65 Amazing Quotes from Designing your life by Bill Burnett
Designing your life by Bill Burnett can be very helpful for job seekers.It can save you a lot of disappointment and frustration that comes with job seeking process.Mainly this book is about decision making.It teaches you how to make good decisions in life.Good decision making skill is extremely valuable in life because our life is sum of choices or decisions we make.I think everyone should read this book.I found a lot of new and fresh ideas that i did not read in other self help books.
Here are the quotes:
''Three-quarters
of all college grads don’t end up working in a career related to their majors.''
― Bill Burnett, Designing Your Life: How to Build a Well-Lived, Joyful Life
''Dysfunctional
Belief: If
you are successful, you will be happy.
Reframe:True
happiness comes from designing a life that works for you.''
― Bill Burnett, Designing Your Life: How to Build a Well-Lived, Joyful Life
''It’s never too late to design a life you love.''
― Bill Burnett, Designing Your Life: How to Build a Well-Lived, Joyful Life
''your
life can’t be perfectly planned, that there isn’t just one solution to your
life, and that’s a good thing. There are many designs for your life, all filled
with hope.''
''Nobody
really knows what he or she wants to be... What people need is a process—a
design process—for figuring out what they want, whom they want to grow into,
and how to create a life they love.''
''Work
can be a daily source of enormous joy and meaning, or it can be an endless
grind and waste of hours spent trying to white-knuckle our way through the
misery of it all until the weekend comes.''
''You
don’t need to know your passion in order to design a life you love. Once you
know how to prototype your way forward, you are on the path to discovering the
things you truly love, passion or not.''
''A
well-designed life is a marvelous portfolio of experiences, of adventures, of
failures that taught you important lessons, of hardships that made you stronger
and helped you know yourself better, and of achievements and satisfactions.
It’s worth emphasizing that failures and hardships are a part of every life,
even the well-designed ones.''
''It’s
actually not always so easy to understand what our problems are. Sometimes we
think we need a new job or a new boss, but often we don’t really know what’s
working and what’s not in our lives….Deciding which problems to work on may be
one of the most important decisions you make, because people can lose years (or
a lifetime) working on the wrong problem.''
‘’People
waste a lot of time working on the wrong problem. If they are lucky, they will
fail miserably quickly and get forced by circumstance into working on better
problems. If they are unlucky and smart, they’ll succeed—we call it the success
disaster—and wake up ten years later wondering how the hell they got to
wherever they are, and why they are so unhappy.’’
‘’Don’t
for a minute reduce work only to that which you get paid for. Most people have
more than one form of work at a time.’’
― Bill Burnett, Designing Your Life: How to Build a Well-Lived, Joyful Life
''You
can’t know where you are going until you know where you are.''
''As
you begin to think like a designer, remember one important thing: it’s
impossible
to predict the future. And the corollary to that thought is: once you design
something, it changes the future that is possible. Wrap your mind around that.
Designing something changes the future that is possible.''
''What
is the good life? How do you define it? How do you live it? Throughout the
ages, people have been asking the same questions:
Why
am I here?
What
am I doing?
Why
does it matter?
What
is my purpose?
What’s
the point of it all?
Life
design is a way for you to figure out your own answers to these perennial questions,
and to figure out your own good life.''
''Our goal for your life is rather simple: coherency. A
coherent life is one lived in such a way that you can clearly connect the dots
between three things:
• Who you are
• What you believe
• What you are doing
For example, if in your Life-view you believe in leaving the planet
a better place for the next generation, and you work for a giant corporation
that is polluting the planet (but for a really great salary), there is going to
be a lack of coherency between what you believe and what you do—and as a result
a lot of disappointment and discontent.''
''Living
coherently doesn’t mean everything is in perfect order all the time. It simply
means you are living in alignment with your values and have not sacrificed your
integrity along the way.''
''Dysfunctional
Belief: I should know where I’m going!
Reframe:
I won’t always know where I’m going—but I can always
know whether I’m going in the right direction.''
''Dysfunctional
Belief: Work is not supposed to be
enjoyable; that’s why they call it work.
Reframe:
Enjoyment is a guide to finding the right work for
you.''
''Since
there’s no one destination
in life, you can’t put your goal into your GPS and get the turn-by-turn
directions for how to get there. What you can do is pay attention to the clues
in front of you, and make your best way forward with the tools you have at
hand. We think the first clues are engagement
and energy.''
''When
you learn what activities reliably engage you, you’re discovering and articulating
something that can be very helpful in your life design work.
Remember
that designers have a bias to action—which is just another way of saying that
we pay a lot of attention to doing things, and not just to thinking about things.
Logging when you are and aren’t engaged and energized will help you pay attention
to what you’re doing and discover what’s working.''
''Flow
is engagement on steroids. Flow is that state of being in which time stands still,
you’re totally engaged in an activity, and the challenge of that particular activity
matches up with your skill—so you’re neither bored because it’s too easy nor
anxious because it’s too hard….Flow is one key
to what we call adult play, and a really rewarding and satisfying career
involves a lot of flow states. Flow is something we should strive to make a
regular part of our work life (and home life, and exercise life, and love
life…you get the idea).''
''Of the roughly two thousand calories we consume a day, five
hundred go to running our brains.That’s astonishing: the brain represents only
about 2 percent of our body weight,and yet it takes up 25 percent of the energy
we consume every day. It’s no wonder that the way we invest our attention is critical to whether or not we feel high or low energy.''
''Here’s
another key element when you’re wayfinding in life: follow the joy;
follow
what engages and excites you, what brings you alive. Most people are taught that
work is always hard and that we have to suffer through it. Well, there are
parts of any job or any career that are hard and annoying—but if most of what
you do at work is not bringing you alive, then it’s killing you. It’s your
career, after all, and you are going to be spending a lot of time doing it… If
it’s not fun, a lot of your life is going to suck.''
''What
makes work fun? It’s not what you might think. It’s not one unending
office party. It’s not getting paid a lot of money. It’s not having multiple weeks
of paid vacations. Work is fun when you are actually leaning into your strengths
and are deeply engaged and energized by what you’re doing.''
''The
clearer you are on what is and isn’t working for you, the better you can set
your wayfinding direction.''
''Gravity
problems aren’t actually problems. They’re circumstances that you can do
nothing to change. There is no solution to a gravity problem—only acceptance
and redirection. You can’t defy the laws of nature, nor do we live in a world
where poets reliably make a million dollars a year. Life designers know that if
a problem isn’t actionable, then it’s not solvable.Designers
may be artful at reframing and inventing, but they know better than to go up
against the laws of nature or the marketplace.''
''It
is always possible to prototype something you are interested in. The best way
to get started is to keep your first few prototypes very low-resolution and
very simple. You want to isolate one variable and design a prototype to answer
that one question. Use what you have available or can ask for, and be prepared
to iterate quickly. And remember that a prototype is not a thought experiment;
it must involve a physical experience in the world. The data to make good
decisions are found in the real world, and prototyping is the best way to
engage that world and get the data you need to move forward.''
''Once
you’ve committed yourself to life design prototyping, how do you do it? The simplest
and easiest form of prototyping is a conversation. We’re going to describe a
specific form of prototype conversation that we call a Life Design Interview.A
Life Design Interview is incredibly simple. It just means getting someone’s story.
Not just anyone and not just any story, of course. You want to talk to someone
who is either doing and living what you’re contemplating, or has real experience
and expertise in an area about which you have questions. And the story you’re
after is the personal story of how that person got to be doing that thing he or
she does, or got the expertise he has and what it’s really like to do what she does.''
''The
idea that somehow the Internet is the be-all and end-all when it comes to looking
for a job has gotten a lot of traction, but it’s yet another dysfunctional belief.
This particular dysfunctional belief leads to a lot of frustration, with a side
dish of demoralization.''
''Most
great jobs—those that fall into the dream job category—are never publicly listed.
The most interesting start-up jobs—at the companies that will someday be the
next Google or Apple—are not listed on the Internet before they are filled. Companies
with fewer than fifty employees and no human-resource departments are often
exciting places to work, but they don’t regularly post jobs. Large companies typically post their most
interesting jobs internally only, invisible to most job seekers.''
''You
don’t find the great jobs on the Internet. No matter what your cousin’s
friend’s brother told you about how he found his job.''
‘’How many times have you thought, ‘My résumé is a perfect fit for
this job
description!’? So you applied, only to get nothing back, not even
an
acknowledgment that they have your résumé? If you understand a
couple of things about this process from an insider’s point of view, it will
make more sense and hurt a little less.
1. The job description on the
website is typically not written by the
hiring manager or someone who really understands the job.
2. The job description almost
never captures what the job actually
requires for success.''
''It’s quite common for people to post job qualifications that
the folks currently in the job can’t possibly meet. This managerial wishful
thinking is a syndrome affecting most of corporate America. The process goes
something like this:Jane (the employee who quit) was a great program manager,
but, boy, I wish she had been better at X, Y, and Z. Now that she’s gone, let’s
post a job for a ‘Super Jane’ and list all the things that Jane used to do, and
all the things we wish she had done, and hope for the best.The super–job
description is posted, résumés are collected from keyword searches, and
candidates are screened by phone. Interviews are scheduled, and candidate after
candidate is interviewed and rejected because he or she is not a ‘Super Jane.’ As
a job seeker, you want to find out as soon as you can if you’re involved in an interview
process like this.One way is to do some research and find out how long the job
has been posted.In a good labor market, a job posting should never be open for
more than four weeks (six at the max).''
''Mistakenly
letting a great candidate go doesn’t cost a cool company [Google,Apple,Facebook,Twitter
etc] a thing: they have plenty of spare great candidates, so letting a few
spill on the ground is a much better mistake to make than hiring a bad
candidate. Therefore, cool companies’ hiring processes are sometimes rather
draconian. Great people get rejected
frequently, and often with no idea why. It could happen to you.''
''If
you want to work at a cool company, you really do want to get connected to people
inside that company, using the prototyping conversations we’ve discussed.A
personal connection can help you greatly. You’ll still have to go through the hiring
process, but you’ll have some help. We’re not saying you shouldn’t try—many
employees at cool companies love their work, so it may be worth the effort.But
be brutally honest with yourself about your chances, and caveat
emptor.''
''Dysfunctional
Belief: My dream job is out there
waiting.
Reframe:
You design your dream job through a process of actively
seeking and co-creating it.''
― Bill Burnett, Designing Your Life: How to Build a Well-Lived, Joyful Life
''There
is no such thing as breaking into the hidden job market. The hidden job market
is the job market that’s only open to people who are already connected into the
web of professional relationships in which that job resides. This is an insider’s
game, and it’s almost impossible to get inside that web as a job seeker. But it’s
quite possible to crack into the network as a sincerely interested inquirer—someone
just looking for the story (not looking for the job). That’s how this works.''
''Most
individuals have both a professional network (of colleagues) and a personal
network (of friends and family). The most common way for people to be
introduced across professional networks is by referrals from personal
networks.This isn’t favoritism—it’s just communal behavior. The use of personal
or professional networks to initiate new people into a community’s conversation
is a good thing. The network exists to sustain the community of people getting
the work done—and is the only way to gain access to the hidden job market.''
''Speaking
of the World Wide Web, it turns out that networking is one place
where
the Internet really can transform your job search. Use the Internet not to get online
job listings but to find and reach out to the people whose stories you want to
hear…LinkedIn has utterly transformed our ability to find the people we’re
looking for…. If you become a superstar at using LinkedIn and Google,the
Internet can make a difference for you, and will no longer be the black hole
into which you submit countless applications.''
''But
when you are looking for an offer rather than a job—when your goal
switches
from getting one job to getting as many job offers as possible—everything changes.
You don’t have to be deceptive. You can be genuinely curious about the job,
because it is absolutely true that you would like the opportunity
to evaluate an offer….this ends up making you more
likely to get the offer.''
''People
don’t hire résumés; they hire people. People they like. People who are interesting.
And you know what types of people each of us is most interested in (whether
it’s as a potential date or a potential employee)—the ones who are most interested
in us.''
''You
rarely know too much about a job before you get the offer, so pursue all the offers
you can. All you need is the possibility that one of them might be a fit.That’s
it, just a possibility.''
''Make
discerning decisions by applying more than one way of knowing, and in
particular not applying just cognitive judgment by itself,which is informed but
not reliable on its own. We aren’t suggesting making only emotional decisions,
either. We all have examples of emotions getting people in trouble (though
usually those are impulse emotions, and that’s a very different thing), so
we’re not saying to swap your brain for your heart or your gut. We’re inviting
you to integrate all your decision-making faculties, and to be sure you make
space so your emotional and intuitive ways of knowing can surface in the process.''
''So
the key to letting go is to move on and grab something else. Put your
attention
on something—not
off something.''
''We
trust that you now understand that prototyping to design your life is a great way
to succeed sooner (in the big, important things) by failing more often (at the small,
low-exposure learning experiences). Once you’ve done this prototype iteration cycle
a number of times, you will really begin to enjoy the process of learning via
the prototype encounters that other people might call failure.''
''Dysfunctional
Belief: Life is a finite game, with
winners and losers.
Reframe:
Life is an infinite game, with no winners or losers.''
''Failure
is just the raw material of success. We all screw up; we all have
weaknesses;
we all have growing pains. And we all have at least one story in us of an occasion
when we’ve reframed a particular failure, where we’ve changed our perspective,
and have seen how a failure turned out to be the best thing that ever happened.''
''We all have our
stories of redemption. A perfectly planned life that never surprises you or
challenges you or tests you is a perfectly boring life, not a well-designed life.''
''Embrace
the flaws, the weaknesses, the major screw-ups, and all the things that happened
over which you had no control. They are what make life worth living and worth designing.''
''Growth
opportunities are the failures that didn’t
have to happen, or at least don’t have to happen the next time. The cause of
these failures is identifiable, and a fix is available. We want to direct our
attention here, rather than get distracted by the low return on spending too
much time on the other failure types.''
''Failure
immunity comes from knowing that a prototype that did not work still leaves you
with valuable information about the state of the world here—at
your new starting point. When obstacles happen, when your progress gets
derailed, when the prototype changes unexpectedly—life design lets you turn
absolutely any change, setback, or surprise into something that can contribute
to who you are becoming personally and professionally.''
''Life
designers don’t fight reality. They become tremendously empowered by designing
their way forward no matter what. In
life design, there are no wrong choices; there are no regrets. There are just
prototypes, some that succeed and some that fail. Some of our greatest learning
comes from a failed prototype,because then we know what to build differently
next time. Life is not about winning and losing. It’s about learning and
playing the infinite game, and when we approach our lives as designers, we
are constantly curious to discover what will happen next.''
''Dysfunctional
Belief: It’s my
life, I have to design it myself.
Reframe:
You live and design your life in collaboration with others.''
''we
don’t want someone to stand up at our funerals and say, 'Dave had good written
and verbal communication skills.' Or 'Bill really demonstrated the ability to
juggle competing priorities and move quickly.' Life is about more than a
paycheck and job performance. We all want to know we mattered to someone. We
all want to know our work contributed to the world.''
''Be Curious. There’s
something interesting about everything. Endless curiosity is key to a
well-designed life. Nothing is boring to everyone (even doing taxes or washing
the dishes).''
― Bill Burnett, Designing Your Life: How to Build a Well-Lived, Joyful Life
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