How Design Thinking Can Help You Plan Your Life
Life design isn't about finding the one perfect path. It's about developing the skills to create a fulfilling life
Many of us feel stuck when trying to figure out our career path or life direction. We’re told to “follow our passion” or worry we’re running out of time to achieve our goals. But what if there was a better approach?
Bill Burnett, who co-founded Stanford’s Life Design Lab with Dave Evans, has spent over 50 years developing design thinking principles to help people create fulfilling lives. His work in design thinking for life planning challenges common beliefs that often hold us back and offers practical tools for moving forwards.
Why Traditional Career Advice Falls Short
Most career guidance rests on three assumptions that sound reasonable but can actually make us feel worse. Understanding these limitations is crucial before applying design thinking for life planning.
The Passion Myth
“What’s your passion?” seems like a sensible question. Yet research shows fewer than 20% of people have one clear, identifiable passion. The remaining 80% have multiple interests, and that’s perfectly normal. Waiting to discover a single passion before taking action leaves most people indefinitely stuck.
The “You Should Know By Now” Trap
There’s an unspoken timeline in our culture suggesting we should have everything sorted by a certain age. This creates unnecessary pressure and ignores how fluidly modern lives actually develop. The truth is, there’s no deadline you’re racing against.
The Best Version Fallacy
Striving to be “the best possible version of yourself” sounds motivating, but it assumes there’s one singular best path. Life isn’t linear, and there are multiple ways to build a fulfilling existence. Chasing an unattainable “best” means missing countless “better” options that could make you genuinely happy.
Core Principles of Design Thinking for Life Planning
Rather than vague aspirational advice, this approach offers concrete methods you can use today. These five ideas form the foundation of effective design thinking for life planning.
1. Connect the Dots to Find Meaning
Meaningful lives come from coherence between who you are, what you believe, and what you do. Try this exercise:
Write a short statement (around 250 words) answering: “Why do I work? What is work in service of?” This isn’t about your job title, but your philosophy of work.
Then write about your broader worldview: “What gives life meaning? Why am I here?”
When you can connect these two perspectives coherently, you’ll begin experiencing your life as more purposeful.
2. Identify Gravity Problems
Some problems cannot be solved because they involve unchangeable circumstances. These are “gravity problems” – like wanting to become company president when it’s a family-run business and you’re not family.
You cannot solve a problem you’re unwilling to accept as reality. Once you recognise a gravity problem, you have two choices: accept it as a circumstance and work within it, or decide to pursue something else entirely. Spending years trying to change the unchangeable only keeps you stuck.
3. Create Three Five-Year Plans
Instead of putting all your hopes into one future vision, design three parallel possibilities:
Plan One: Your current path continues and goes well. Include everything you’d want to achieve, places you’d visit, and skills you’d develop if this trajectory succeeds.
Plan Two: Your industry changes dramatically – perhaps automation replaces your role. What would you do instead? What alternative skills could you develop?
Plan Three: Your wild card plan. If money wasn’t a concern and nobody would judge you, what would you genuinely want to do?
Creating multiple plans reveals options you’d forgotten about and often shows themes worth incorporating into your current life. Most people don’t completely switch to plan three, but they bring elements of it into plan one, making their actual life richer.
4. Prototype Before Committing
Designers build prototypes to test ideas before full implementation. You can do the same with life choices.
Prototype Conversations: Find people already living a life you’re considering. Ask them about their journey over coffee. Their stories will either resonate with you or reveal it’s not quite right. Someone, somewhere, is already living your potential future – go talk to them.
Prototype Experiences: Test things on a small scale first. Considering going back to university? Attend a few lectures as a visitor. Thinking about a career change? Volunteer or freelance in that field before resigning. Your body and emotions will give you valuable information about whether something truly fits.
5. Choose Well
Making decisions poorly creates lasting dissatisfaction. Here’s a better process:
Generate Options: Get good at creating multiple possibilities rather than seeing only one path.
Narrow Down: Too many choices paralyse us. Research shows that when faced with six options, people decide easily. With 24 options, hardly anyone chooses at all. Narrow your list to five maximum. If you’ve eliminated the wrong option, you’ll feel it in your gut.
Trust Your Whole Self: Good decisions require both rational thinking and emotional intelligence. Your brain summarises past emotional experiences and communicates through gut feelings. Ignoring these sensations leads to poor choices.
Let Go and Move On: Once you’ve decided, commit fully. Research demonstrates that keeping decisions reversible makes people significantly less happy with their choices. Those who commit to their decision without the option to reverse it report much higher satisfaction.
The Luck Factor
Interestingly, people who consider themselves “lucky” aren’t actually luckier – they’re simply more attentive. They notice opportunities in their peripheral vision whilst others focus narrowly on predetermined goals.
Stay curious about unexpected possibilities. The serendipitous opportunity you weren’t looking for might be exactly what you need.
Why Design Thinking for Life Planning Works
This methodology has been tested with thousands of students. Research shows participants develop higher self-efficacy and fewer limiting beliefs. People who don’t consider themselves creative discover they can generate innovative solutions to their own life challenges.
The beauty of this approach is its flexibility. You’re not locked into one path because you’ve learned to generate options, test ideas, and make decisions confidently.
Getting Started
You don’t need special skills or resources to begin designing your life. Start with these three actions:
Get curious about what genuinely interests you, not what you think should interest you.
Talk to people who are living lives that intrigue you. Ask for their stories.
Try stuff on a small scale before making big commitments. Prototype your way forwards.
Life design isn’t about finding the one perfect path. It’s about developing the skills to create a fulfilling life from wherever you are right now. You’re not late, you’re not missing your passion, and there isn’t just one “best” version of you waiting to be discovered.
There are multiple good lives available to you. The question isn’t which one is perfect, but which one you’ll choose to build.
