Designing Your Life: How to Build a Well-Lived, Joyful Life

by Bill Burnett

in the United States, only 27 percent of college grads end up in a career related to their majors.

The reframe for the question “What do you want to be when you grow up?” is this: “Who or what do you want to grow into?” Life is all about growth and change. It’s not static. It’s not about some destination. It’s not about answering the question once and for all and then it’s all done. Nobody really knows what he or she wants to be. Even those who checked a box for doctor, lawyer, or engineer. These are just vague directions on a life path.

the research shows that, for most people, passion comes after they try something, discover they like it, and develop mastery—not before.

Acceptance. That’s why you start where you are. Not where you wish you were. Not where you hope you are. Not where you think you should be. But right where you are.

Work is often the largest single component of most people’s waking lives, and over a lifetime it occupies more of our attention and energy than anything else we do. Accordingly, we’re suggesting you take the time to reflect and articulate what work and vocation mean to you (and perhaps what you hope work means for others as well).

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—we calculate it at 90,000 to 125,000 hours during the course of your lifetime. If it’s not fun, a lot of your life is going to suck.

think about activities that you did in other areas of your life (perhaps even decades ago) when you felt that life was working. A historical Good Time Journal on past projects from school, summer programs, volunteer projects—anything that you were seriously engaged by—can be useful.

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. You want to hear what the person who does what you might someday want to do loves and hates about his job. You want to know what her days look like, and then you want to see if you can imagine yourself doing that job—and loving it—for months and years on end. In addition to asking people about their work and life, you will also be able to find out how they got there—their career path.

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.

Most mid- to-large-sized companies that use the Internet to collect résumés scan them into an HR or “talent management” database. The hiring manager never sees the original. Your résumé will be “discovered” in a keyword search of the database, and the keywords used most often come from the job description. So, to increase you chance of being discovered, use the same words that they used in the first part of the job description.

Dysfunctional Belief: You should focus on your need to find a job. Reframe: You should focus on the hiring manager’s need to find the right person.

“The more I learn about XYZ Environmental and the more people I meet here, the more fascinating it becomes. I wonder, Allen, what steps would be involved in exploring how someone like me might become a part of this organization?”

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.

Use the Internet not to get online job listings but to find and reach out to the people whose stories you want to hear.

Since so many job descriptions are dysfunctional and inaccurate, most people rule out a job as not being “right” for them before they’ve even applied (and before they actually know what they’re rejecting). It’s a nasty chicken-and-egg problem that can severely shrink your potential opportunities. That’s why the most important reframe when you are designing your career is this: you are never looking for a job, you are looking for an offer.

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. It’s not a matter of semantics; it’s a matter of authenticity. When you reframe the job search into an offer search, you end up being more authentic, energetic, persistent, and playful while you pursue your next position or opportunity. And, ironically, 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.

You can’t make “the best choice,” because you can’t know what that best choice was until all the consequences have played out. You can work on making the best choice you can, given what’s knowable at the moment, but if your goal is “make the best choice,” you won’t be able to know if you’ve done it.