Productivity
Designing Your Life Summary & Review: You Don’t Find a Passion — You Prototype One
Designing Your Life summary: Burnett and Evans replace 'find your passion' with Odyssey Plans, prototypes, and a 7-day plan to design a…
Read Summary →Bill Burnett
"The Stanford designer who treats a stuck career as a prototype, not a calling"
Bill Burnett is a product designer and executive director of the Design Program at Stanford University. After years at Apple he helped build Stanford’s life-design course with Dave Evans, turning studio habits — many sketches, cheap tests, iteration — into tools ordinary people can run on a Tuesday. He co-authored Designing Your Life (Knopf, 2016) and Designing Your Work Life (2020).
1 book·Life Design & Career Design
Books by Bill Burnett
Our in-depth summaries and reviews of his work
Key Ideas & Recurring Themes
Passion is a lagging indicator
Interest shows up after a life is working, not as a prerequisite you must hunt first.
Odyssey Plans
Three five-year lives on paper — the path you are on, the pivot, and a wild card.
Prototype conversations
Ask someone living a version of the life what the days are made of before you leap.
Notable Quotes
"A well-designed life is a life that is generative — it is constantly creative, productive, changing, evolving, and there is always the possibility of surprise."— Designing Your Life
"You can't know what you want until you know who you are."— Designing Your Life
Book Author Bill Burnett
Designing Your Life Summary & Review: You Don’t Find a Passion — You Prototype One
Designing Your Life summary: Burnett and Evans replace 'find your passion' with Odyssey Plans, prototypes, and a 7-day plan to design a life that fits.