How to design your life? — 5 steps to planning the happiest of you

Published in

Bootcamp

3 min readNov 30, 2021

Let’s ask ourselves

If we are rich but suffer, is that a good thing? If we are happy but poor, will that always happen? If we are poor and suffer, isn’t that bad?

What if we are happy and have enough?

Now, what are the causes of happiness? I think that since this body element goes well with a calm mind, not with a disturbed mind, therefore a calm mind is very important. It doesn’t matter our physical situation, mental calmness is most important.
— His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama

Understanding the process of design

(1 minute)

💡 “No plan for your plan will survive the first contact with reality”

Why are we still planning? Planning is not a step-to-step process that we must follow. Planning gives us a clear direction, and when things are not as we predict, we change. We are not robots. We are human and humans adapt.

“The unattainable best is the enemy of all available betters because there are many, many versions of you that you could play out, all of which would result in a well-designed life”
- Bill Burnett and Designing your life Team at Stanford

Simple:

Know what you are having → Understand and accept the reality → Come up with ideas (ultimate crazy is fine) → Prototype → Choose the best.

Example:

I have cereal, milk (any kind), chocolate, orange juice, coca.

Coca is not healthy (Let’s accept this!)
Orange juice is healthy
Milk goes well with cereal
Chocolate is delicious

💡 EMPATHIZE → DEFINE → IDEAS → PROTOTYPE → TEST

1. Empathize: Connect the dots

(4 minutes)

Here we are talking about ourselves. Write theories.

What do you believe

I believe in the purpose of life

I believe that the purpose of life is to be happy.
— His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama

What you do

What you are doing now?

Who you are

2. Define: Understand and Accepting

Gravity problems: Things that you cannot change. Then why should we bother? (4 minutes)

Note from Q&A of Dalai Lama

Write down what you think you cannot change.

3. Ideas: How many lives can you live?

(15 minutes)

You only have one now, but no one said we can’t live other lives. Let’s try to create 5 years plan for 3 scenarios of our life.

💡 Never design to make it worse

The thing you are doing right now, do it for 5 years.

Framework:

I’m a designer → I will have 20k followers on Instagram → I will have $10k contract → Success getting design awards…

What is the goal of each year? How, What will you do to achieve it?

💡 If we can help others, then we need to do that; if we cannot, then at least restrain from harming others.

4. Prototype: Is this the thing you want?

(1 minute)

Ask interest question
Expose to the assumption
Prototype conversation: if you are interested in what other people are doing, ask them.
Prototype experience

Let’s note down a list of people you want to talk to, what you want to know.

5. Test: Choosing well

(1 minute)

Gather and Create → Narrow down → Make good choice → Let go and move on

Choice overload — no choice at all. Don’t let your customers have many choices, especially you.
You cannot choose well from your rational mind

When we need to make a decision and the mind is dominated by anger; then chances are, we will make the wrong decision.
— His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama

Re-read everything you wrote. You are now on the quest of your life.