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- [00:06]
A
What's up yo? Welcome to youo One Life. I'm your host, Kim Young Kim, and I hope you're doing great today. If you're new here, here's what this podcast is all about. This podcast is about teaching you from the greatest minds in the world, assisting you in all aspects of your life and helping you save money on your utility bills by not paying them. What are they going to do? Cut everything off and leave you there to die? That's what I do. What? You can't be serious. Also, who are you and how'd you get into my house? So this episode is a replay from my conversation with Bill Barnett, co author of Designing youg Life and the soon to be released book how to Live a Meaningful Life. I got an online copy from his co author Dave Evans and it's an amazing book and will help you to find meaning, joy, alignment and flow amongst many other things so that you can enjoy your life day in, day out and of course have a meaningful life. I'm so grateful for this book and the impact that it's had on my life and the impact that I know it'll have on the world at large. Now, the game plan was to interview Dave Evans before the book launch on February 3, but things have gotten crazy on his end with the launch and his other responsibilities so he had to reschedule. So I came up with a B plan and decided to re release this episode with a promo for their book so that you'll pick it up and it'll better your life as well. Their website is in the show notes and you can find the links to purchase the book there. Alright, with all that said, here's the original episode. Now today's episode is going to be a bit different from the previous episodes I've done today. What I'll be doing is I'll be chopping up parts of the interview from my conversation with Bill Burnett. And this is just me doing some experimenting, but I would love to know what you think about it. Feel free to reach out to me on Instagram or or my email which will both be in the show notes. All right, so today's episode is with Mr. Bill Burnett, Co author of the New York Times best selling books Designing youg Life and Designing youg New Work Life. He's a professor at Stanford and also the director of the Life Design Lab at Stanford University. Now I personally have purchased 22 copies of this book for friends and family. I believe it's one of the most important books you'll read regarding your Life direction. And that's a hill I'm willing to die on. And here's the deal. There's a very good reason why Bill's TEDx talk has 10 million views. It's because it is life changing and definitely something you should check out after listening to this interview. Alright, so here's the spoken word intro I did for him. Let's go. Mr. Burnett, how are you doing today?
- [03:06]
B
I'm great. How are you?
- [03:07]
A
I'm doing fantastic. I'm super glad to have you on the podcast. I had, you know, Mr. Evans, Dave, on the previous podcast. Now I get you. We're coming full circle and I'm super excited about today's interview.
- [03:20]
B
Okay, well, try not to say the same things Dave said.
- [03:23]
A
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I think you'll, you'll be just fine. All right, so let me go ahead and get you introduced and then we'll get rolling. His last name is Burnett and it's clear he's top billing Gets love and respect cause he's kind and he's brilliant Drops seeds of dreams neath the sewing machine of grams his sketches started small but would reach him many lands eventually and he mentally applied himself to win. And this is where the glory of his story begins. Put roots down in a town and he shot up from the ground with a foundation that was amazing. He was raised Stanford strong. Lots of products that we bought up he put his stamp upon so address them very proper because Luke, he is your father. He designed you in his mind like a vase inside a potter's the cardinal design behind those action figures. And then he used his time to create something bigger. The first touchscreen PC. It was slated as greatness given many jobs from Steve because his work was top rated. Went from producing power books to one day writing them. Filled with great concepts and so much enlightenment of how to find your way to work that you love. And every graduation he's flooded with hugs. A professor, director and advisor to many and he helps take students from arriving to sending so big ups to Wild Bill. Because your legacy lives large and your guidance has helped us to find our own star.
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B
That's great. Thank you.
- [04:53]
A
Yeah, I'm glad you liked it.
- [04:54]
B
I've never had a rap intro before. That's fantastic.
- [04:56]
A
I'm glad you enjoyed it. I'm glad you enjoyed it. Now in this first section, Bill goes over all six of the mindsets of designing your life. And this may be a very different way of thinking than you're used to. If you do not have a background in design. Which is where they get a lot of their ideas from.
- [05:15]
B
Yeah. You know, and it's. It's really the same mindsets. We. I teach a lot of designers how to design stuff, you know, products, services, experiences. That was my main job for a long time. Designers think differently because if you're trying to invent something that's never been done before, you. You gotta think creatively. So the first mindset is curiosity. Be curious about the future. Second mindset is reframing. Just pick, you know, if you're stuck on a problem, change the problem, reframe it, turn it around, put it upside down. Then it's radical collaboration. Because the answer is in the world with people. You're not gonna think it up on the couch, go out and talk to people. Then it's a bias action, which is just, let's get going, because what are we analyzing? Everybody wants to analyze everything. You got no data. It's the future. We're going to just go, go experience it. And then finally, mindful of process, which is just, hey, sometimes you're looking for lots of ideas. So we're diverging. Sometimes we're zooming in and we're going to prototype something. That means we're converging. So, you know, don't. Don't get your brain going in two directions at the same time. We actually added another. Another mindset. The sixth one is storytelling, because you got to be a. You know, a good designer is a good storyteller because you're telling the story of a future with a new product or a new you in it. You got to be a good storyteller. And then that brings more people into your radical collaboration, which gets more curious, which gets the whole thing going.
- [06:32]
A
All right, so the six mindsets were curiosity, reframing, radical collaboration, bias to action, being mindful of the process, and storytelling. And I'm glad they added storytelling, because every time I tell people about that one time that I was mistaken for Fabio at Big Lots, everyone gets curious about me. They all want to collaborate with me and swab the inside of my cheek for a DNA sample. Okay, so in this next section, Bill breaks down what reframing is and why it's so important.
- [07:10]
B
Wow. You know, actually I'm teaching the. The class for my MBA, PhD and Master's students called Designing the Professional. A little bit of a tweak on the Designing youg Life class. Right now in this quarter, Stanford, we just did the reframing class or session. So the power tool in design or design thinking, and in designing your Life is everybody's trying to solve problems. So problem solving, you know, lots of different techniques for problem solving. There's all these books on how to hack your brain or hack your know your way to success. That's all problem solving. But problem finding, like working on the right problem, is actually more important because there's a famous Biscal professor who said there's nothing quite so foolish as doing something very, very well that never needed to be done in the first place. Peter Drucker. And he was like, a lot of times when I'm advising companies or I'm advising people, they're stuck on a problem, it's the wrong problem. It's not really about getting promoted at work. It's just about having more influence. It's not really about owning a boat or a house or something. It's just about having some security. So if you can flip the problem around and get to. Typically you either abstract it by going up a level or you dive in and go down to what's the root problem. That's what we call reframing, picking a better problem. Because problem finding is actually more powerful in the innovation process, innovating your life than problem solving. I'm sure most of the people watching this or people who follow you, they're smart people, they got all sorts of problem solving techniques. They're just working on the wrong thing.
- [08:43]
A
Now you probably have worked on the wrong thing before. Maybe you spent a bunch of time making your house look spotless for your soon to be mother in law when she came to visit and it turned out she was blind. And what you could have done is you could have saved a bunch of time by spraying something that smelled nice. And also probably listening to your partner when they talk about their family and other things that are important to them. Now Bill goes on to talk about how to find the right problem to work on and how you know you have a good reframe.
- [09:15]
B
So the reframing is like, all right, like I said, you got a problem, you're thinking about one way, you're thinking about a different way. And the test is, does that give you more options? Does that open up more options for things to try? Does that open more frequently? Freedom. The goal of reframing is freedom. I'm not stuck on a problem anymore. Now I'm moving forward again. I used to be stuck and now I'm unstuck. So the goal is freedom. And the way you know you've got a juicy reframe is, hey, this is coming up with lots of things to try, lots of people to talk to, lots of little experiments. We call them prototypes, to run to see if this is the right direction. Sometimes every frame, you know, and you do the reframe, and you're still stuck. So it's like, okay, well, this is. There's lots of ways to look at the problem. This one isn't any better than the one I'm stuck on. Let me try a different way to do it.
- [10:04]
A
Yep, that's what it's all about. It's all about freedom, and it's about more options. I read something really wise in a book one time that said, if I have an hour to solve a problem, I spend 55 minutes defining what my problem is and 5 minutes trying to solve it. Now, I did this recently, and it turns out that I'm the problem, and the solution is more cowbell. Now, in this next section, Bill talks about how they problem solve a reframe in class, live and direct. And this shows the importance of radical collaboration and why it's important to brainstorm with and share your ideas with others.
- [10:48]
B
We do an exercise in class where people pick up a real problem they're working on. They put it up in the board like an idea board, and then people come by and they brainstorm solutions for them. And in the first round, we say, who got some? Who got good solutions? And most people didn't. They said, well, why? Well, the answer is too obvious or the answers were too general. They didn't understand my context. So we have them just reframe that same question a different way, do it again. They get better answers. The third time, they've actually come up with something that's a root, fundamental idea, and they've put it in a framework, they've expressed it in a way where people are giving them really good ideas. So that's how you know you've got a good reframe, is that you and other people are going, oh, I know a dozen ways to solve that problem, or at least a dozen ways to take a. Take an approach to that problem that might yield some new ideas. Because the whole goal is to not get stuck. I mean, we get stuck on our lives all the time, and it's just. It feels bad when we're stuck because, you know, I mean, you. You're. You're an enlightened guy. You're doing these podcasts, but I bet you got a friend you go, you know, have coffee with, and they're like, they're always stuck. They're always complaining about something. They're Stuck. And they don't like their roommate, they don't like their condo association, they don't like their boss, they don't like their job. They don't like the guy down the street who plays his music too loud. Whatever. They got a lot of problems, but they're not doing anything. So designers get stuff done, get out in the world and do stuff. And when you're stuck, you got to reframe.
- [12:12]
A
Okay, so I'll go ahead and admit that there's a guy down the street who doesn't like me because I play my music too loud. But in my defense, it's not my music, it's my podcast. And also, if you're still asleep at 5am in the morning, maybe you need a podcast like mine to challenge you to do better in life. I call it Morning Motivation for the Masses. But real talk, when you have a lot of solutions or at least ideas for your problem, then you've done a decent job on your reframe. This next section is about your work view and your life view. And basically what that means is what do you think work is for? What do you think life is all about? And you write out a bunch of stuff to help you process what that means. I did this for myself, and I decided what work is all about is making money, and what life is all about is not getting incarcerated.
- [13:11]
B
Dave and I teach at Stanford. We're not allowed to just make stuff up. It's a research university, so there's got to be some piece of research behind this. But there's a lot of research, particularly from the positive psychologist Martin Seligman and others, Dan Gilbert and others, where we're trying to get to is what we call a coherent life where, like, what I think the big picture is and what I do for a living, like, what's my life view? The big picture, and inside that, what's my. My work view? What's the job all about? So good life with a good job in it, not the other way around. You can't start from the job out. Good life, good job in it. And when those things are coherent, they talk to each other. Those two ideas make sense to each other. And there's a. The third piece of that little triangle is what's your story? I mean, you grew up with some story. Everybody has a story. I grew up, you know, I work hard, you know, get good grades, go to a good school, and all will be well. Not true, but that's the story I grew up with. So everybody's got a story. They grew up with. Then they've got their own view of life, their own view of work. And when those three things fit together, we say you have a. When you have a compass for the way forward. So now you don't have to know exactly where you're going, but you got to know you're going in the right direction right now.
- [14:19]
A
I experienced this not long ago. There was actually a big name person that was down to be on my podcast. Not quite a household name, but someone that a lot of people know. But as I started going through the content that they put out, I found some stuff that I really didn't like and I found pretty egregious. And I decided I had to bypass having them on, even though having them on would be very helpful to my podcast. I decided I have too much of a problem with what they put out in the world, and I just couldn't do it. Now, moving on, Bill continues on with this topic, and he states, it's all about your work view and your life
- [15:00]
B
view and how's it fitting into this thing. You know, how do I have a good life with a good job in it? And so that's what the life you work for you thing gets you started. It starts on that path. Okay, this seems pretty coherent, at least for now. I can make it better as I learn more about myself and. But I have, I have a direction. And if something comes up and, you know, a job opportunity and a life opportunity, I can kind of measure it against this compass and go, no, that doesn't make any sense at all. That's a complete left turn or. Yeah, I should explore that a little. That might be a good thing. I think it's going in the direction I want to go.
- [15:38]
A
All right, so here's how this could play out in real life. Maybe you get an opportunity to. To go work for McDonald's Corporation, which might not jive with your life view and your work view, but then you find out you're going to help change their chicken nuggets to be made of actual meat versus whatever the heck's in those things right now. Now, that might be an opportunity that you're interested in, because now it's not about making money. It's about saving lives. All right, in this section, Bill talks about positive psychology and an exercise from the book where you track good things that happen in your life over the course of a few weeks. It's called the Good Time Journal. And it's a powerful exercise for you to see what you enjoy, what gives you life and what invigorates you?
- [16:28]
B
Yeah. And so, you know, like I said, all this stuff is based on research. One of the very, very first things, you know, when Martin Seligman kind of started the movement of positive psychology. Let's study how healthy people get better and thrive rather than people with psychosis or neurosis or something. One of the first things they did was they. And they were kind of called the happiness guys. And they didn't like that because it wasn't just happiness. But. But they said, you know what. What makes people experience their life, their day, their week, whatever, in a more positive way. And it turns out whatever you pay attention to kind of sets your mood. You pay attention to all the bad stuff that happens in your life, then you kind of have a negative attitude. But if you. At the end of the day, they called it a gratitude journal. You journal about, hey, what were the things I was grateful for today? Then six to eight weeks later, they would do a bunch of assessments and you would have a more positive outlook. Why? Because your brain was paying attention to the good stuff, not the bad stuff. We made it even easier. We said, it's a good time. Journal list one good thing that happened today. I don't know about you. I've never gotten into a journaling practice in terms of writing a long essay at the end of every day or even a long paragraph. But I can write one or two words down. Barista smiled at me. At the Coho, a student came to office hours and was really know had done a great job on the assignment. I'm really grateful. So, you know, the gratefulness thing, gratitude thing, or the. Or just finding the good thing. And we do another one in the second book called the Good Work Journal, where we look at autonomy, competence, and relatedness. That's sort of motivational, intrinsic motivations, like, who did you help today? What did you initiate today? What did you get better at today? Any of those things? Just noticing the positive means that you're paying attention to things that are inherently going to kind of change your brain chemistry, change your body chemistry to be a more positive thing. It was one of the first findings of positive psychology that literally we know that we know this from general psychological research, is that we don't really have the ability to pay attention to everything. So we just pay attention to what we're looking for. Psychologists will say, you don't see what you're looking at, you just see what you're looking for. And when you change your attention to be looking for positives and gratitudes, More often you change your mind, change the way. So it's pretty straightforward and it works.
- [18:49]
A
So here's what's in my Good Time Journal for the past few weeks. Arm wrestling an eight year old, working on my pectorals and watching a documentary on Nickelback. But in all seriousness, I love writing jokes, I love thinking about funny things to say in a situation. I love connecting people who are on a similar mission with each other. Those are things that are all in my Goodtime Journal. And I strongly recommend that you do this exercise. It's super helpful. Illuminating things that you should be doing more regularly and also helping you to design your life. In this section, Bill talks about what to do with your Good Time Journal to make the most of it.
- [19:32]
B
So once you get in the habit of sort of noticing what's going well, then another thing that we do, which is kind of the big dog assignment in the book and in the class is what we call it, the Odysseys. Three completely different versions of your life. Well, a lot of times I say, hey, three completely different versions of your life. People go, well, I don't even, you know, I don't even know what I like. Well, let's go back to the Good Time Journal. Now we've got a whole list of things that are positive. So normally we say, here's the template for the three lives. Whatever you're doing now goes great, five years goes great, personal stuff, professional stuff, bucket list stuff. Then you rate it on a dashboard. And then the second one is, okay, that's gone. AI. You know, there are no more podcasts. All the podcasts are being built by AIs. So plan B, what's your plan B? And then plan C. The third plan is typically, what would you do if you didn't care about money? You got plenty and you got enough. And what would you do if you didn't care what your friends said? Like, oh, you, you know, that's a crazy idea. You can't do that. So assume, assuming positive social support and you don't have to worry about money. What would you really want to do with your life? And it's not that these things are you. You pick one option, but you just, you use the Good Time Journal, you use like the energy map and other things to kind of inform yourself about what do you like? And then as you come up with three completely different lives, you start to notice, wow, there's something in common in all these lives. Or there's something really unique about the thing I would do if I didn't have to care about money and status. And those things inform what you want to try next. Again, you're not going to jump into one plant or the other because it's just a 30 minute exercise. But it tends to bring stuff up, particularly the wild card plan. Because when you don't have to worry about constraints, then you go back to, well, when I was a kid, I always wanted to be an astronaut. I wanted to be a test pilot, I wanted to be a singer, I wanted to be a whatever. And it, it starts to reawaken your curiosity. So curiosity plus good time journals plus energy mapping or balance mapping gives you information to start planning, you know, three completely different lives. Always three, not two. You never wanted them. False binaries, either A or B, A or B. Always bad decision making. When you only have two choices, they have three. And then you get curious about, wow, just think about the oceans. Keeps coming up. And when I got, I got dive certified, another one, I become a marine biologist. And then the other one, I adopt otters for the Monterey Aquarium. How come the sea keeps showing up, huh? I'm curious. Let me dig into that a little more. Because there's so much information in our unconscious thinking, but we just get in a groove and we just keep doing the same thing over and over again. So this is a chance to bust out of that groove.
- [22:15]
A
So your odyssey plan is three different lives, and at least one of those three plans has to be crazy with no regard for social approval or money. And if you still find yourself dreaming of becoming an influencer without regard to either of these, betterhelp is here for you. All right, so in this next section, Bill talks about putting designing your life into in just a few words, and also tapping into your inner curiosity and your inner child.
- [22:47]
B
Once Dave and I were on a TV station and we're supposed to do an interview like Canada, Good morning Canada or something. And somehow or other our segment got cut from 10 minutes to two minutes and you got to do your thing in two minutes. When you're like, we're professors, we can't do anything in two minutes. Well, either two minutes or off. So we went, we came up with Designing a life in 10 words. 10 words. Ready? I think it's 10 or 11 words. Get curious, talk to people, try stuff, tell your story, take your curiosity for a walk, get curious, talk to people, try stuff, tell your story. And it's decided. It's a cycle, so you ought to be able to make some kind of a rapper or something out of that. But I love the expression, like Take your curiosity for a walk, man. See what shows up. I mean, doesn't it seem to you when you talk to some people that they're kind of sleepwalking, you know, it's hard. Life is hard. I got to get to the job, I got to pay the mortgage, I got to get the kids, you know, off to school, whatever it is. And I get it, it's just, it's not easy for me either, either. But man, if you just wake up a little, I'm not talking, you know, enlightenment, sitting on a rock for 40 days or something, just, just like get a little curious. Well, I tell you, I got, I got a new grandson, Connor, who's 4 years old. He's 4 years old, turn 4 March 1st. I'm going to be 4 in March. He says, grandpa. I said, that's great. He's a curious little, I mean, hang out with four year olds. You were once a four year old and you were as curious as could be. I mean, walk down the street, it's like, grandpa, look. And he chops to the ground, it's an ant. And we watched the ant for a while. Grandpa, walk a little bit more. Grandma, look, it's a worm. Oh, it's a worm. Grandma, look, it's a ladybug. And everything in his world is brand new and exciting. And I love that. I mean, I think I'm a curious guy, but when I spend time with my 4 year old grandson, Connor, I realized, wow, my curiosity, they've shaved the edges off of my curiosity a lot. His is like wide open. The world is so cool. And you know what? It is. So let's back to that four year old.
- [25:02]
A
All right, so get curious, take your curiosity for a walk and go back to your four year old self, which for me was doing interpretive dances of the Communist Manifesto. You'd be surprised how well you can represent the proletariat through your bodily motions and the bourgeoisie through your bodily functions. Now, I will say that the world is very cool and you very well may need to snap out of sleepwalking yourself. I know I need a splash of cool water on a regular basis. Now, in this session, Bill talks about how to have prototype conversations, also known as informational interviews. And he also talks about how to do prototype experiences and in real life,
- [25:51]
B
information interview, or we call a prototype conversation because it's not really an interview. You're not, you're not interviewing for anything. But let's say, let's say you're listening to this podcast and you go, you Know what I'm really curious? What is it. What's it take to do a podcast? Or what would it take to have my own YouTube channel or my own TikTok channel? Huh? And rather than quitting a job and buying a bunch of equipment and starting opening a studio and then hoping you can find people to look at, listen to what you do, you say, wait a minute, let me. Before I go all in, let's lower the risk. I'm going to try some informational interviews, prototype conversations. I'm going to call up Kim Young and say, hey, could you give me 30 minutes of your time? I'll even buy a cup of coffee. Or virtually, I'll buy you a virtual cup of go. I'll send you a Starbucks certificate. Can we chat? How'd you get started? What, what's this thing and all? I. I'm not asking for, not asking for money. I'm not asking for a job. I'm just asking for your story. How you, how did you get to do this cool thing? I had, you know, we had a friend who's a friend of a friend in the book, and she really loved Italy and Italian food and stuff, and her dream was to have an Italian deli and, and she actually opened an Italian deli and searched all the food and that was really fun. And then six months later, we asked her, how's it going? She says, it's really boring. All I'm really doing is buying the same stuff over and over again. And I'm filling in for. I've got these workers, they don't show up for work sometime. I have to. It's really boring. I said, well, the idea of an Italian deli was fun. The actual running one is kind of a pain in the neck. Says, right? You could have totally prototyped that. You could have just hung out with a friend who was a caterer. You could have hung out with a friend who had a little shop and find out that the day to day is really boring. So two things happen in a prototype, conversation, information, interview. Either you go, wow, that story is really cool. Maybe I want to pursue this a little more because it's like time travel. Like you're me in the future already doing podcasts with a big. I looked at the. At your site a lot, a lot of stuff, you know, already in the can. So I can time travel. Imagine what it's like to be you and then think, would that fit me if I were in your situation and I could time travel into the future of. I own this little Italian Deli. It's got great food and everything else, but the actual running of it day to day is boring as crap. Either way, I learned something other something. And all you're asking for people to do is give you a little help, give you a little guidance. Just asking for directions. Hey, I'm new in podcast land. How does this thing run? Hey, I'm new in the in running a shop or a deli or a thing. Can someone give me directions? And people love to tell their story.
- [28:35]
A
Prototype conversations is the most helpful practice, according to Dave Evans, the other author of the book. And Hands On Experience is super helpful too. Interested in becoming a private investigator? How do you prototype this? Maybe you dig through your neighbor's trash and follow them around in your car all day. Boom. You're welcome. Now, Bill states that you can have a prototype conversation anywhere just by being outgoing and also thinking about yourself as a lucky person. And I've actually done this. I've struck up conversations with comics at comedy clubs. I met the lead singer of the Strombellas at a car rental place. And through those conversations, I learned a lot in a very short time of what their life is actually like and how I actually didn't want to either one of their lifestyles.
- [29:30]
B
In one of my lectures on luck, because it's good to be lucky. And there's this guy, Richard Weissman, a professor in the uk, who studied luck. And one of the things is that thing over. You're standing in line in the Starbucks and strike up a conversation with the guy in front of you, and 40 minutes later you've had this phenomenal prototype conversation or information interview. And you know, 30 minutes in he's like, you know, we've got some openings at my company. Are you interested in blah, blah, blah. You know, we're doing an open mic night for standups. You want to come with me and I'll sponsor you. Like, get in that conversation with random strangers and good stuff often happens.
- [30:14]
A
Now, one of the big things in the book is the idea of keeping a positive mindset. And they literally have a chapter called Choose Happiness. And this is Bill talking about choosing happiness, about controlling your mindset and about just being positive in general.
- [30:33]
B
One of the ideas in the books and stuff in the class is, look, it's about controlling your mindset. And, you know, lots of people talk about this. If you pay attention to things that make you happy, you'll be happier. You pay attention to opportunities to come by. If you just are, your peripheral vision is a little wider and you notice Things that are coming by, hey, what you can improve your chance of some, quote, lucky occurrence, you know, being recognized and then acting acted on. So it's all about controlling your mindset. And it's not. And look, design starts in reality. Cold, hard reality. Where are you today? You know, you need a job. You need a job. You got laid off. You got laid off. We're not talking about some, you know, magical manifesting the future, but just by thinking about it, we're talking about how do you, how do you actually make actionable change in your day to day, you know, thinking, setting the bar really low in order to, you know, make changes that are positive. And, and there's a lot of good psychology around behavior change. There's a lot of good psychology around how your mindset affects your, your health. Right? And there's a lot of good, you know, good, good research around. So the basic way in which if you can perceive the world a certain way, then you have an advantage. Now it's also true, you know, like, forget psychology tests and personality tests. I'll just do something simple. In the world of Winnie the Pooh, there's Pooh Piglet, Eeyore and Tigger, who's kind of a happy guy, but he's a little lost. Piglet is a very anxious person, always worried. Tigger is the happiest guy on the planet, bouncing around all the time. And Eeyore is the depressed. You know, everything is wrong. I know some of yours, I know some piglets. Dave, by the way, is absolutely a tigger. Dave Evans. He's always bouncing, all the time, bouncing up and down. And I think what psychologists would say is, you know, using the right tech, right positive psychology techniques, you can make a little happier, Eeyore, a little less anxious Piglet, and a little more purposeful. Poo Tiggers are off the charts anyway, so you can't, you know, they just get happier. It doesn't mean that, you know, that if you're sort of an Eeyore kind of person or if you're kind of an anxious person, that suddenly you become a Tigger and you're happy and you're just bouncing around. No, I mean, you're wired the way you're wired, and it's okay. You know, everybody's a little different. We need all those people that make a good story, right? So just work on what you got. Be practical. But, you know, follow the research and think about it as a design problem, because design is inherently fun. Coming up with new stuff is always fun, always fun.
- [33:20]
A
This actually reminds me of a documentary about happiness called Happy, where they talk about how 50% of your happiness is genetic and 50% of your happiness is within your control in the way you live your life. And based on how many Fast and Furious movies you've seen. Now, one of the big things that Bill wanted to communicate is that he and Dave don't claim to have all the answers at all. They claim they've created a process that's helpful so that you can figure it out for yourself.
- [33:52]
B
Remember the premise. People are weird. They're all different, different motivations. That's why in the book we say, look, I'm not going to be in the end of this book. I'm not the designer of your life. You're the designer. I'm empowering you with the tools to be your own designer. Because I don't know what you should do. I don't have any idea what you should do. The first rule of the class is we do not should on the students. No should.
- [34:16]
A
And as I start to land this plane, the way they do this is through interpreting the design process to designing our own lives.
- [34:26]
B
You know, a lot of ways to the top of the mountain. Whatever gets you there is fine. I just step into, you know, I'm a designer, Dave and I like creativity and design. It's the way we think about problems and we think it's useful for people, particularly because it takes the edge off of it. It's not that hard to, you know, to come up with a mind map. It's not that hard to come up with. You know, I work for you in the life few. It's 500 words and yet those little tiny things, little tiny changes can have big impacts.
- [35:00]
A
All right, so this is the part where I freestyle rap and I start to close down the interview. Speaking of big impact, you've had a big impact on the world. And I appreciate all the work that you have done, all the work that you and Dave have done collectively, and just the. The guidance that you have provided. So good deal. So what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna end this, this interview with a little bit of freestyle rapping. All right, here we go. Here we go. You should be able to hear this. Here we go. All right, microphone check. I'm talking Bill Burnett. I'm talking about a person that was curious, like a four year old. He would just hold a rock and wonder where it came from. You're talking about a grandson that just goes and explores for sure. And I'm coming straight through and you gotta look for more. Why are you framing by being curious? And that's what I'm saying. Coming out the top. Words that I drop when I'm brainstorming a whole bunch of ideas. And that's what I'm saying with Odyssey Plan, you gotta be that man or that woman looking at three lives and see what's cooking. Maybe you'll see things that just repeat. And that's what I'm saying. Days of the week, you got to come through with information from the people and ask them the story. That's what I'm saying. You just want more of that right there. And just straight share your ideas with the others. And that's what I'm saying. It's life you discover when you just go out there and just straight go. All the exercises. Yo, you'll be arriving to good places. And that's how we lace it. Spit off the top. Yeah. With just greatness. You could just find with your North Star, with your compass. And that's how we run it. Coming off the top. And that's how I go. Life design right there. Up in the flow. All right.
- [36:54]
B
Life design up in flow. Yeah, it's all about flow.
- [36:58]
A
It's all about. Oh, we didn't even get to speak about the flow state.
- [37:01]
B
And that's great. You got it in there. You got in there in the rap,
- [37:05]
A
all that gets done stuff. All right, very good. Well, I am going to ask you two questions because I have a little more time. Number one, who is someone that you have been influenced by, that you feel like others should learn from? Someone universal, like Seneca, Ben Franklin, someone along those lines that you're just like, why do people not know more about this person's ideas?
- [37:28]
B
I'll give you two people. One's really close to me instead of my mentor at Stanford, a guy named Bernie Roth. And he wrote the book called the Achievement Habit, among other things. In that book, he claims credit for my marriage, which is true.
- [37:38]
A
Nice.
- [37:40]
B
That's probably more well known, is Alan Watts. I ran across Alan Watts book when I was 16, and it blew my mind. And I realized, oh, wait a minute, there's more to this religion, spirituality thing than I've been told. Because I was just told, you know, one thing, the Christian version. So Alan Watts, and he did a lot of recording back in the 60s and 70s. So there's a lot of his stuff out there. And his son, Mark Watts, has got a whole channel of his stuff. That's the place I go.
- [38:06]
A
Yeah, that's great. Yeah, Alan Watts is wonderful. He's speaking of. Which helped me expand my mind and have ideas of what could be possible. All right, and my final question for you is how can people connect with you or the Designing youg Life entity online?
- [38:27]
B
Yeah. Designing your dot life. Designing your dot life is the URL www.designingyour.life and that. That's. That'll get you to the website. That'll get you information. We're always blogging, we're always posting stuff. It'll also give you if you want to download all of the. All of the. The worksheets from the book. You know, they're all there from both books. That's where we'll be previewing stuff because we're working on a third book just finished about halfway through. So that one will come out probably in early 2026, next year, about a year from now. So, yeah, that would be where I would go to find out more about us. And then for. And Stanford, the Stanford Lab also has a website where we are mostly talking to other academics and people like that.
- [39:09]
A
Okay, wonderful. Can I ask what this book is going to be about or is that kind of a top secret thing?
- [39:15]
B
No, it's not top secret. It's just. We're still working on it. But basically, if you zoom back from Designing your life, which was about, hey, how can you design your life? Well, what about designing our lives together? What about communities? What about spirituality? What about is. There's this, you know, a lot of the life views have this thing called God in them. And Dave is a. My partner. Dave is actually a pretty big thinker in the Christian community. He says he really loves Jesus. And I'm an atheist. I really love Nietzsche.
- [39:41]
A
Right.
- [39:41]
B
So we're going to write a book on how do people with really different worldviews in this world where everybody wants to argue about identity actually find so much common ground. So it's about spirituality, identity, community. And we look, you know, looking around and talking to people, it's like there's a loneliness thing happening. There's a lack of forming, you know, friendships and communities happening. And we think there's lots of design opportunities to help people with that. So that's what it's going to be about.
- [40:09]
A
Absolutely. Well, thank you so much for that upcoming book. I'm sure it's going to impact a lot of people and just keep on doing all the great work that you're doing.
- [40:17]
B
Okay. You too. All right. Thanks for the interview.
- [40:19]
A
Have a good day. All right, so that's the episode. I hope you learned a lot from it. I hope you enjoyed it and I hope you apply these ideas to your life. And also make sure to pick up a copy of Designing youg Life. It is an absolute game changer. Now, if you're new here, make sure to hit that follow button so you don't miss future episodes. And if you've been listening, please rate and review the podcast and Apple Podcasts. Rate it and Spotify and leave a comment on this episode. And of course I love hearing from y'. All. Reach out to me via instagram at your One Life podcast or via email at your1lifepodcastmail.com and I'll make sure to tag both of those in the show notes. Now here's a review that was left on Apple Podcasts titled Refreshing Content. This guy makes my day. I don't usually laugh and learn from the same podcast. It's a much more relaxed approach to self betterment. It's something light and fun to pull us out of the seriousness we tend to force ourselves into when it comes to pursuing our goals. That's from mystery kid911. I appreciate you mystery kid911. I'm glad you enjoyed the podcast and if you write a review for this podcast, your review might be read aloud on the next episode. Again, shout out to Bill Burnett and Dave Evans for their amazing book how to Live a Meaningful Life. Check out the book via the link in the show notes and also their other books. All right, so that's all I got for now. This is your One Life. I'm Kim Young. Kim, I hope you have a great day, a great week, and until next time, peace.