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The search for a meaningful life often feels like an impossible quest for a single, hidden destination. We are frequently told that we have one "true" purpose or one "right" career path, and if we fail to find it, we have failed at life itself. However, according to Dave Evans and Bill Burnett, the founders of the Stanford Life Design Lab, this perspective is fundamentally flawed. Life is not a problem to be solved with a single correct answer; it is a creative project to be designed through experimentation, curiosity, and action.
Key Takeaways
- Multiple "Right" Lives: You contain more personhood than one lifetime allows, meaning there are several versions of a "good life" you could lead successfully.
- The Odyssey Plan: Designing your future requires mapping out three distinct five-year paths: the current path, the pivot path, and the "wild card" path.
- Prototyping over Planning: Instead of making massive life changes, use small "prototypes" like narrative conversations and "ride-alongs" to test new directions.
- Flow vs. Transaction: True meaning is often found in the "awakened brain" or flow state, rather than the "achieving brain" focused on transactional success.
The Myth of the One True Path
Many people suffer from what designers call "anchor problems"—stuckness caused by the belief that they must find the one perfect path to happiness. Dave Evans and Bill Burnett argue that this mindset creates unnecessary anxiety. Notably, their research at Stanford University suggests that the average person has at least seven or eight different "lives" within them. If you are currently living one version of your life, you are only experiencing about 14% of your potential personhood at any given time.
This realization should be liberating rather than overwhelming. It means that there is no "getting it right" because there are multiple ways to get it "good." As Evans points out, the goal of life design is to build your way forward through doing, learning, and growing, rather than waiting for a moment of absolute certainty that may never come.
There is no getting you right. There is no right life. They're just getting it going.
Designing Your Odyssey Plans
To move past the paralysis of choice, Evans and Burnett utilize a tool called Odyssey Planning. This exercise asks you to imagine three completely different versions of your next five years. By visualizing multiple futures, you quiet your internal critic and open your mind to latent possibilities. The three plans should follow this structure:
Plan 1: The Existing Path
In this version, you imagine that your current life or career trajectory continues to go well. What does life look like in five years if you stay the course and find success in your current environment?
Plan 2: The Pivot Path
This plan assumes that your first option is suddenly gone. If your current industry disappeared or your primary path was blocked, what would you do to pay the bills and find fulfillment? This forces you to identify transferable skills and secondary interests.
Plan 3: The Wild Card
This is the "money is no object" path. If you knew nobody would laugh at you and financial constraints were removed, what would you do? Whether it is becoming a painter, a dive instructor, or writing a fantasy trilogy, this path reveals your deepest curiosities.
Prototyping: Building Your Way Forward
Once you have identified potential paths, the next step is not to quit your job or make a drastic commitment. Instead, life designers use prototyping. A prototype is a low-stakes experiment designed to gather data about a potential future. It is about "building to think" rather than "thinking to build."
Effective prototyping often takes two forms:
- Narrative Conversations: Instead of asking for a job, ask for a story. Talk to people who are already living the life you are curious about. Ask them what their daily reality is like, what they love, and what they struggle with. This provides "surrogation"—experiencing the reality through someone else's eyes.
- Small Experiments: If you want to be a writer, try writing a short essay every day for a week before committing to a master's degree. If you want to be an actor, find a local community improv class. These small moves provide immediate feedback on whether the "aliveness" you imagined is actually there.
The Awakened Brain and the Flow World
Meaning is rarely found in the transactional world—the realm of budgets, to-do lists, and status. While the "achieving brain" is necessary for survival and career progression, it often leaves people feeling empty. To experience a meaningful life, Evans and Burnett suggest leaning into the flow world.
Flow is a state of total engagement where time seems to disappear. This is often associated with the "awakened brain," a concept supported by the work of Dr. Lisa Miller at Columbia University. In this state, you move from "got to" (obligation) to "get to" (opportunity). Critics of modern work culture argue that we are over-practiced in achievement and under-practiced in flow. Designing more meaning into your life often involves reallocating time from "mindless scrolling" to activities that trigger this awakened state, even if only for twenty minutes a day.
We are here to give you tools to design more meaning in life, not just find the meaning of life.
Overcoming the "Too Late" Fallacy
A common barrier to life design is the fear that time has run out. Whether you are 22 or 72, the feeling of being "behind" is a pervasive social construct. However, the math of longevity suggests otherwise. Evans illustrates this by walking through the timeline of a 54-year-old woman wanting to enter medical school. Even with years of schooling and residency, she would still have nearly two decades of active practice ahead of her.
The "design mindset" is inherently optimistic. It posits that as long as you are breathing, you are "becoming." There is no age at which curiosity loses its value. Instead of mourning the years that have passed, life designers focus on the focus question: What is the invitation to become more myself in this particular season of my life?
Conclusion: The 10-Word Blueprint
Designing a meaningful life does not require a complex, hundred-page manifesto. It can be boiled down to a simple, iterative process that anyone can start today. If you feel overwhelmed by the magnitude of your future, Evans and Burnett suggest returning to these ten words:
Get curious. Talk to people. Try stuff. Tell your story.
By shifting from a mindset of "knowing" to a mindset of "doing," you remove the pressure to be perfect. You recognize that you are a highly capacious creature with more potential than a single lifetime can contain. Start small, set the bar low, and begin prototyping your way toward the multiple "good lives" waiting to be discovered.
