Good Life Project - Dave Evans: Designing Your Life

Episode Date: January 23, 2017

Today’s guest, Dave Evans, is a lecturer at the famed Stanford d.School a theological scholar and management consultant. He is also a man on a mission to explore what it means to spend time designing your life.As an early team-member at Apple, he led product marketing for the mouse and introduced laser printing to the masses.He then joined gaming behemoth, Electronic Arts, as employee #2, before leaving to help start-up teams, corporate executives, non-profit leaders, and countless young adults build amazing ventures.Along the way, he realized they were all asking the same question. “What should I do with my life?” Helping people get traction on that question finally took develop a groundbreaking course that applies design thinking to life, where he introduced the concept designing your life to students at Berkeley and then Stanford.His latest book, Designing Your Life: How to Build a Well-lived, Joyful Life, walks you through the entire, step-by-step process.Subscribe to email updates and listen on iTunes! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

So don't go, oh, find somebody who's successful and then do what they did. Find somebody who's successful and happy and find out why did that succeed and why were they happy. Now learn from that and say, what if that is transferable to you and your situation? My guest today is Dave Evans. Dave is the co-creator and co-teacher of one of the most popular courses at the Stanford D School or Design School, all about designing your life. And he's taken this thing called this approach to problem solving, to creating amazing solutions called design thinking, and applied it to the problem of figuring out what to do with your life. What do you hear for? And they've been teaching this course for coming close to, I think about a decade now at

Stanford. More and more people start asking them, hey, we're not in school and we're not students, but we're really curious about what you're doing. And they distilled the entire curriculum into a book, which is absolutely fascinating. We kind of navigate that without talking all that much directly about it. As we navigate Dave's story, his personal story, he came up actually in California thinking he wanted to be a marine biologist as a kid, found out quickly that wasn't for him, somehow ended up becoming an engineer, and then was on some of the early teams at Apple and then Electronic Arts and navigated a really remarkable, wayfinding, jagged life that has brought him to a place of deep awakening. And I wanted to spend some time finding out how he got to where he is and how he developed

his methodology, his approach to designing your life. It turns out that we have a huge amount of overlap in the way that we see the world and some different tools and some different languaging. And I thought it'd be really fascinating to share not only his story and his ideas with you. So I'm so excited to share Dave Evans with you, his ideas, and of course, a whole bunch of tools out of his new book, which is called Designing Your Life, who he co-authored with his partner in teaching and in writing, Bill Burnett. I'm Jonathan Fields, and you is? You're going to die. Don't shoot him. We need him. Y'all need a pilot.

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will vary. Did you have anything for breakfast? Just coffee, actually. We, you know, when we travel through New York, we travel through New York. You better say good things about that coffee. We travel through New York on food, so we ate more than enough yesterday. That's nice. Wait, are you here alone or are you here with people? Here with my wife. We have decided to become temporary New Yorkers.

I got to be here all last spring for 11 weeks, and I'm coming back this spring for eight. Oh, that's fantastic. For what? Well, this is a bit of a side effect. I came back as the first experimental entrepreneur in residence in a theological think tank. Wow. Yeah, it's kind of-

You have to deconstruct that a little bit. Two oxymorons into that. Okay. Well, we really do claim in Designing Your Life that the methodology is not worldview specific. It's truly for everybody because it's a method of ideas. So I happen to be the seriously religious guy that I keep trying to follow what Jesus had in mind. And Bill is our designated existential atheist. So we literally sort of camp on the bookends of the points of view. We have radically different worldviews and almost identical work views, which turns out to be a fabulous partnership. But I've been involved in the faith community for a long, long time, particularly in the disintegration of people's daily lives and what they think of as their spiritual

lives, very often having nothing to do with each other, which is kind of criminally negligent and certainly incoherent. It turns out that even in my own Christian tradition, there's a long and deep understanding of what your work and what your daily experience, even if you're not doing overtly religious things or caregiving things, which people feel okay about. Let's say you're a garbage guy or let's say you're an accountant, you're doing regression analysis on software for a life insurance company. How's that spiritually significant? Well, the reason we don't understand that is what's called the sacred secular gap. That's a technical term in the

doctrinal world that for some reason, well, that's not spiritual. That is. That idea, that's worldly, that's heavenly. That's an old third century bad idea. We've been stuck with it for a long time. We really got to blame it on Plato, frankly. It's Platonic dualism scrapped into all of Western culture. The Eastern Orthodox Church doesn't have this problem because they never read Plato. And I've been working to try to get rid of that stupidity for a long, long time. And this outfit called the Center for Faith and Work in New York actually works on the early heart. So we've been hanging out together. That's fascinating. So you're coming back then for a chunk of time. Coming back for on that really hard. So we've been hanging out together. Ah, that's fascinating. So you're coming back then for a chunk of time. Coming back for a chunk of time. We'll be here in April and May. Is it more research-based? Is it teaching-based?

It's teaching-based and it's interactive-based. This is an institute that was formed by Tim Keller's Big Redeemer Church in town. Got it. Yeah. And they care very deeply about the city. They believe that the idea of being, you know, if we love God and God loves you, we love you too. You know, the transitent law of affection. So we're here to serve the city.

And the people in New York are very committed to their careers. It's a working town. It is. It's a town defined by capitalism. It's the place you come to work. It's where you come to work. You know, and it means something. So that's the conversation we're going to be in.

So we're going to be in that conversation. We have to be culturally relevant. And to do that, we have to understand at least our own point of view. And certainly help people grow into that in a deep way. Yeah. And to start in probably this – maybe one of the single hardest places to – maybe not hard, but the place where, like you said, this is the place where everyone comes to, quote, make it. Oh, absolutely. In the professional world.

So actually to have the conversation here, it's almost like if you can do it here, you can do it anywhere. Well, yes. I mean, it's paradoxical. It's really hard and really easy. I liked New York before. After living here for 11 weeks, we madly in love with New York. My wife is now informing me. We will live in New York for one to three months a year for the rest of our lives. Figure it out, Dave. I'm just thinking, you guys have a place in California. We have a place in New York. We kind of like California too. We have a place in California on the water. All right. Even better?

We could talk. What time of year do you like? All right. We're going to have to take this conversation off the air. We are. I'm serious. Have your people talk to my people. Yeah, yeah.

Anyway, but New Yorkers are fabulous. I mean, New Yorkers care very deeply about what they're doing. They're thinking about it. It's a conscious conversation. And they're not fooling around. You've got to bring your A game, but that's great. Yeah. They're thinking about it. It's a conscious conversation. And they're not fooling around. You got to bring your A game, but that's great. Yeah. And I think there is this illusion that it's just about the pace.

It's just about the job. It's just about the money in New York. And everyone's got their heads down. I think on the surface, you can see that. But yeah, if you dig a little bit deeper, there's so much depth and there's so much questioning of there's a lot of why going on in the city right now. Well, and when my wife and I, you know, she was crying in the car all the way to the airport last June. Oh, when you're going home? Oh, yeah, going home.

She sat in our gorgeous living room overlooking the Monterey Bay in a funk for two weeks. I'm dead serious. And the reason being one of the things – we live in the West Village and we're – we always will apparently. And the conclusion we had was that the first attribute of the city that we would characterize is its affection. It's an incredibly open and affectionate city. How did that manifest for you? Because that's one of the knocks that I hear from people who come to the cities. They feel that it's cold. And I never understand that because I will literally,

if I see somebody with a map in their hand in the corner, I'll literally walk up to them and say, hey, can I help you in some way? It's a warm, open, outreaching city. My sociological quick assessment is the common space is the street, is the sidewalk. That's everybody's yard. So we're, you know, if you want to get to know your neighbors, you don't have a kid or a dog in California because you get to have something that's going to wander off your yard into theirs. But we're all in the yard together.

And everywhere we stop, you know, we stop, the line at the taco truck right by Christopher Square is one of my favorite places to have a conversation. At 11 o'clock at night right across the street from the Monster. Everywhere we go, there's a conversation. It is interesting. I didn't really think about it that way. I had in my mind also Southern California is so much cafe

culture, so it's almost like that's the yard. In New York, there actually isn't a lot of cafe culture in New York. Maybe more where you were in the West Village. There's some of that, yeah. Yeah, it's more there. But when you leave that, it really is the street as a common. It's an interesting way to describe it. Hmm. All right. Now people are focused.

You know, but if you accost them, that's one thing. You're stuck in a long line. The train's delayed. You know, somebody's reading something. So How's that book? One in 30 kind of go. The other 20, as it turns out, I was reading my wife. Boom, off we go.

It is. It's so amazing. Anyway, let's take a step back in time with you. We're hanging out here today. I've got this fascinating book I want to dive into, but I want to go back first. I had a Jones earlier in life to be a marine biologist. I did. All right. I grew up go back first. I had a Jones earlier in life to be a marine biologist. I did. All right.

I grew up in Southern California. We had a little tiny beach house at a place called Carpinteria, which then was a tiny little farming town south of Santa Barbara. So we liked the beach. And that was the time that Jacques Cousteau started becoming famous. He actually invented the aqualung. And there was the undersea world of Jacques Cousteau. I remember that show. Well, I fell madly in love with that show and just decided, gosh, you know, Jacques is aging.

Someone's got to take over the Calypso. It might as well be me. You know, the fact that he had sons who were already on board did not occur to me that they might be first in line. But, you know, I literally held on to that idea until I was 20. So that was the path until you're 20. That was the path. It was the only idea I had. And I liked it.

And I just kept going with it. Is that how you chose college based on a program that did that? Well, no. Horribly not. No. In fact, it was reinforced by in high school. I mean, I was pretty good at school. And I confused, as do many people, what I liked with what I was well taught.

So I had this little Jacques Cousteau cartoon playing in my head from my childhood. And then I got to high school. And it turned out Mrs. Strauss, the bio teacher, was the best teacher I had. So I thought I loved biology. I just liked her. I was poorly taught other things. And most of the stuff I'm really good at, they don't teach in high school anyway. So I get to college and go, well, so clearly it's bio, marine biology. And I went to Stanford because they let me in and it was a cool school and I really liked it. If you want to be a marine biologist, it was a horrible place to go. They actually had a marine station, which is now related to the Monterey Bay Aquarium, the Hopkins Marine Station, very small little thing, which, of course, I never checked out. I never went and visited.

I never spoke to anyone. I didn't do any of the stuff in the book. The book is all about, you know, let me tell you everything I didn't do. I should have taken my class. I should have read my book. But it wasn't there. So this is my way of paying it forward for those bruises. How interesting is it though? Because I think this is a really common experience that you somehow stumble upon a teacher who is teaching something and there's something about that person

that is so radiant, so interesting, so engaging that it really doesn't matter what that person is teaching. You're utterly drawn to the subject. But the truth is, we never strip the layer back and realize it's really the teacher. They could have been teaching anything. It's hard to parse those sometimes when you're trying to figure out what you're really interested in and what's really lighting you up. Oh, it's incredibly hard, particularly because in the meta-narrative of the culture, the little story about the way things are, that particular distinction between, no, no, don't confuse just because it's interesting. That's who you are. That's your calling.

That's your work. By the way, don't forget everything in the universe is amazingly interesting if you just look at it from the point of view of the person who appreciates it. So a good teacher who loves their subject and is doing not merely teaching at you, but expressing the embodiment of themselves as a teacher. I am being a teacher and I'm not doing teaching at you. It's going to be engaging if you're paying any attention at all. So watch out for that. It's great. It's a lovely experience, but don't let that necessarily be the point of discernment for the path your life should take. Yeah. And yet, how can it not be to a certain extent? It's of course true. Yeah. Well, this is why we love curiosity as the starting place, right? So, you know, interested is interesting. And so, that is where you can find it. But what you want to do,

you want to explore a variety of paths of interest or what have you and give some experimentation to start finding out whether or not the feedback loop is, gee, do I just like watching this TV show now and then or do I actually want to live here? Yeah. And we've all done that. It's interesting. I have a past life as a lawyer, a very past life at this point. And on the side, I had always loved rock climbing and mountain biking. Okay.

At a certain point, I left the law and I started experimenting with different things. And among them was, I said, wouldn't it be cool to actually create a company where I guided people rock climbing and mountain biking and hiking? So we did a couple of prototypes. Of course. Right? And I very quickly realized while I love the activity, I hated the business of the activity. Yes. You know, and had I not done those little trials, you trials, I could have just gotten full steam into it. But also, it's so – because you just automatically assume that, well, of course I would like building my living around this thing because I like doing it as a hobby on the side.

Yeah. If I love it, I want to do it. Right. That's not necessarily true at all. One of the stories in the book, if you would call it a lease, and they're all inspired by a collection of true people. This one's mostly about one person who did the exact same thing with the Tuscan Italian cafe. Went whole hog successfully and then, oh, now I have to run this thing. It's awful. You know, how about a little catering on the side?

How about go talk to some other owners? How about, you know, how about stand in for somebody for a week? I mean, lots of it like, oh, that's what it's really like. Yeah. It's an interesting way to do it. Back to you. So at some point you realized marine biology, no. No. And I was slow on the uptake. I mean, two quarters in a row, I had my biology TAs come in and go, now, Dave, we'd like to have a conversation. I said, well, sure, Mark. What's on your mind? He says, you know, we've noticed something. We've noticed that you're really bad

at this and you don't like it. And we would like to suggest that you drop the major and leave. Please quit. We don't really like having you in the class anymore. I'm that direct. And I was so insulted. You can't tell me that. You know, I'm much better at this than you think. So I stuck with it.

My second TA in the course said, you know, Dave, we'd like to have a conversation. I thought, maybe I shouldn't be doing this. So I was slow on the uptake. Yeah. And I flipped over to mechanical engineering. How? I mean, what's the thing you're – By force.

I mean, there is a creative force called the deadline. Yeah. You know, and making some decision that's at least as generative as you can make it and getting forward progress, learning along the way can work. Fortunately, it worked for me. It occurred to me the Thanksgiving break of my junior year in college. I was on a four-year scholarship and we had no money. So it was like, get done on time. This five-year plan is not available. I suddenly realized, oh my gosh, when I go back to school on Monday, I have to register for classes for the winter

quarter of my junior year. I have five quarters left and I have a whole bunch of courses and no degree. I have to graduate. So, now the goal has come. It's no longer find your passion. It's no longer find the – it's like get out of here with a degree. Right. You know, with that going on. And not a day beyond four years. Not a day beyond four years. And so I read the courses and degrees manual cover to cover looking for anything as a major that would be okay and I'm going to stick with it, close your eyes. I didn't like any of them, any of the 64 choices. I decided they were all not interesting enough to complete. I started reading for any course that would be interesting. One class will be enough

and then I'll just get that degree. I'll figure it out later. And I found a mechanical engineering design course that I thought was kind of interesting looking. So I walked into the chairman's office at 8 o'clock on Monday morning and said, can you get me out of here with a degree? And five quarters he said, sit down. We did. And that was it. And that was it.

Now I found a passion later on. So about a year into that, I suddenly realized, oh, mechanical engineers are the guys that like design engines and power systems and power grids. And we've got this thing called an energy crisis, so I can solve the energy crisis. And they said, go, yeah, absolutely. We have a whole division that works on that. I said, great. So I found a passion called let's go solve the energy crisis.

I was just 35 years too soon. Right. So you went out and – but you actually – you were in the field for a while doing it. Yeah, it was. Yeah. I graduated with a master's in thermosciences. I was paid for by Chevron research.

I was a Stanford energy fellow in 1976. I was fully prepared to go and solve the world's energy crisis. Before the world was prepared. Before the world was prepared. Yeah. All the ideas we had then are the ones we're using now, by the way. Yeah.

I mean, right. But this was mid seventies, 1976 to 1980. Yeah. It's, we could- Right, but this was mid-70s? 1976 to 1980, yeah. It's been four years trying to do this. Was that right around the big gas crisis also? I remember. Oh, yeah.

Yeah. The lines going on for years and years and years. The first time we had gas over a buck. Right. And lines for hours and hours and hours of 73. Right. So this was on people's minds. And OPEC came into power.

Oh, yeah, it was hugely popular. But people weren't willing to, they weren't ready to do something about it. No, once we cut the deal with OPEC and we'll just pay more for gas Hugely. But people weren't willing to – they weren't ready to do something about it. No. Once we cut the deal with OPEC and we'll just pay more for gas and give you a bigger SUV and I don't really care. How frustrating has that got to be for you at that moment in time being the guy who's like, look, we can do this? I was in semi – I mean, I'm not clinically depressed, but I got as close as I know how to be for almost two years. The reason I was in the energy business for four years was the last two of it. I just couldn't let go. It was clear very quickly that my choice was to be, you know, way ahead of the culture and prophetically out on the edge, standing there in my hair shirt going, stop sucking liquid dinosaurs out of the ground.

Stop it. You're doing the wrong thing. You know, barely making a living. And somebody's maybe got to do that. But is that me? And I decided I'm really a get things done guy, not just talk about a future we're not willing to live in yet guy. I'm impactful more than prophetic. And so I had to make a shift, but it took a long time. Yeah. So when you do that, what pulls you out of that? Well, again, reality is very helpful.

Yeah. You know, at this point. What's happening in your bigger life at that point? My bigger life, I had just gotten married. We just bought a house. Okay. And the banks are really interested in seeing that check every month. I've heard. So being employed and making some money, we're going to get the family started pretty soon.

And if possible, my wife really wanted to be at home with kids. And if we could do that, that'd be great. So get going, Dave. My father died when I was very young, when I was nine. So I'd been largely self-reliant and certainly completely self-supporting ever since college. So there was no backup plan. So the fact that I was about to run out of money says you're going to go do something else. Yeah. What was that something else? What was the first thing? Well, the first thing was biomedical. So I'd had this great interest in energy stuff. And then in college, I'd also done some research in the biomedical field, prosthetic devices for human

bodies, smarter surgical instruments, stuff like that. Mechanical engineers get involved in those sorts of things. That looked interesting. So I started pursuing that and began to work my way into that industry. I was just about to receive an offer from a company I was really interested in working for when I got a phone call from Apple Computer. I've heard of that. And of course, at that point in my life, I was really committed to doing interesting physical things in the world, whether it's engines or power systems or, you know, a new hip or whatever it might be. But these computers, they just lie there in blank. They're very boring.

I hated computer science. I hated electronics. Even though I lived in Silicon Valley, I promised myself I would not fall for that drug. And so the one commitment I made to myself was in terms of figuring out my future, the only thing I was not allowed to do was work for a computer company. They're so boring. And Apple then is not the Apple that we know also. No, this is when I went there. So I went, you know, fast forward.

So when they called, I hung up. I said, you want the other Dave Evans? Dave Evans is a very common name. I'm the fourth in my family. My son is the fifth. His son is the sixth. And there are plenty others. I said, you want the Dave Evans at Hewlett Packard? Who I bumped into before. I said,

you want that guy? You don't want me. You got the wrong number. He goes, no, no, we want you. I said, no, you really don't. Click. I hung up. They kept calling back because Apple then and now is an arrogant company. If anybody's going to hang up, we're going to hang up. People don't hang up on us. We hang up on you. And they kept persisting. It turns out they were looking for me. And I was annoyed by that. I go, who gave you my resume? I don't want you to have my resume. And I finally agreed to have one lunch. And at which point, of course, they'd quickly realize I'm totally the wrong guy. I don't like their stuff. I don't understand their stuff. I have no training. I don't do this stuff. You know, I don't know how this happened. But hey, Steve had just been on the cover of Time

Magazine. So I thought, well, you know, if you get a backstage pass to U2, even if you don't like the music, you go. Because I mean, it's a cool thing. So I said, if you get a backstage pass to U2, even if you don't like the music, you go. Because, I mean, it's a cool thing. So I said, let's have a backstage pass to this cool company. I'll go take a look. 14 interviews later, they surprised themselves by making me an offer. And I astonished myself by taking it. And that put you on the team that ended up working on the first mouse. Yeah.

I was on the original Lisa team, the team that preceded the Mac. Yeah. Actually, the era in the most of the recent Jobs movie is right when I was there. I worked with Joe Hoffman very closely and all that stuff. So I was the first mouse product manager back in 1979, 1980. Yeah. What was the vibe like then? Oh, it was just flying.

I arrived six weeks before the company went public. We were about 800, 900 people at the time. We grew to over 5,000 in the first year. Six weeks in, I was one of the old guys. So I got on the first corporate culture committee when a couple of us sat around the table with Steve going, oh my God, people are coming so – I mean, buses literally of people were arriving daily. And very quickly, they, the people who don't get it, would outnumber us, the people who get it. Get it meaning what does making a ding in the universe mean? By five to

one and suddenly we'd wake up and find ourselves in some other company just by sheer influx. And so how do we do that? How do we figure that out? And we did, we kind of figured that out, but it was a very exciting time. Really, really fast moving time. How long did you take around that? About two, two and a half years. Right. Yeah. With the exception of Stanford, I didn't do anything longer than three years. I'm really good at quitting.

Typing a pattern. Yeah, yeah. I know. I like to start stuff, get it going, then I get distracted and we call it a path. Whether you're in your running era, Pilates era, or yoga era, dive into Peloton workouts that work with you. From meditating at your kid's game to mastering a strength program, they've got everything you need to keep knocking down your goals. No pressure to be who you're not. Just workouts and classes to strengthen who you are.

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jet black aluminum. Compared to previous generations, iPhone XS or later required, charge time and actual results will vary. What was it that made you start to be curious about something else? Well, I actually wasn't looking out the window at the time, but my boss, the guy that hired me into Apple, a guy named Trip Hawkins, was going to leave and start a company. And he said, here's what we're going to do. And I said, could you at least put that in the form of a question? He says, well, here's what I would really like you to do, and you're going to, so let's just go do this thing. And that became what we now call Electronic Arts.

Right. Which for those who don't know, does what? It's now the largest multi-billion dollar creator of the interactive video game industry. So I was employee number two of Electronic Arts. Right. Which had to be interesting also. Oh, massively interesting. And that industry has – it's kind of stunning what's happened with it.

Well, yeah. And our first ad was We See Farther. I mean, we wrote the manifesto before we wrote the business plan. It was really this missional concept of moving into what we thought interactivity was going to mean. And we would tell people things back in the early 80s, like, you have to understand that the game business will be bigger than the movie business. And you get a lot of snickers, like, no. What drug are you on? Completely crazy, which is now true.

You're thinking, like, that Atari, you mean Pong? Yeah, yeah. It really was. There was both a mission and a vision. And that was what was most interesting to me. Yeah. How fascinating though to be – because Apple had that. Oh, yeah.

It was a very hard decision for me to leave. Yeah. To go from – I wouldn't say to guarantee because certainly there were some major stumbles. And that was actually before Steve left and then came back, right? Steve and I left about the same time, yeah. Ah, interesting. Yeah, so interesting though for you to go from that to something where you're sort of like employee number two. Oh, yeah.

But with a similar vision. And that was why because I said, okay, if I'm going to do the Silicon Valley thing, I really want to do the startup. But I mean do the startup with all the pain and the agony that's involved in it. I had small children. I want to see the whole movie. I want to see the movie from a blank sheet of paper to the script to the screen, you know, the whole thing. So I promised myself I'm going to do startup. I have to have a single-digit employee number so I can see the whole movie from the back of the stage.

And actually, the business plan of Electronic Arts, the only thing about that whole idea that was problematic for me wasn't that into the product,, which is why eventually I left very amicably, still close to those people. But the team was great. The idea was great. The missionality was great. The intentionality was great. The VC backup team was terrific, you know, and the authenticity of the people involved was just to die for. So, I mean, there were so many great things about that company that I said, man, if you

get a chance to get on that plane, go take the ride. And it was a great time. It's amazing what happens when you're in that early with something. Did you believe the talking point about the gaming industry is going to be bigger than the movie industry and all this stuff at that point in time? To you, was the fantastic vision real? The original fantastic vision was a little different than the one it fulfills now. And I did buy it. And the original vision was making software worthy of the minds that use it. That was the user vision. And the developer vision was elevating software to the status of an art form. Now, those are both fundamental shifts in both the way things work in commerce and in the meta-narrative of how we perceive things and making technology serve

humanity in a certain kind of way. Take this power and guide it in a very human-oriented way. So we're going to develop this software in a certain kind of way and we're going to let people use it in a certain kind of way. And that prioritizing for people over things was something I cared deeply about. And that's exactly what I saw happen when we introduced friendly computers, right? And that was working. So I began to see cultural change enabled and catalyzed by technological advancement once at Apple. And I said, let's do that again. That's kind of a cool drug. I like doing that. And it deserves to be done. I'm not sure we're going to pull this. But originally it was broad interactive. So it was

home education and home productivity and creativity stuff and music stuff as well as interactive entertainment. And of course then – but we were VC-based and the games took off. So then the company said, well, you know, follow the money. Right. Which happens so often. Both companies were human-centered, were – at least in the beginning, you know, like there's something that people need. Yep.

And they may not even know that they need it right now. But we're going to give it to them. Yep. Yeah, there's – I mean, in marketing, there's demand response but we're going to give it to them. Yep. Yeah. There's, I mean, in, in marketing, there's demand response and demand creation to use the technical terms. Like here's this thing you didn't know you needed. Now sometimes if I don't really, so there's seeing ahead, there's visionary insight, like

this is where this thing can go and you're intersecting your future. People haven't encountered yet. Right. And you're doing that well, or you're thinking up stuff nobody wants at all. You know, those are called failed companies. But being able to do that a couple of times is very exciting. Yeah. Why'd you leave there?

What was the calling? Well, my goal really was to do the startup, you know, and to be part of a cultural creation. But we were working really hard. I was truly working the eight hours a week. I had two small children. I had been fatherless. And I'd had this arresting experience one morning on Saturday when my then three-year-old son, Robbie, I overheard talking to his mother in

the kitchen while I was sitting in the family room. And he said, mommy, can we play with daddy today or will he fall asleep in the chair again? And suddenly, I mean, my heart just broke and I went, oh my God, you know, I mean, my father was gone because he died. And as far as, you know, but if you're not there, I mean, so Robbie's dad was gone too. So I said, we got to fix this. Now it took years to fix it, but you know, I couldn't, and I think other people could. In fact, there was a guy named Tim Mott, who was the head of R&D, brilliant guy at Electronic Arts who did this well, but I'm not efficient. I'm really effective, but I can cram four hours of work into eight like

nobody I know. So I've never been efficient. And so, you know, being an officer of a rapidly growing, incredibly huge demanding company, you know, commuting 40 minutes each direction, each way, and being a very present dad to small children all at the same time, I wasn't pulling off. And eventually I had to say, you know, if I figure this out when the kids were walking into high school, that's too late. I maybe should figure this out, but I'm on a deadline. I gave myself a deadline. I didn't hit it. And then I walked out. So I wrote a note one Thursday morning, you know, and then the exec team got together and said, okay, Dave's got to go. And I kind of, oh, okay, well, we'll figure it out. You know,

and within the day we had the place reorganized and I met with my people and Tim took on, and off we go. Very, most supportive quitting I ever did. It was really great. It was a lovely time. Do you think it's possible to have the job that you had at that moment in time and simultaneously be a present and engaged and involved parent? Absolutely. Yeah. I've watched people do it. And I could have learned that technique, that technique of self-management, that technique of incredible time discipline.

And it probably would have been a bad decision. I mean, I think I deserve to be more efficient. You have to decide in life, what am I going to work through and what am I going to work around? How severely contorted am I going to make my natural way of being to accommodate a goal? And that's an actual tough trade-off. So I think I could have and it would have come at such a cost, I'm not sure it would have been worth it. And I ended up doing freelance consulting, you know, one whole career later. And that really worked because it turns out it's much easier to say no to a project than to a responsibility.

I'm a co-founder. I'm in charge of marketing. I'm in charge of product development. You know, well, ask Dave and he has to be there and you have to answer because you're leading this thing that all of us depend on. Now, if you rent me to come in and change this messaging or solve that sales problem and I hand it back to you fixed, then we stop. And this is, can you do it again? I might say, no, I'm going to go coach Little League this spring and I'm taking fewer contracts. So saying no episodically and yes, as a freelancer, it was much easier. So I was able to accommodate my inefficiency and still make a very interesting living. Yeah. It's not even comedy, but almost like leverage. No, I mean, I, you know, I leaned into my weakness and actually,

there's a great line from Outward Bound. You're an outdoor guy. You might know those guys. If you can't fix it, feature it as a marketing idea. But if you can't get out of it, get into it as the outward bound idea. So if you're finding this problem, then lean way into it. Well, my inability to stay focused turned out to be a real strength in track switching. So running four concurrent contracts, doing things, you know, starting up really quickly, shutting down really fast, which is what contractors do.

I was really good at. So what used to be the inability to hold a job is now the incredible capacity to quickly track switch and involve myself with people on an ad hoc basis. Yeah. Which some people would look at from the outside looking in and say, oh, no, that's the wrong way to do it. Right. Because for them, it's the wrong way to do it. And they make the blanket judgment that it must be for everybody.

Well, this is where we get into what we call the distinction between counsel and advice. You know, we do office hours. Now, we're college instructors. You come to office hours and you think you get advice. Well, advice is when people tell you what they think. And counsel is when they help you figure out what you think. And they're very different. Advice is fine, you know, when you get it from an expert.

But most advice fortunately begins with a phrase that helps you know exactly that you're in the advice zone. People say, well, gosh, you know, Jonathan, if I were you, blah, blah, blah. The thing is, if I were you doesn't mean if I were you. It means if you were me. That's what it really means. And it's really clear you're not. So advice is fine as long as the presuppositions and the prior experiences and the values said and all the stuff that went into informing why the next thing I would do if I was in your situation. If all those things are common between us, my advice might fit. If it's not, watch out. So getting advice is fine. Taking it, be very, very careful. You know, it's interesting too, because there's a recommendation out in the world that if you

want to succeed at something, go find an exemplar who has done what you've done and do what they did to get there. And that's never sat well with me because basically for what you're saying, you're not them. You don't have their life, their constraints, their abilities, their dreams, their desires, their fears, their capabilities, their limitations that allowed their path to work for them and to model it and repeat the steps that they took may implode when you try and do it. You may get really lucky and it may work for you. It assumes you are them and it assumes the situation in which you're going to do the same thing has the same attributes. And those two assumptions could be terribly dangerous. There's a great line by a person, I think a lot of it, kind of Parker Palmer, who is an educator, wrote a book called Let Your Life Speak. And he said, I came to the realization that I was doing a noble job of living somebody else's life. And his heroes were Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King and Dorothy Day. And he was trying to be them and that's great.

But that's learn from, not become, right? So this is why in Designing Your Life, we really encourage people to do this life design interview thing. Go get a bunch of stories. Don't just grab one and try to emulate it. So don't go, Oh, find somebody who's successful and then do what they did. Find somebody who's successful and happy and find out why did that succeed?

And why were they happy? Now learn from that and say, what if that is transferable to you and your situation? So it's the transferable learnings that we're looking for. It's not emulation that we're looking for. Now, if something's crossover, great. Borrow a good idea. Yeah, designers definitely are in favor of cheating.

Cheating whenever possible. The short path is great, but it's not a rule. Yeah, and that makes so much sense to me. But I think we live in a culture where so many people are looking for the hack these days. Right. And they see this idea of modeling as a hack. Let me skip past the bad stuff. Right. Which is perfectly decent motivation.

It's not a bad one-liner. I mean, one of the articles about the books was the five hacks on design. That's fine. Just make sure you're really good at hacking. When you're hacking code, right? If I'm going to hack a reusable component of code, it's got to sit in this larger architecture. I mean, just play it smart. Yeah.

You know. And understand the why underneath it, you know, because the ecosystem internally and externally may be profoundly different for you. And their why may have nothing to do with, you know, why you might do it your way. Yeah. I mean, why it would work for you. If I try to emulate Tim's management technique when I was at Electronic Arts, it might have technically worked, but it wouldn't have fit. I'm wearing somebody else's clothes. I've learned how to walk in them, maybe even run in them.

And so what? Now I'm doing a really good job of being Tim. You take a step. So where do you go from there then? You're out there. You're doing freelance work. At some point in this whole process, you go back to get a diploma in theology yeah well okay so along the way the you know so how do we end up running writing a book how did i end up you know in your studio yeah well you know it

starts with when i was 19 and i i decided not to be a marine biologist i think i held on to that so hard because i didn't have another idea and having no idea was a terrifying proposition. So having a bad idea for a while was more attractive. And then I got terrible counsel. I finally gave them – I mean, the counsel I got from the university, the counsel I got from elders, the counsel I got from church people was all pretty terrible. And I was really furious. I mean, I was absolutely furious that the mentoring infrastructure of the modern world and the Western culture in which I lived was criminally negligent on helping me become my adult self. They kept asking me accountability questions. Have you figured it out yet, son? What do you want to do? Do you know where you're going? I got lots of that, but very little how to figure it out. And they go, well,

you know, when you know, you'll let us know and we'll help you go get what you need, you know, and you're a little late, you know. So I not only got no help, I got, you know, judgment and remediation that I was screwing up, which is really helpful. So along the late, you know. So I not only got no help, I got, you know, judgment and remediation that I was screwing up, which is really helpful. So along the way, you know, I was really working on figuring it out and figuring out how to figure it out. So in my own life, I'm trying to come up with an approach as well as an answer, you know. And also, and I was doing that within the spiritual tradition that I was involved in then and now, which turns out to have a lot to say about it that they don't talk about much. And then I also noticed as I was doing corporate culture work at Apple and then founding Electronic Arts and then consulting and running into the insides of all kinds of companies. Everybody turns out to be really interested in their life and everybody really thinks what they do matters and they don't have it figured out.

So coming up with that, it was something that was clearly important, you know? Now for me personally, decision-making meant really doing a discerning job, not just come up with an answer, but a discerning thoughtful response to your situation. And in the book and in our course, we define discernment as being decision-making that employs more than one form of knowing, not just cognitive knowing, which we lean into in the West. You know, where's the spreadsheet of the attributes of these decisions and I'll score them and the one of the higher number wins. You know, door number one got a 78 on my list and door number two got a 62. So clearly it's door number one. Well, that's

cognitive and that's great. But what about emotional knowing? What about intuitive knowing? What about social knowing, kinesthetic knowing, spiritual knowing? These are affective forms and they're all – we're human people. You know, your body is not just a transport mechanism for your brain. It is in fact the human person. So how do I pull all those things together? You know, so that's discernment. And as a practicing Christian, what that meant was, you know, this has got to be spiritually integrated reality. And I realized I sucked at this. I was so bad at this. So I actually went back to school and worked and studied, you know, the legacy of Christian contemplative practice in order to understand how to live the interior life, you know, how to get access to those forms of knowing that I knew very little about.

Did you find what you were looking for? Yeah, I did. Yeah, I did. Yeah. I mean, I actually took classes on how to pray, classes on how to listen, classes on how to quiet down and how to be in a conversation where you're not trying to direct somebody to the outcome. You're trying to help somebody get to the heart of the matter, which is a different conversation. And that has turned out to be very helpful. Which I think is also very different than the way people view religion these days.

I think a lot of people look at it as, okay, this is a tradition which is going to give me the answers and the rules by which I live. Rather than this is a container that will allow me to explore the questions that will let possibilities sort of be explored. You know, how we hold what it is we're doing matters. Yeah. You know, point of view matters. And the Anglicans have a nice way of putting it. They say that, what is the church? Well, the church is the community of persons who are living the question

together. This is the community of people with whom I will co-journey living into this question, how should we now live? I like that. Yeah. I'm working more on the question. Some people are rehearsing their answer, and some people are practicing their question. Yeah. I get the sense on the question. Some people are rehearsing their answer and some people are sort of practicing their question. Yeah. I get the sense that the vast majority of people are in the former camp. I think the ratios are better than it appears on the surface, but some of them have been awfully loud. Yeah.

You know, have been awfully loud in the culture, whether they're left or right, you know, and have captured a lot of attention. And so doing, I think, sometimes hurts some folks. And that's something we need to pay attention to. But I encounter a lot of people who I think are trying to live nobly, you know, a comparable metaphor might be, there's a lot of complaining about millennials being kind of whiny and entitled, you know, from people my age, right? I'm 63. I'm a boomer through and through. That is not my experience of millennials or Gen Z on the way up right behind them. You know, sure. Every now and then some whining, right behind them. Sure, every now and then, some whining, but hey, I mean, they're under 30. But the point I'm experiencing is these are people who care deeply about their lives and they care deeply about the world. And frankly, they're not

going to put up with a fair bit of nonsense and time wasting. You better give me a good reason or I'm going down the street. I think that's frankly holding the culture and employers accountable to doing what we need to get done. Yeah. I've seen the same thing. It's almost like they're, I feel like they're getting existential at a much earlier age. Well, absolutely. Yeah. You know, I think what's happening is I don't think they're fundamentally thinking about life differently than other people are. I think they're simply wanting, we describe the coherent life and designing your life. We say, you know, one of the goals is to live the coherent life. You know, we talk about building your compass to figure out

where that might be. And the coherent life is who am I, what do I believe and what am I doing? And kind of interconnect those things in a way, even if there's some compromise that makes sense to me, am I living coherently? And what we're seeing in millennials, at least the ones we hang out with, is a demand. I mean, a real urgency to be living coherently starting right away. It's not like I'll go do whatever they tell me to do for 10 or 15 years and earn my chops and earn my credibility and I'll completely sacrifice all my other values, but I'll wake up with credibility and money and position and power. And then I'll have the life I really want. No, that's not the deal anymore. It's like, you know, it's got to be the real deal

all the way through. I've seen the exact same thing. And I've wondered recently whether – because I'm trying to figure out why. And who knows if there's really an answer. But this idea came to me. I'm curious what you think of it, which is I wonder if part of what's going on is that we're sort of like the kids of parents who went through war. Yep.

Yeah. And so for them – My parents went through World War II. Right. For them, the existential question, you know, like the let's find meaning, let's find, no, no, no, let's keep, do anything we need to do to put a roof over the, you know, and put food on the table. That's our job.

And not be overrun by the bad guys. Right. You know, and then we saw, like we're close enough to have understood that ethos. And even if it wasn't directly transmitted to us, we absorbed it. And like sort of the generation of millennials are coming up and they're distant enough from that, that they're not sort of, they're not bound by that sense of obligation to do just that. And they're more curious about really going back to, you know, what am I here to do? Yeah. I don't think they're fearful that the world's not going to work. I think right now you might be fearful it's going to get stuck in some ideological stasis. But look, the world's

okay. And it's a global world and we're all going to talk to each other and you guys can have it back. So now what do we do with it? So just the defensive mindset of hang on and don't lose ground. It's a very understandable position for somebody who grew up through the Great Depression or through World War I or World War II. Boy, if you understood how awful it is to go backward, you'd be pretty committed to just holding your ground and be thankful for that. But if you're not worried about going backward,

then you're thinking about going forward. And so millennials and Gen Z are definitely thinking about going forward. Yeah, I think that's a great thing. Great thing. Mayday, maydayday we've been compromised the pilot's a hitman i knew you were gonna be fun on january 24th tell me how to fly this thing mark walberg you know what the difference between me and you is you're gonna die don't shoot if we need them y'all need a pilot flight risk the apple watch series 10 is here it has the biggest display ever it's also the thinnest Flight risk. The Apple Watch Series 10. Available for the first time in glossy jet black aluminum.

Compared to previous generations, iPhone XS or later required. Charge time and actual results will vary. When you were doing the theological study, was this on the side or did you basically... It was on the side. Yeah. Because you're a family guy. You got other stuff going on. But I'm a consultant. See, I'm a freelance consultant. So if you're just willing to make less money, I made enough.

I clearly made less money doing the freelance work than if I had gone off and taken all the startup because virtually every client, half of them were startups and, hey, come join us, jump in, do this, be a co-founder. I got those invitations two, three times a year and they were very exciting and very engaging. And those could have been much more lucrative,

but I wasn't designing for maximum money. I was designing for maximum aliveness. So I actually thought I got away with murder. I mean, I really pulled off the coup. I had a fabulous family. I mean, I coached Little League and I taught Sunday school and I was at the dinner table on time every night and got to see my kids. I'm very close to my family. And I got some play time. I actually got in a mountain bike and did some other stuff, stayed reasonably healthy and did really interesting work with fascinating people and made a very good living at it. I mean, this is the deal of the century. Now, so one summer I took the entire summer off, took a six-week road trip with the kids through the Southwest.

Guys my age weren't doing that. All I have to do is not be completely freaked out that you're not making any money. And that's long enough that the phone stops ringing when you come back. Well, the world has completely forgotten me. Well, you can pull off generating new work. You're good to go. Yeah. Through this whole process, as you're doing a lot of internal seeking and exploring and being hyper-engaged with your family, are you having conversations with your partner about sort of like what's going on in your mind and what you're exploring? To the point of great exasperation. Oh my God, we have to talk about this again.

I'm extra intensive. I think out loud. You know, I hear stuff the same time you do. Yeah. You know, I'll often be noticed in a conversation. I'll say something and go, wait a minute, that's really true, isn't it? You know, because I'll literally hear it when you do. No, I'm thinking out loud all the time.

I'm very much a communitarian. I live in community. I have very close friends. There's a group of three other guys called TD3 Tom and Three Daves, a small group I put together in 1974 in college. We still meet annually. You know, we had a long weekend. We dive in. We go for the whole conversation.

So I've been living out loud for a long time. Yeah. Because a lot of this, it's, you could really consider yourself on a spiritual path here. And it's interesting to see that sometimes if one person is deeply invested in that path and another person is. Not so much. Yeah. Yeah.

It can really lead to struggle. Well, it depends how you hold it. Yeah. You know, so Bill Burnett, my partner and I at Stanford, we both have the delightful opportunity to regularly tell people, that's the best partner I ever got to work with. Now, on a worldview basis, we both think the other guy's a little nuts. Bill's my favorite atheist and I'm his favorite faithful person. And how does that even work? In fact, not only does it, when Bill and I sat down and said, okay, we're going to do this thing. We're going to actually build what's now become this big class in this course and this book.

We went up to a beer garden in the hills behind Stanford. And I said, we really got to pound through this spiritual question first. Because we're on the same page here. And we concluded that we could. And our obligation to ourselves is not merely come up with something that could work, that Dave's okay with it and Bill's okay with it. He doesn't have to check himself at the door. No, no, no. It's got to be much more than that.

So the system we come up with has got to not only be compatible with but be catalytic to whatever your point of view is. So designing your life has got to make Bill a better atheist. And designing your life has got to make Dave a better Christian. And if we understand how to be in community and support each other, and we really believe this is best done with a team of people, it's almost impossible to hear your own voice inside your head. We need community to hear ourselves. You know, one of our coworkers calls the small groups that we form in our class, the echo chamber in which one can hear one's own soul speak. And so Bill's job is to hold me accountable to being a

better Christian. And my job is to hold Bill accountable in his language and in his paradigm to being a better humanistic practicing existentialist. And we're good at that. I mean, probably my best spiritual accountability partner is an atheist. There's no reason we can't help each other be our better selves. My job isn't to make you dead. My job is to help you be a better version of Jonathan. Jonathan has the authority and the autonomy to be in charge of Jonathan's life. Even in my worldview, I'm a free will Christian. So if God thinks you deserve to be in charge of your life, maybe I should agree with him. So my job is to help you be you, not to help you be me.

That makes sense. And we see this all the time. I mean, last spring when I was here in New York, 110 people gather at the fire museum down in Chelsea and walk in and sit down at tables of six. Never met each other. They don't know anything. I've got 20-year-olds. I've got 80-year-olds. I've got a whole bunch of 30, 40, 50-year-olds and all kinds of different walks of life. We put them in groups of six and threes. And they spent all day long asking pretty hard questions of each other's lives and helping each other hear themselves.

And they do it beautifully. A little intention and a decent construct goes a long way. That's what we tried to build was a set of tools and ideas that people could apply that would help them doably step forward and build their lives.

There's a lot of should going on. Here's what you should do. Stop shooting on yourself. Get some usable tools. Get some friends. Get some help. Get going. Yeah.

And I also love the emphasis on community. That's something that when we started this, we kind of said there were three legs to the stool. There's media, education, community, but really didn't focus on the community. And the community literally had to happen. It started to emerge out of what we were doing. And once we started focusing on that, I was caught by surprise. I think if you look at almost any spiritual tradition, you see three pieces that are always there. You have the teacher, the teachings, and the community.

And they're there for a reason. And if you had asked me five years ago, what really matters most, I probably would have said the teachings first, the teacher second. The community is somewhere out there. And I've completely reversed my tune because I've seen – we run – every year now we run an adult summer camp where something close to 400 people converge from around the world. We take over a kid's sleepaway camp for three and a half days. And profoundly different people from all walks of life. Yeah. But it's this stunning, gorgeous, beautiful, open, surrendering, playful thing that happens. And we've tried to deconstruct why is this so beautiful? Why does it work so well?

And it's really illuminated how critically important this idea of community is in us being okay in the world, in us discovering ourselves. One of the things that I've come to realize also is that beyond having tools that people are sharing is that it's critical for people to feel safe in that community. Because without that, nothing happens. We seldom talk about this because it doesn't come up, but it's coming up now. So there's a pedagogical architecture underneath the way we teach and underneath the way we write. It's called the four C's. And the four C's are the container, the construct, the community, and the conversation.

And without the four C's, it doesn't happen. And with the four C's, it does. And if you do it right, you don't even notice. You shouldn't even see it. So the container, something's got to hold us together. So we're sitting in your studio. We're in this nice little room, you know, and we're talking to a certain group of people in a podcast format. It's going to be about an hour and you're all said and done.

You know, and that holds us together. That holds us in. And then there's the construct. Well, what are we talking about? Why does this matter? So, you know, the container is a class. The container is a book. I'm going to read this book about life design.

You know, and then what's the construct? Well, for us, it's design thinking. You have to have enough of a backbone that enables the conversation. And the sweet spot we were looking for is we need enough construct to get you going forward, but without becoming prescriptive or proscriptive. There's a lot of lovely things that people say euphemistically, and that's great, but there's no there there. And there's a lot of here's what you ought to do, directedness, which is overly stated.

So the sweet spot is give me something to work with that doesn't tell me the answer. That's a construct. And then around that construct and within that container, we have a shot at forming a community. We can do this. And then ultimately we say it's the conversation. We've heard time and time again. It was the very first thing we heard after the end of the very first prototype of the very first group of students in the summer of 2007. We said, well, great guys. Thanks for coming over for a couple hours. We had a couple of ideas we wanted to try. We're done now. And one guy goes, bam, and he slams his hand on the table and he says,

we're not going anywhere. We go, no, actually, well, we think we're in charge and we are going somewhere. And he goes, no, no, no. We have no place to have this conversation. We're not leaving. So what you're doing at camp is creating a container and a construct of some shared values and orientation that allows the community forum so the conversation happens in a way that's really generative. We see people doing lovely generative things with each other as long as we have a couple of core agreements, which are terribly important. Yeah, absolutely.

But then you're good to go. Yeah, so true. It's funny. We just had a little meetup in New York City last night, and there was a guy there who's been at our camp all three years, and we did something different this year, which is that everyone shows up, and then the

first night we send them off to their bunks because you live in like the kids' bunks community. Yeah, yeah. I was a camp counselor for years. All right. There you go. So we had – you know, like each – you know, bunk has its counselor. The person is kind of leading, you know, somebody who's been to camp a few years.

And this year we had a sheet where everyone would go around. We had a set of prompts because we wanted people to start to actually open up a bit. And last night, a gentleman who's been there every year now is saying to me, he went back to the guy's bunk last night. And then we saw, okay, we all had to answer these questions. And all the guys were rolling their eyes. Really? Really, really? This is not what we do. We're dudes. And he said, then they started to answer the questions and it turned into this like slowly by slowly profound emotional opening that nobody saw coming.

I think sometimes you need to, people need permission. But once it happens, it's like what you were saying, they don't want it to end because it happens so rarely outside of that container, that construct, like that conversation, that community is so rare these days. And I think it's a bit tragic because that is such a nourishing, and to use your word, generative part of life. We see this all the time and it is incredibly lovely. It's the kind of thing that brings tears to our eyes. I mean, we really feel incredibly humbled and privileged by the response the book is getting. And it means that what we had hoped for seems to be happening, that there's a conversation people want to have.

They're not well tooled for it. They're not well pre-constructed for it. The culture isn't just rolling off a log and saying, here, let's do it this way. They're not doing that. But people are immediately ready to. So we see that happen surprisingly quickly. It's, you know, we've over 10 years gone through in some, I mean, hundreds of iterations of really simple things like, okay, after you do this little exercise, what question do we ask? What question is the one that gives people permission to catalyze telling the truth in a way that's not, you know, overly invasive or underly supportive? And once somebody, you know, wants to play, wants to come to play, then things would do open up. Look, people are really interested in their lives. People would like things to get better. And if I can trust you to be helpful, I'm okay with that.

We see that time and again. Yeah. I think we're just looking for somebody to give us the prompt and to give us the tools and the container and the four Cs. I love that. I'm going to have to revisit that and think on that a bit. Well, that's what we were trying to do is that, you know, let's touch each of the, all the way from philosophic considerations, what's my life view and all the way down to how do I get the guy to reply to my email? I mean, so if I'm going to navigate my way forward in life,

I need tactical, practical tips. I need some ideas on how to think about what, because three in the morning, I'm going to wake up, I'm going to go into the bathroom, I'm going to stare in the mirror and the guy looking back is going to go, Dave, how did we get here? What are we doing? What is this about? And you want to have a good answer. So you want to address that question. So there's a variety

of things you've got to do. But if you can put that together for people, which is what we try to do, they've got the energy. I mean, the reason this works is the energy is not in the book. The energy is in the reader. Yeah. And I think the energy actually, processes like these actually amplify energy. Oh, sure. Because it wants to flow. It wants to get moving. Yeah. I mean, it's people who sit there and say, I'm flatline. I got nothing inside of me. I've got like nothing to give to this. Once they realize that they're in a process and experience where it's actually, it is, it's giving them what they want and need and it's opening doors to them. The energy just starts to be abundant. Well, it's, it's because that's the human experience.

Yeah. And we really, you know, what we now call design thinking is also still correctly called. And for many years it was only called human centered design. And the idea was, you know, that humans aren't the same as machines. So what are people really like? What do people really need? How do people think? How do people change? How do people enact?

And so this thing is built for real people in real time. The two things we hear back from this lovely new community of persons we never met before who are people who met us just by reading a book. They didn't come to our class. They weren't a client. They just read the book. And they say, number one, you know, I think I can do this. And I'm exiting this – I'm entering this feeling more hopeful now, which we're really encouraged by because there's a lot of counsel out there

that's not doable. It's not sustainable. It's too hard. Be your amazing, fabulous self all the time, you know. I mean, we're on a speaking diocese with Abby Wambach, the world's most famous female soccer forward. And I said, can you perform at your

Olympic best 24-7, 52 weeks a year for the rest of your years? Are you kidding? You want to peak just in time? I mean, so that council doesn't work. Let's do things

that are humanly accessible. You know, set the bar low, clear it, iterate, move forward in a human way. That's what we're trying to get people to do. So the permission is, you know, you don't have just one passion. You have lots of interests. You don't yet know the

future. So you can't analyze. I really should know by now. You can't know. So let's go build it. There's a discovery-oriented way to live into your life as an accumulating process. So if we just start acting like people are, all we're doing is – one of the reasons this is working is not – I mean the tools and ideas are good. Look, that's great. It's a fabulous book. You should buy it. But the reason it's fabulous isn't because we're so clever. The reason it's fabulous is because the tools are solid and they're just like people.

So real people who want tools that work find it workable. It's the tools that aren't very human that aren't working very well. Being more human is a good thing. Yeah, I've heard that. Don't tell a New Yorker. We're not supposed to let that out. Okay. We've got to have our heads down and wear a lot of dark clothing.

So you make a living having these kind of conversations. Crazy, right? What a gig. Isn't this insane? It's like the biggest scam. Well, you clearly incremented your way forward into this. I did. This has been a series of prototypes and implementations and stumbles left and right and course adjustments.

Which is, by the way, the shortest path. That tacking back and forth through the wind. I believe that, too. There is no linear line. This is way, the shortest path. That tacking back and forth through the wind. I believe that too. There is no linear line. This is wayfinding versus navigation. GPS works because I know where I am, where I'm going, and all the data about everything in between. So I can get you right where you're going. That's GPS.

But in the future of a human experience, particularly being the person you're growing into, I should have it all figured out. Well, that means the person you want to become two, five, ten years from now, you can anticipate out of the person you are today. Right. Which you can't. I hope my 80-year-old Dave has ideas I can't even understand right now. Yeah. So we've got to build our way forward. Yeah.

I mean, the idea that we all have a predefined point that we need to move towards, which we know to be right, It's just this, I think it's a fallacy that causes so much pain because even if we get it and we get, even if we figure out the straight line there, the GPS to it, almost guaranteed you get there and you're like, so how do you feel? Do you feel the way you thought you'd feel? No. No. And how long did that work? Bill loves to say, you know, modify the military phrase and say, you know, plans seldom survive their first contact with reality, with reality. So it just doesn't work like that. Yeah, so interesting.

You and I could go on for a long time. I want to come full circle here because we're coming up on an hour. So the name of this is Good Life Project. So if I offer that phrase out to you, to live a good life, what comes up? The good life. For me, certainly for many people, I think the good life has some component of living authentically. It's got to be an honest expression for me. And hopefully it leaves the campground better than I found it. I'm an old boy scout. So I'd like to leave the world a little better than I found it. But I got to do

that in a way that's authentic to who I am. So the good life exercises my embodiment of aliveness in some kind of honest, maybe even beautiful way. And it blesses those around me. You know, it becomes something of a grace. You know, I think that would be a good line. Thank you. Thanks so much for listening to today's episode. If the stories and ideas in any way moved you, I would so appreciate if you would take just a few extra seconds for two quick things one If it's touched you in some way if there's some idea or moment in the story or in the conversation That you really feel like you would share with somebody else that it would make a difference in somebody else's life Take a moment and whatever app you're using

Just share this episode with somebody who you think it'll make a difference for Email it if that's the easiest thing, whatever is easiest for you. And then of course, if you're compelled, subscribe so that you can stay a part of this continuing experience. My greatest hope with this podcast is not just to produce moments and share stories and ideas that impact one person listening, but to let it create a conversation, to let it serve as a catalyst for the elevation of all of us together collectively, because that's how we rise. When stories and ideas become conversations that lead to action, that's when real change happens. And I would love to invite you to participate on that level. Thank you so much as always for your intention,

for your attention, for your heart. And I wish you only the best. I'm Jonathan Fields, signing off for Good Life Project. We'll be right back. The Apple Watch Series X is here. It has the biggest display ever. It's also the thinnest Apple Watch ever, making it even more comfortable on your wrist, whether you're running, swimming, or sleeping. And it's the fastest-charging Apple Watch, getting you eight hours of charge in just 15 minutes. The Apple Watch Series X.

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