5 steps to designing the life you want | Bill Burnett | TEDxStanford

> But who is “your” company and how do we pick the “niche”? Turns out, this is a common problem. Friendly Challenge: imagine 3 very different future niches for your team. Leveraging your interests, experience/expertise. Mix in the Clients you'll serve, Products you build, and Problems you solve. Each version would have a 5 year plan. Start a discussion -- which one energizes your team? More on this subject by the authors of Design Your Life > ▶ this video Highly recommend their book! PM me if you want to discuss.

This might sound cheesy, but first of all: Know yourself. - What are your values? - What do you stand for? - What do you want in work and life? A design thinking approach, how to find a meaning in your work (and life) is through a simple 3 step process, provided by Burnett and Evans (link or ▶ this video): 1. Get curious 2. Talk to people 3. Try stuff Simple as that... Nevertheless, I think that work defines us and it becomes our identity (e.g. Joseph the Carpenter, Bob the Builder), but at the same time there is so much more in you than just work. From what you are writing, I could identify what you don’t stand for and don’t want :-) this realization is a good starting point. However, now is the time to get curious, observe, reflect and start choosing your battles wisely, because you might wake up one day and realize that all you have been doing is wasting your time and energy on fights you didn’t actually care about that much… And this is precisely why it helps to know yourself, know your values, what you stand for, your talents and strengths, and maybe even your vision or dreams of how would you like to live in the future, and how would you like the world to look like in the future… Knowing this, I think, would allow you to focus your energy on something that is meaningful for you. Because meaning exists only in your head. So whatever we do, whatever happens in the world or the universe is meaningless per se. The meaning is interpretative. You create and give meaning to whatever you do, or whatever happens to you or in the world. > but I want to know I'm doing something for a good purpose. I think, you can never know in advance whether the purpose turns out to be “good” or “bad”, here is a little illustration of that :-) link