These slides summarize the Designing Your Life book by Bill Burnett and Dave Evans. Dr. Kristin Palmer led a workshop walking through big ideas in the book sharing templates and tools for helping people to design a live they can love. You can reach Dr. Palmer through http://www.CentralOregonLifeCoach.com.

1. Designing
Your Life
Workshop
Welcome to the…..
with Dr. Kristin Palmer

2. HOUSEKEEPING
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3. Dr. Kristin Palmer
CEO, Life Coach, Builder, Woman who gets stuff done, Crusader for Improving the World through Education.

4. 1. Be Curious - Curious vs. Judging
2. Try Stuff - Bias to Action
3. Reframe Problems - Problem or Opportunity?
4. Know It Is A Process - Awareness
5. Ask For Help - Radical Collaboration
Designing Your Life

5. Problem Finding +
Problem Solving =
Well-Designed Life

6. How are you _really_ doing?
1. Write a few sentences about how
it’s going in each of these areas.
2. Mark where you are on each gauge.
3. Ask yourself if there is a design
problem you’d like to tackle in any
of these areas.
4. Ask yourself if your problem is a
“gravity” problem.

7. A gravity problem is one where nothing you can do will fix it.
There is gravity.
Poets generally are not millionaires.
An anchor problem is “stuck on steroids.”
It’s like a physical anchor holding you down.
It’s when you think there is one way something has to be.
There generally isn’t only one solution.
Ditch the anchor by being open to other solutions.

8. Why we need a compass….
Who you are
What you believe
What you do Why am I here?
What am I doing?
Why does it matter?
What is my purpose?
What’s the point of it all?

9. Figuring out your True North - Part 1 - Work View
Write a few paragraphs about what works means to you.
These questions might prompt ideas for your perspective:
1. What is work to you?
2. Why work?
3. What does work mean?
4. What defines worthwhile work?
5. What does money have to do with it?
6. What does growth or fulfillment have to do with work?
7. What work do you do for no pay?
8. Why work?

10. Figuring out your True North - Part 2 - Life View
Write a few paragraphs about what life means to you.
These questions might prompt ideas for your perspective:
1. What are your values?
2. Why are we here?
3. What is the purpose of life?
4. What is the relationship between ourselves and others?
5. Where do family, country, and the rest of the world fit in?
6. What’s good? Evil?
7. Is there a God?
8. What role does joy, sorry, justice, injustice, love, peace, strife play in life?

11. Figuring out your True North - Part 3 - Overlap
Are there places where you see consistency across your life and work views?
These areas speak to who you are and can be a compass for your choices.
Work View Life View

12. Are there patterns in what you are doing that give/drain energy,
leave you feeling positive/negative or bring you in a state of flow?

13. AEIOU Reflection Tool
Activities - What were you actually doing? What role?
Environment - What kind of place where you in? How did it make you feel?
Interactions - Who were you interacting with? Formal? Informal?
Objects - Where there any objects that supported your engagement or energy?
Users - Who else was there? What role did they play? Positive? Negative?
You can mine your peak experiences through your life and use the AEIOU reflection
tool. Are there insights there?

14. Design Thinking > Prototyping
You choose better when you have lots of good ideas to choose from.
Never choose your first solution to any problem.

15. Mind Mapping
Pick a center point.
Make a mind map.
Make secondary connections and
create concepts mashing it all up.

16. Mind Mapping Careers - Step 1: Make 3 Mind Maps
Make three mind maps, one for each of the following center points:
1) Engagement - Something from your Good Time Journal where you were super engaged.
2) Energy - Something from your Good Time Journal when you were really energized.
3) Flow - Something from your Good Time Journal where you were in a state of flow.

17. Mind Mapping Careers - Step 2: Invent 3 Careers on Each Mind Map
Look at the outer ring of your mind map and pick three things that
catch your eye/jump out at you.
Try to combine those three things into a job description that would
be fun and interesting to you. No need to be practical here!
Name that role and draw a quick sketch of what it is.
From the example mind map exercise, the person selected hiking,
playing basketball, and helping his niece/nephew as the three things
and running a Pirate Camp in summer as a potential role.

18. Creating Odyssey Plans
Odyssey plans are what you could do over the next 5 years.
The idea is to make three different ones.
This is not Plan A, Plan B, and if that doesn’t work then Plan C.
This is the different sides of who you are and what you enjoy and what those might look like as a career.
Life One - That thing you do.
Life Two - That thing you’d do if thing one was suddenly gone.
Life Three - That thing you’d do or the life you would live if money and/or image were no object.

19. Sample Odyssey Plans from Book

20. Continued

21. Odyssey Plan Template Components
The template is the next slide.
Use the graphic columns to represent years in the 5 year Odyssey plan.
Make a six-word headline to describe this plan.
Questions that you might ask - what kinds of things will you test and explore in this version of your life?
Dashboard:
● Resources - do you have time, money, skills, contacts, etc you need?
● Likability - are you hot or cold about this plan?
● Confidence - do you feel like you could pull this off?
● Coherence - does this plan align with your compass (life view, work view)?

22. Odyssey Plan Template

23. Prototyping: Building is Thinking
Bias to action.
Try out versions of potentially interesting futures.
Fail fast.
Fail forward.
Sneak up on the future.
Build empathy for ourselves and others.
Example from book is woman who opened a cafe and how she might have done that in smaller steps to
expose her to if she actually liked that career and had what was needed.

24. Prototyping: A Life Design Interview
Get to know someone’s story.
Talk to someone who is doing and living what you’re contemplating or has real experience/expertise in
related areas.
Idea is to hear from someone who is doing what you think you want and hearing what they love and hate
about their job.
Ask about their work, life, and path to where they are.
This is not about YOU. YOU are not talking. You are encouraging your guest to tell you their story.
This conversation is in NO WAY an interview.
Having this conversation MAY lead to an interview, someday, maybe, possibly.

25. A Life Design Interview Request
…I’m very impressed with what I know of your work and I’d love to hear
some of your story. Might you have 30 minutes to spare at a time and
place convenient to you, when I can buy you a cup of coffee and hear more
about your experience….
If possible, get this person via a referral and mention who referred you.
….John said you were just the person I needed to speak with….

26. Brainstorming Rules
Go for quantity, not quality.
Defer judgment and do not censor ideas.
Build off the ideas of others.
Encourage wild ideas.
Desired Brainstorming Outcome: Be able to say something like…”we had 141 ideas, we
groupled those into 6 categories, and based on our focal question, we selected eight
killer ideas to prototype. We then prioritized the list and our first prototype is…..”

27. Brainstorming: Naming and Framing
After brainstorm, count your ideas. Try to group ideas by category.
Frame the results related to the original focal question. Vote silently.
Possible categories:
● Most exciting
● The one we wish we could do if money were no object
● The dark horse - probably won’t work but if it did…
● Most likely to lead to a great life
● If we could ignore the laws of physics….

28. Job Search Tips
● Focus on the computer behind it and reframe your resume using the
EXACT words from the job posting.
● Focus on your resume for the specific job posting, not more general.
● Always bring a new copy of your resume to job interviews - it’s
probably the first time the hiring manager or team has seen it.
● Use the PEOPLE network and hear the stories of people you find
interesting.

29. Life Design Choosing Process

30. Becoming Immune to Failure
Log your failures, categorize them, identify growth insights.

32. Radical Collaboration
● Build a team to walk alongside you as you design your life.
● Share your ideas with them.
● Supporters are go-to people you count on to care about your life.
● Players are the people you do things with, typically co-workers.
● Intimates are close and extended family members and close friends.
● Team rules: 1) Respectful, 2) Confidential, 3) Participative (no
holding back), and 4) Generative (constructive, not skeptical or
judging)

33. Mentors and Giving Counsel vs. Advice
Look for mentors and getting counsel (lots of questions to understand
you, then summarizing what they heard and “did I get that right”,
focused on you, even though they may bring a different perspective)
versus
Getting advice (If I were you…)

34. Beyond Your Team, Build Community
Kindred Purpose (about something not just meeting)
Meets Regularly
Shared Ground (values/points of view)
To Know and Be Known

35. Dysfunctional Belief Reframe
If you are successful, you’ll be happy. Happiness comes from designing a life
that works for you.
It’s too late. It’s never too late to design a life you
love.
I should already know where I am
going.
You can’t know where you are going
until you know where you are.

36. Dysfunctional Belief Reframe
I should know where I am going! I won’t always know where I am going,
but I can always know whether I am
going in the right direction.
Work is not supposed to be enjoyable,
that’s why they call it work.
Enjoyment is a guide to finding the
right work for you.
I’m stuck. I’m never stuck because I can always
generate a lot of ideas.

37. Dysfunctional Belief Reframe
I have to find one right idea. I need a lot of ideas so I can explore any
number of possibilities for my future.
I need to figure out my best possible
life, make a plan, then execute it.
There are multiple great lives (and
plans) within me and I get to choose
which one to build my way forward to
next.
If I comprehensively research the best
data for all aspects of my plan, I’ll be
fine.
II should build prototypes to explore
questions about my alternatives.

38. Dysfunctional Belief Reframe
You should focus on your need to find a
job.
You should focus on the hiring
manager’s need to find the right
person.
My dream job is out there waiting. You design your dream job through a
process of actively seeking and
co-creating it.
Networking is just hustling people, it’s
slimy.
Networking is just asking for directions.

39. Dysfunctional Belief Reframe
I am looking for a job. I am pursuing a number of offers.
To be happy, I have to make the right
choice.
There is no right choice - only good
choosing.
Happiness is having it all. Happiness is letting go of what you
don’t need.

40. Dysfunctional Belief Reframe
We judge our life by the outcome. Life is a process, not an outcome.
Life is a finite game, with winners and
losers.
Life is an infinite game, with no winners
or losers.
It’s my life, I have to design it myself. You live and design your life in
collaboration with others.

41. Dysfunctional Belief Reframe
I finished designing my life; the hard
work is done, and everything will be
great.
You never finish designing your life - life
is a joyous and never-ending design
project of building your way forward.

42. Additional Resources from Workshop Discussion
The Designing Your Life book and the authors’ website with resources.
Dr. Andrew Huberman is the guy that looks at your brain and behaviors and the
research on why we get so focused when we are stressed.
The selective attention video with basketball.
Mel Robbins TED talk about Stop Screwing Yourself Over and using a 5 second rule.

43. Thank you!
Dr. Kristin Palmer
http://www.CentralOregonLifeCoach.com