Designing Your Work Life Book Cover

Designing Your Work Life

How to Thrive and Change and Find Happiness at Work

Brief summary

Designing Your Work Life asks us to do the most vital thing related to our work life, which is, to pursue the job we truly long for. The book teaches us to create a perfect job out of our existing ones. We need to define our own happiness and success in our fast-paced lives. We should try to bring forth a positive change despite the commitments of our professional lives. Most of us struggle with work for the larger part, and our primary instinct most of the time is to let go of what’s causing us stress. Designing Your Work Life provides us with certain solutions that may help us rectify our current job scenario. It talks about how we can re-organize our work to make it suit our needs. The book empowers us to make decisions that would make our work more enjoyable. Designing Your Work Life encourages us to use tools like curiosity, reframing, and radical collaboration to transform our work lives and discover the best-suited jobs for ourselves.

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LESSON 1: Our position in our professional lives.

We all wish to find meaning in our jobs. No matter how much we rely on others to instill meaning in what we do, the onus lies on us. As companies work towards being more active and evolve according to changing markets, the workplace has become increasingly unpredictable and difficult to navigate. We often wonder if we are there yet. Even though we cannot really define what ‘there’ is, it is always present in the back of our minds. Our younger selves would often be fascinated with what our final destination might be. As adults, this question might not bother us much. However, when it comes to our career, we tend to be concerned with where we want to reach, and rightly so. 

We might feel dissatisfied and unhappy when we aren’t moving towards our goal. It is easy to feel sad when we are dissatisfied with our professional lives. Looking forward to where we are headed is an enormous distraction. It prevents us from taking drastic steps that would help us make changes to our current work environment. 

The primary message that we must focus on is the fact that, the position we are in our career currently, is okay for the time being

Psychologists use a term called ‘hedonic treadmill’. This term describes the phenomenon where a person repeats the same tasks over and over again just because they get pleasure out of it. The hedonic treadmill is a metaphor for the idea that an individual's level of happiness tends to return to where it started from, regardless of good or unpleasant experiences. The chemicals in our brain run out and we are stuck in this repetitive cycle. This is why psychologists call it a ‘hedonic treadmill’. 

Dave Evans and Bill Burnett call a person who follows this rehearsed life, a “non-life designer”. This type of person longs for material luxuries from his career. They want a higher salary, more power, or a bigger office. However, they don’t identify or acknowledge why they want such things. The authors advise that we should try to become “life-designers”. These are people who live life intentionally and are satisfied with their position in their work-life. We must develop the ability to accept what is good enough for now. This urges us to reframe and restructure our mindset.  We should not accept our job despite its shortcomings. We must focus on the positives and the tasks we genuinely enjoy. 

LESSON 2: The true meaning of work and money.

 Burnett and

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About the author

Bill Burnett and Dave Evans Image

BILL BURNETT is the executive director of the Stanford Design Program and was a product leader for Apple’s groundbreaking PowerBook business. He directs the undergraduate and graduate programs in design at Stanford. DAVE EVANS is the co-director of th...

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Designing Your Work Life Book Cover
Chapter List
  • LESSON 1: Our position in our professional lives.
  • LESSON 2: The true meaning of work and money.
  • LESSON 3: The importance of problem-finding and problem-solving.
  • LESSON 4: The subject of motivation.
  • LESSON 5: Identifying our influence.
  • LESSON 6: Do not be a quitter.
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FAQs

In the summary of Designing Your Work Life book, there are 6 key lessons. These lessons include:

  1. LESSON 1: Our position in our professional lives.
  2. LESSON 2: The true meaning of work and money.
  3. LESSON 3: The importance of problem-finding and problem-solving.
  4. LESSON 4: The subject of motivation.
  5. LESSON 5: Identifying our influence.
  6. LESSON 6: Do not be a quitter.

Designing Your Work Life by Bill Burnett and Dave Evans was published in .

Once you've completed Designing Your Work Life book, We suggest reading out Gods of the Upper Air as a great follow-up read.

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In the printed version of Designing Your Work Life book have over 300 pages and usually takes 8-10 days to finish. However, with the Wizdom app, including its summary and audiobook, it can be completed in just 15 minutes.

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