The Power of Life Design: Find out what you really want from life and how to get it

Everyone’s ultimate life looks different. We all thrive in diverse environments and conditions.

So how can you design a life that fits you? A life that is specifically crafted for your unique passions and skills? Not the life that your dad, boss, teacher, sister or society thinks is right for you, but a life that engages you and leaves you energised.

Our fears and beliefs about how we should work often leaves us stuck:

• We should work at one place for at least three years.
• We should climb the corporate ladder
• We should be grateful for an average, uninspiring job, and settle.

But what about another reality? One where you really like your job. Right now, you could be wasting precious time in your current job, while you could actually be doing something meaningful and joyful?

You might also have dysfunctional beliefs about your work and life:

• If I am successful, I will be happy
• My degree determines my career
• It’s too late to change careers or jobs or start something new

There is a way and it is called Life Design.

The first step is to really get to know yourself. To gain empathy about who you are, what you believe you are good at and what engages you.

The second step is to start designing various alternate lives and then build small, low-cost, non-threatening prototypes to test your various assumptions about these lives.

The third step is to develop a plan to get to the life you want.

A prototype is a simulation of the final product so you can start LEARNING as quickly as possible.

It is a very powerful tool to test various assumptions. Often we’ll find ourselves watching a series like Grey’s Anatomy and think ‘I wish I was in the medical field’, or we’ll read stories about Elon Musk and think, ‘I always wanted to be a techpreneur, what happened?’ But these assumptions can be dangerously wrong. What you think you want, is not always what you actually enjoy. When we have glimpses into other lives, it’s only a glimpse. We don’t see the whole picture or the failures.

This is where Prototyping career options can help you. Completely understand the risk, rewards, investments and the process needed. You want your prototypes to be simple, provide rapid feedback, help you embrace change and prototyping should be fun.

For example, if you believe your perfect life will be to own a deli, a way to test this assumption (prototype) will be to speak to deli-owners or work in a deli as a waiter for a while. The purpose of the prototype is to learn and understand if it really engages you and gives you energy.

Often we have romantic ideas of what we want from life. If we don’t test these assumptions through small prototypes, we might end up selling everything we own to buy that Deli, only to find out we really don’t like working with customers, and the hours’ drive us mad.

Designing the perfect life you want and deserve, takes a lot of EXPERIMENTING.

 Two Professors at the Stanford Design Thinking School built a course and book called “Designing your Life” where they applied Design Thinking to making some of your biggest life and career decisions.

Life Design Workshop: Johannesburg

At Thundamental we have developed a Life Design Workshop, based on the principles of Designing your Life, Lean Methodology, Business Model You, Scientific Method and First Principles Thinking.

Who is this workshop for?

• Students
• People looking to change careers
• People who feel like they want more meaning from life
• People coming close to retirement
• Parents with young families

The next workshop occurs:

• Date: Wednesday 6 & 13 February 2019
• Time: 17:30-21:00
• Venue:  CoLab, Delta Café, 76 Marlborough Ave, Craighall Park, Johannesburg

Tickets: https://www.quicket.co.za/events/65583-life-design-craft-a-life-that-works-feb-2019/

For more information contact: [email protected]

Answer the questions:

• How do I find a career/business that I love?
• How do I balance career with family?
• How do I build a career/business that will make a good living?
• How do I make a difference in the world?
• How do I build a career where I can connect, contribute and create?