bill Burnett and Dave Evans, Designing Your Life)

A good description of Optimization and removing the burden of choice by Accepting your choices

“It is a wonderfully happy accident that the very best technique you can use to learn what kind of work you might want to pursue (prototyping with Life Design Interviews, as discussed in chapter 6) is exactly the best, if not only, way to get into the hidden job market in your field of interest, once you know what you want.” (Bill Burnett and Dave Evans, Designing Your Life)

^811e3b

“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. Wrap your mind around that. Designing something changes the future that is possible.” (Bill Burnett and Dave Evans, Designing Your Life)

Designing changes the future that is possible

“Designers don’t think their way forward. Designers build their way forward. What does that mean? It means you are not just going to be dreaming up a lot of fun fantasies that have no relationship to the real world—or the real you. You are going to build things (we call them prototypes), try stuff, and have a lot of fun in the process.” (Bill Burnett and Dave Evans, Designing Your Life)

Good design involves experimentation

“What do you do? You ask a local for directions. Getting referrals to people whose stories would be useful to hear is just the professional equivalent of asking directions. So go ahead—ask for directions. It’s. No. Big. Deal.” (Bill Burnett and Dave Evans, Designing Your Life)

Ask for directions in life

“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.” (Bill Burnett and Dave Evans, Designing Your Life)

Don’t fight reality

id:: 66325ac1-2ac4-47ab-9b65-f015211080d3

“Please take some time to write up your thoughts on the integration of your two views. Our students tell us that this is where they often get the biggest “aha” moments, so please take this part of the exercise seriously and give the integration some thought. In most cases, this reflection will result in some editing of one or both of your views. By having your Workview and your Lifeview in harmony with each other, you increase your own clarity and ability to live a consciously coherent, meaningful life—one in which who you are, what you believe, and what you do are aligned. When you’ve got an accurate compass, you’ll never stray off course for long.” (Bill Burnett and Dave Evans, Designing Your Life)

“Counsel is entirely different. Counsel is always helpful. You can never be too clear on your own thinking. You can never get too good a grasp of your own best wisdom and insights. Finding someone who can give you good counsel and who regularly leaves you in a clearer and more settled state of mind is a great asset. This is where good mentors shine. We would say that all legitimate mentoring is centered on giving counsel. Counsel invariably begins with lots of questions aimed at accurately understanding you, what you’re saying, and what you’re going through. Good counselors will often seem to ask the same question a couple of times from different points of view, to be sure they’re getting it. They will often try to summarize or restate something you’ve said and ask, “Did I get that right?” This approach tells you that they’re focused on you—not on themselves. The value of mentors’ life experience when they are giving counsel lies not in borrowing what facts or answers they know but in accessing the breadth of their experience and their objectivity, which helps them to help you to see your own reality in a new way. Good mentors spend most of their time listening, then offering possible reframings of your situation that allow you to have new ideas and come up with the answers that will work for you. Of course, this is just our advice.” (Bill Burnett and Dave Evans, Designing Your Life)

^adc4e9

Good Counsel