Designing Your Work Life

Designing Your Work Life

The #1 New York Times bestseller for building the perfect career

Summary

Build a new work-life balance that suits you.

We will spend up to 120,000 hours at work in our lifetimes.

But how best to use those hours is one of our most challenging questions.


We all want to find meaning at work, but our managers can't get it for us. And as companies work to be more nimble and shift according to changing markets, the workplace is increasingly unpredictable. It's up to each of us to define and find our own happiness in this ever-moving landscape, which is rich with opportunity and possibility.

Designing Your Work Life helps you understand the politics and psychology of work and equips you with the 'design thinking' principles - the innovative methodology pioneered at Stanford that has been fuelling the growth of Silicon Valley - to build a working life that works for you. Designers don't analyse, worry, think, complain their way forward; they build their way forward.

Perfect for anyone hoping to improve their current job, aiming for a promotion or even switching career paths, as well as recent graduates thinking about their future, Designing Your Work Life is a deeply empowering read. Part business book, part inspirational and innovative self-help, this book will help you answer one of life's most challenging questions.

'Life has questions. They have answers' New York Times

Reviews

  • For many of us working from home, advice on how to find meaning and joy is welcome when the daily commute is a walk downstairs and the movie Groundhog Day feels more like a documentary...the economic upheaval created by the pandemic will no doubt make this book an attractive proposition for many people now considering a radical change in lifestyle or just questioning what work is all about.
    Financial Times

About the authors

Bill Burnett

Bill Burnett is the Executive Director of the Design Program at Stanford. He got his BS and MS in Product Design at Stanford and has worked professionally on a wide variety of projects ranging from award-winning Apple PowerBooks to the original Star Wars action figures. He holds a number of mechanical and design patents, and design awards for a variety of products including the first ‘slate’ computer.
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Dave Evans

Dave Evans is the Co-Founder of the Stanford Life Design Lab and holds a BS and MS in Mechanical Engineering from Stanford. Early in his career he worked for Apple, where he led the mouse-design team and introduced laser printing to the masses. He then helped found the pioneering interactive and game software developer Electronic Arts.
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