Book Review - Designing Your Life
The Founder of Inspire Leadership & focuses on unlocking people’s potential by providing them with programs; mentorship and coaching into high performance
Designing Your Life: How to Build a Well-Lived, Joyful Life
Book by Bill Burnett and Dave Evans
In Designing Your Life, Silicon Valley design innovators Bill Burnett and Dave Evans use their expertise to help you work out what you want in life and how to get it. They show us how design thinking can be used to create a life that is both meaningful and fulfilling. The book guides us to create a fulfilling life regardless of who or where we are, what we do or have done for a living, or how young and old we are. Ideally, the book is using the same design thinking responsible for amazing technology, products, and spaces to transform our lives especially in designing and building our career and life. The results will be a life of fulfillment and joy, a life that is constantly creative and productive, one that always holds the possibility of surprises. The book is worth reading, at least for the concrete advice on how to evaluate different aspects of your life, and how to analyze your levels of engagement. Tons of exercises can help us see the patterns that are helpful to keep in mind as we consider the next steps in our life. The book emphasizes the need to develop passions, rather than attempting to "find" them. The authors provide us with advice on how to accept what we can't change, avoiding so-called “gravity problems”, which, by their very nature, cannot be changed. They go ahead to advise on the areas that give life a meaning.
To give our lives a meaning, the book identifies four critical areas of our lives that we need to assess before we can embark on our journey and which we should endeavor to have a balance: Health: physical, emotional, mental; Work: doesn’t matter whether paid or volunteer; Play: the things we do for fun and Love: which includes the things we love
Another balance we should pay a lot of attention to is the one between our work view and our life view, that is our philosophy of what the phrases "good job" and "good life" mean.
Key takeaways for me from the book is that as we try to get to where we want to be in life, we must know where we are now, what matters to us, and what gives us energy and sense of engagement. Based on this knowledge and especially for the four dimensions of life, that is work, play, love, and health, we can create the vision that should be able to guide us towards our North Star. There is a need to defer judgment and instead, we create multiple ideas now. This may require that we involve other people in our support system to make a collaborative endeavor, including crazy ones. We need to get our hands dirty by trying things in reality. The word is to prototype! This will help us to figure out what works and what does not work. In the end, the book suggests that we need to be curious, try stuff, always try to reframe problems, understanding that success is a process and always ask for help.
You will need to read this book if you can answer one or more of the following questions in affirmative
1. Are you looking for a job that you like or maybe even love?
2. Do you generally feel that life is pretty good, but could be even better?
3. Are you in some kind of transition?
4. Do you wonder how you can have a balanced life?
5. Are you considering a career change and don't know where to start?
6. Do you feel stuck?
Get Updates Daily
Client's Testimonials
"Working as a trainee in the Danish International Investment Funds, I had the pleasure to work with Edward Mungai. Edward is respected for his dedication to his work and often stay after hours to complete his tasks ahead of time."
Mathias Gredal Nørvig
CEO of SYBO
""Edward is a charismatic expert speaker and a thought-leader on addressing climate change.""
Asher Lessels
Task Manager at UN Environment
"Edward is very forward thinking. He is a great person with a big heart who strives to conserve the environment. Edward is passionate about educating and informing people about climate action relating to renewable energy, environmental conservation, corporate reporting standards, sustainability, etc. Kenya will greatly benefit from your skills."
Samuel Muchangi
Entrepreneur
"Edward is a very tough, visionary leader who brings out the best in those he works with as well as those he mentors."
Nyawira Gitaka
Blog for Development 2017 finalist, World Bank Group
"Edward, thank you for preparing such an engaging and relatable presentation. You’re very comfortable in front of an audience, good on your feet, and knowledgeable. Your talents really shined! I’m sure that the audience was wowed and that new clients will roll in. Looking forward to many more collaborative interactions! "
Paul Acher
CEO Jade Communications
""Edward captured the attention of everyone in the room. His energy and absolute conviction in what he was sharing made everyone take notice. There were copious notes being taken throughout his talk! Ed challenged me to think bigger about what I am capable of accomplishing. He inspired me to reach for greatness and not settle for mediocrity. We can hardly wait to have him back sometime in the future!" "
Pius Nganga
CEO Capital Strategies Limited
"I had the absolute pleasure of recommending and contracting Edward to present to our congregation. Edward was punctual, easy to communicate with and his amazing energy resulted in the following responses from the congregation: Over 90% rated Edward and his presentation as 'Absolutely Fantastic', with the remaining rating him as 'Great'. When asked about what key learnings the congregation had taken from the conference, the following referred to Edward: • How important a positive attitude to life is important & not to let other people's negativity impact on you • Ignoring the naysayers • The need for work, life balance • Be thankful for your health and look after yourself • Surround yourself with people that make you happy and positive • Spirituality is key to success and how to relate with your networks • The importance of making a real difference in our life I would have no hesitation in recommending or contracting Edward for future events and I can't wait to work with him again. "
Rev. Dr. Johnson Kĩriakũ wa Kĩnyua, PhD
Senior Paster, Church of Amazing Grace International (C.A.G.I)
"Thank you for delivering a powerful message to our CEO Apprenticeship Programme Thought Leadership Session. The leaders had nothing but positive comments about your presentation, and left feeling ready to take action, and ‘owning’ that engagement starts with them. Your message was practical and logical, yet highly engaging. You delivered it in a way that the audience could easily connect and relate to you. Our event couldn’t have been a success without you!” "
Stephen Mukasa
Country Director, Uganda, Strathmore University Business School
"Edward message is entertaining, high energy, engaging, motivational, thought provoking, and behavior changing. His powerful message is delivered with humor but sprinkled with real life example as well as some science. His presentation will be a highlight of any meeting. People will be talking about his message for years to come."
Jennifer Githinji
CEO, Africa instore
Our Clients
