Designing a Life that Matters

20:51But, you know, even if you do pull off that impact, what have you done for me lately? Yeah. You know, I mean, you know, I shipped the mouse a long time ago. What have you done for us lately? So impact, the feeling that comes from an impact doesn't last. And frankly, most of the time, pulling off having an impact doesn't work. So it's a very risky business to decide that's the only way my life is meaningful.

21:20So in some ways, we've hitched our wagons to these two horses, fulfillment and impact. And in some ways, they're both mirages. Yeah. And even for some people who are pulling it off, I've got friends my age starting their seventh company. You know, look at this. Anna, why are you doing this again? Well, I'm really good at it. Well, I know, but we knew that five companies ago. I mean, don't you have another idea yet? And frankly, what they are is they're so stuck on pulling off that impact thing, they become addicted to it and they can't let go. And then when they finally get to the place where they can't do it anymore, it's an existential crisis.

22:07Let's look at another dysfunctional belief that gets in the way of living a meaningful life, Dave. Many of us feel stuck in one way or another. We're not sure why or what to do. Some people call it a midlife crisis, or I've even heard the term quarter life crisis now. Your colleague, Bill Burnett, once had a student that you call Sonia. Sonia had a problem. What was this problem? Well, she too had, you know, she was working in high technology and she went to a great big company and she was writing code and she was one of these successful people. The stuff she's writing, millions, even billions of people are using.

22:42And she's making a good living. She's working with really intelligent people. She's growing and learning new things. Wow, this is this is working on every front. Except then, you know, she suddenly realized I'm just turning the crank. You know, I'm part of this mechanism of high technology, you know, having people click things through and look at another website. Does that really matter to me? And am I stuck on this thing forever? And I mean, she was in her early 20s and already felt like she was not hitting the ceiling. she was hitting the wall because she kind of looked forward through the lens of, you know, techno-capitalism and said, that's all this thing is forever.

23:25Talk about the idea, Dave, that when we are feeling stuck and desperate like this, many of us look for a single big solution that can get us unstuck. You know, there's this magical idea that there is this one place I really deserve to be, my special calling, my special place in the world. What is the universe inviting me to do? Or where is my passion? All these different narratives come around. There's this lovely idea that I will find it, which either has no compromise or just tiny little compromises and really lights up the dashboard of my soul and makes me feel like I am in the right place, doing the right thing.

24:03This is what I was made for. And then and then only do I deserve to be happy and feel like I'm being my authentic self. And that almost never really happens. I understand that Sonia did this. She basically decided that she was going to make a radical change in this career that she was unhappy with. Yeah, she really wanted to make a jump, and she was particularly attracted to something radically different because it really wanted to feel different. And a number of her friends were in the process of going up to the San Juan Islands and jumping into working together and revitalizing an old farm and making it an organic farm.

24:37So Maybe I can just go back to the land and have a personal experience and join this commune of organic farmers. And that's what's really going to work for me. We don't really know how that all worked out for her, but there's a very similar story. Another young man I know who was highly successful in high technology stopped out and went to try to start an artist commune. Actually bought a property in a rural area, brought artists in like we're going to have this creative environment. It's going to be great. And did that for about two years. And then that was lovely. and then realize all it is is radically different.

25:10I don't even really like this. This isn't that interesting. At the end of the day, these people are kind of boring because all they want to talk about is this one little narrow view about art. And what I fell for was the radical shift. And radical shifts are radical, but that radicalism doesn't last very long. And you're still stuck with waking up being you, living in the world. Is this the life I want to be in? Let's look at another dysfunctional belief that gets in the way of our happiness. This one is about the idea that if we don't feel good about doing what we're doing, the solution is to double down, work harder, and grind.

25:42Now, of course, there is a vast amount of research that finds that hard work is strongly correlated with success, but I want to talk about the misguided idea we have that more is always better. Can you talk about your own life choices here, Dave? When your first kid was born, you were, you know, I don't know how to put this kindly, you were a workaholic. Yeah, you know, it really is. Well, if this is good, more is better. You know, the psychologists call this hedonic treadmill. This is how addiction works. You know, how much is enough? A little bit more. And so what I was trying to do was trying to be a successful business person.

26:18So I was growing rapidly and getting more responsibility. And, you know, having one kid is a good idea. Let's have more. So by this time, I've got three kids, you know, and I've got so I've got twice as big a family and about five times as big a job. And, of course, my obligation just to do everything well. And I'm not. It takes me about 75 hours a week to do that job. I learned how to operate on three to four hours of sleep a night, which was a bit of a disaster. And then I had a severe comeuppance one Saturday morning, about nine o 'clock. I'm sitting in the family room drinking a cup of coffee.

26:53And I heard my then three-year-old son, Robbie, say to his mother, Mom, can we play with Dad today or are he just going to fall asleep in the chair again? Wow. And I went, oh, my God. When I was Robbie's age, my dad was gone because he died. When Robbie's Robbie's age, his dad's gone because he's asleep. You know, a corpse, a sleeping guy, about the same thing. And I suddenly had this epiphany. Oh, my God, I've got to fix this. It's not working. More is not working.

27:38You know, we had Lydie Klotz on Hidden Brain some years ago, and that episode has stuck with me ever since. And his thesis is that whenever we're trying to do something in our lives, our instinctive approach is always to add, to do something more, to increase what we're doing, to add the extra note in a score of music, to add the extra ingredient in a dish that we're cooking, to always think of addition rather than subtraction. Whereas very often, it is subtraction that gets us to the person and the place we want to be. It is indeed. You know, Georgia O 'Keeffe, an artist that you're talking about, is that it's in elimination that things become available.

28:19The biggest decision you make as an artist is to decide what not to include. It's about getting more out of. In fact, probably the life you're already in is full of more meaning-making, full of more aliveness. if you have the tricks, the wherewithal, and particularly the mindsets necessary to see it, to attend to it, and to get it from it. So we really want to free people up. We want people to be free to get what's already there.

28:50The poet Mary Oliver famously asked, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life? It's a wonderful question. It can prompt us to dream big, to ask if our ambitions are equal to our potential. But it's also the kind of question that can make us feel that whatever we do is not enough. If one lifetime cannot contain all that we can do, surely our hopes and dreams will always be far greater than our accomplishments. Doesn't that set us up for a lifetime of feeling like we are not measuring up, not doing enough? For a lifetime of unhappiness? When we come back, how to root our dreams and ambitions in the soil of what is possible.

29:32You're listening to Hidden Brain. I'm Shankar Vedanta.

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32:01If you have a personal story you'd be willing to share with the Hidden Brain audience, please find a very quiet room and record a voice memo on your phone. Two or three minutes is plenty. Send the audio file to us using the email address feedback at hiddenbrain.org. Use the subject line stuck. Again, that's feedback at hiddenbrain.org.

32:27We all make plans, set goals, and chase after what we believe will bring us happiness. But then, almost inevitably, things don't go the way we expect. Life doesn't work out the way we imagined. What if the problem isn't us, or even the vagaries of life, but the way we are approaching our goals? Dave Evans is co-author with Bill Burnett of How to Live a Meaningful Life, using design thinking to unlock purpose, joy, and flow every day. He argues that thinking like a designer can help us establish the foundations of a good life. Dave, you've taught design thinking for many years. You've come on the show before to talk about this idea.

33:10For listeners who are not familiar with this approach, what is design thinking? Well, design thinking is, first of all, the relatively new, about 15 - or 20-year-old nomenclature, name we have for a process that was originally conceived at Stanford going back to 1963 called Human-Centered Design, HCD. We renamed it Design Thinking about 20 years ago. It makes it a little more accessible, more accurate, really. And all it is is a methodology to innovatively come up with ideas and solutions to problems that are not easily solved. Problems where you don't know what you're looking for until you find it.

33:49And when you find it, it's so unique to the context and the persons involved, it's not replicatable, and it changes over time. And so design thinking is an approach to, number one, understanding the problem you're working on and what you might try to do about it, and then having ideas that turn into prototypes, experiments to learn your way forward and see what might actually work, and then you can implement something that actually is feasible. So what Bill and I did starting 20 years ago is we took those ideas about designing a future thing you've never done before into designing ourselves, not just designing products.

34:27And that's turned out to be a pretty interesting conversation. So one of the imperatives of design thinking is to grapple with problems at the right scale. are. So when we ask ourselves, what is the meaning of life? You say that could be an interesting question, but that might be a very bad design question. Can you explain why? Yeah, we say problem finding precedes problem solving. And one of the reasons many efforts fail is you're working on the wrong thing. Very often you're working on too big a thing or the wrong thing. And so trying to answer that one ultimate existential question, what is the meaning of my life?

35:05What will I be able to say on my deathbed and be satisfied with? Whew, that is a really tall bar. And frankly, we don't know how to design for that because it takes the whole life to answer it. So we like working on answerable, doable problems. And the better question is not what's the meaning of life, but how might I live a more meaningful life now? And that's what we're trying to help people do.

35:37Let's talk about some of the ways that design thinking can make the question of life's meaningfulness more achievable, more doable. You point to a number of different design principles that can help break down this question. The first is something that you call fully engaged and calmly detached. What do you mean by this, Dave? What does it mean to have the mind of a designer? Designers who think this way look at the world a little bit differently. So fully engaged and calmly detached is this aspirational mindset that says, I want to be entirely available, entirely engaged with what I'm doing that's right in front.

36:12I'm having a conversation with this incredibly lovely person named Shaka Vedantam on this fabulous conversation called Hidden Brain with a bunch of thoughtful people. Am I paying attention or am I thinking about what I'm going to have with dinner with my friend who's staying over at the house tonight. So I want to be fully engaged, but I also want to be calmly detached because there's this thing called the outcome of what I'm doing that in truth, I have no control over. At the end of the day, doing the right thing is all I can do, the best I can possibly do. So I can control my participation, but I cannot control the outcome.

36:46And it turns out those two things then become competitors. If I get too wound up in worrying about the outcome, is this going to go oh, well, is Shankar going to like the episode? I wonder what the listeners will think. If I'm too distracted by my involvement in the outcome, I'm too attached to that outcome, it's going to get in the way of my participation. So the best way to be fully engaged is to let go of the outcome, and then we'll take things as they come. And of course, this happens at an interpersonal level all the time. Someone gives us feedback, the feedback is critical, and instead of listening to it or exploring it with curiosity, we get defensive because we now are saying someone is criticizing what I'm doing.

37:27Someone doesn't like the outcomes of what I'm doing. I'm working so hard. I'm a good person. And now suddenly your ego gets caught up with the problem. And now you can't listen to the advice for what it actually is. Being all committed to the outcome that you have in mind, frankly, completely takes you out of what you're already doing. It's not that I don't care. It's that I'm not so committed to it and involved to it that I now am staking my reputation on it. I'm staking my identity. And now I've got a psychological attachment to it. And it's all about me. So what it really boils down to is recognizing that it's not about you all the time.

38:15Many years ago, the researcher Ron Howard talked about the quality of the decision versus the quality of the outcome. And in some ways, that has bearing on what we've been just talking about, Dave. Can you explain this idea? It turns out, thinking well, making a good decision is a good idea. And if we could run, you know, the same decision in a thousand parallel universes and watch all the vagaries, you know, the better decisions would probably work out more often than the bad decisions. But let's be clear, I'm not in charge of the future. You can influence as best you possibly can. But let's have an honest and humble perspective on ourselves.

38:53I'm doing the best I can, but that doesn't mean it's going to work. So in some ways, what I'm hearing you say is that when it comes to the outcome of our decisions, acknowledging them with some humility means that I can plan for a beautiful wedding, but I might want to tell myself it could rain that day. The caterers might get a flat tire on their way to the venue. The venue itself might burn to the ground. There are many things that are outside my control, and acknowledging them at the outset might in some ways limit my expectations and frustrations when things don't go the way I want. Absolutely.

39:27What we're trying to do is I'm trying to give reality its best possible chance of turning out the way I hope. And then once I'm doing that, then I release the fact that then I get to fully participate in the reality that is actually going to occur. So if indeed I've planned this thing and it rains that day, well, I can spend all afternoon going shoot, shoot, shoot, shoot, shoot, you know, and being mad at the weatherman who owed me a sunny afternoon. Or just go, okay, and what can we do with this? You know, there's this phrase, making the best of a bad situation. That's really unfair. The situation doesn't think of itself as bad.

40:02The rain's not going, I'm here to ruin your party. You know, the rain's just falling. So it's really making the best of the situation. All we're ever trying to do is make the best of the situation.

40:25another design principle you talk about is story crafting um what is story crafting david well there's the old line that life is a story we tell ourselves and the psychologist will remind us now that's true your internal narrative really matters and so story crafting is about but picking carefully the story that you are telling yourself and living into, because it has a profound effect, both on the life you live and the quality of your experience of it. Of course, that story has to be true. It can't be a fantasy story. We're not fans of magical thinking, but we are big fans of picking the story that's truest and most generative to give you the best possible chance of becoming fully alive.

41:10You and others have looked at the role that story crafting plays among first-generation college students. Tell me about this work and what you find. Well, you know, Stanford is, of course, an elite university. But what people lose track of is, you know, 80 percent of our students are on financial aid. So they're not prep school kids. And by no means are they all highly resourced. We have lots of first-generation students or under-resourced students who really suffer the imposter syndrome. Like, man, do I really belong here? And there are a group of people in the education school and psychology department who work on intervening in ways that might be helpful to these students.

41:44And one of the results was, it turned out, as short as a 15-minute intervention with a first-generation student on the narrative they're telling themselves can have a transformative effect that lasts not only all four years of college, but five or ten years after. And the narrative simply is not, yeah, you're under-resourced and all those guys who went to the prep school are going to kick your butt. That story is then replaced by the reason you're here is you're highly capable. You can do this work and there are lots of resources to help you that you can avail yourself of. And if that story, that alternate narrative is offered to that first-gen student by another first-gen student two or three years older than them for whom it has worked, they believe it, and literally that 15 minutes, their performance changes permanently.

42:47I want to talk about another design principle, but first I want to talk about some of your own experience as a designer. When you were an undergraduate engineering student, Dave, you were also a firefighter, and one of the first products you designed was a fire hydrant wrench. What is a fire hydrant wrench? Well, if you ever take a look at your neighborhood fire hydrant, there's a little, you know, cover over the nozzle where the water comes out on one side, and on the other side of that thing, there's a little post sticking out. That's actually the valve that opens and closes the hydrant. And if you look at it, it's in the shape of a pentagon.

43:22It's in the shape of a five-sided pentagon. And the reason is because we don't want people opening fire hydrants who don't know what they're doing. And so when I went into mechanical engineering and went into the PRL, the product realization lab, which you might call the machine shop. I walked in there with a great big chunk of brass. And the idea was to mill that thing into a fire hydrant wrench that had one of those Pentagon things on it on the one hand and a kind of special curvy thing on the other to take the cover off because you need one of those if you're fighting a fire. Tell me what happened as you were trying to mold this brass thingy into a wrench.

43:59Did it all go smoothly? It went very unsmoothly because I didn't know what I was doing. I'd never done anything like that before. I never used the machine. I didn't know how to use a mill or a lathe or a high-speed, you know, metal bandsaw. I'd never worked with anything that heavy before. I was completely inexperienced. You know, broke tools. I had to get more materials. And I had this idea in my head about this perfect wrench that I'd seen that was, you know, bought from a very expensive supplier. And then I finally realized what I was doing was, which is a metaphor for the rest of real life is, I'm trying to make a real thing.

44:37I'm trying to bring it into being, trying to take something and allow something real, something finite, something limited, something constrained, something even with flaws in it to come into being. And all that struggle with, you know, breaking parts and what have you proved to me that this thing was going to be a compromise.

45:05You say that the way we craft physical objects can teach us something about how to craft and make meaningful moments out of the daily events of our lives. And you call this moment-making. What do you mean by this term? Well, the thing about making anything is, of course, it's limitation. And this goes back to one of our big reframes around the meaning question is what we call the scandal of particularity, which is there is no perfect fire hydrant wrench. There is no perfect birthday cake. There is no perfect conversation with Chakra Vedanta. There's only the one I'm actually in. So thing one in making something is recognizing its limitation.

45:41All ultimates are only really found in the particular. And they reflect that. They're not the fullness of it, but they reflect it honestly. And that isn't a problem. It's not, oh, I fell short again. It's not the perfect fire hydrant wrench. It's the real one. All the hours I spent making this thing, it started with a great big block of brass, and it ended up being a very specific thing. It's very much like sculpture, you know, like, you know, Michelangelo releasing the angel from the marble. I'm in the process of releasing the wrench from the block. And if all I want is the end result, then everything I did up to that It simply doesn't matter.

46:18And every mistake I make is in the way and a problem. As opposed to, yes, I need to pay enough attention that this thing will actually work when it's all said and done. That matters. However, was I present at the time? Was I actually noticing and learning how to use the machine tools? Was I noticing how a sharpened tool works differently than a dull tool? Did I understand the difference between brass and steel? Did I get the feel that I actually feel? and you can if you do this right, you can feel the metal cutting in your hands. And do you understand that experience? And now I'm actually being a maker, not just I completed making.

46:58And so if everything's just the outcome, when it's all done, by the way, the second I finished making that wrench, how long does the moment of being done last? A microsecond? Now it's passed. So what's next? And I missed it. I missed the whole darn thing. You know, people very often miss the whole darn thing because all they wanted was the outcome, and then it's over.

47:32I mean, philosophers and spiritual traditions have told us for centuries that we have to live in the moment, and in some ways that's what I hear you saying. It's exactly what we're saying. I mean, Ram Dass said it a long time ago. you know, be here now. Because at the end of the day, that's the essence of it. We call it the flow world, not the transaction world. The transaction was finish the wrench, make it available on the fire truck. That's a transaction. But the moment was standing at the lathe and actually experiencing how a cutting tool and a piece of metal interact. That's entering into the fullness of the moment.

48:06So moment making turns out to be the critical task of people who want to design more meaning in their life, and particularly the kinds of meaning that can transcend not just impact making, which is wonderful, but hard and short-lived. These moments full of potential meaningful experience abound in front of us. So the number one skill of a meaning-making designer is moment making.

48:43I'm also reflecting, Dave, that the process that you're describing to build a fire hydrant wrench also applies in some ways to interpersonal contexts and emotional situations. When we're working on something with someone, we're working as part of a team, when we are managing someone, when we're dealing with a boss, when we are thinking about a child or a partner or a spouse, All of these involve relationships that are under construction. And in fact, they're under construction all the time. And when you have that mindset, you're not trying to think about, okay, there is a perfect place I'm going to get to with this other person.

49:21And once we get to that place, we're going to be happy forever. We're going to live happily forever, as the fairy tales say. In some ways, it takes the pressure off the outcome and gives us more enjoyment in the process. Absolutely. And one of the little tools we've invented for that is the got to get to shift. When you're thinking transactionally, you're in the transactional world, it's all about getting it done. So I've got to get this thing done. I've got to get through this meeting. I've got to get these people to agree. I've got to sign this contract. I've got to get these tasks assigned, whatever that might be.

49:52You know, as opposed to I get to participate in this process. There's a lovely illustration that I think I have permission to use. Our editor, who's working with us on this book, is, you know, she's working at home remote one day. and her child is in the other room making a bunch of noise while she's about to go onto a Zoom call. And she started saying to herself, I've got to find a way to get this kid to quiet down while I'm working. And then she suddenly remembered, oh yeah, she had just read the got to get to idea in the manuscript and said, no, no, no. I get to work at home now, which means I get to be in the presence of the effervescent sound coming out of this very alive child.

50:32I still get to work in the presence of that. I can put on my headphones and solve that problem easily. I'm so lucky that I get to be here and be a part of that. Now, how do I, I've got to find a way to shut the kid up. And she said, and that took about two seconds to have that change of mind, and everything changed. So that's what we're looking for. We're looking for, see it a different way and have a surprising change of your psychic experience of your own life. And of course, many of us discover this too late, Dave. You know, when we lose someone in our lives, we now say, you know, I would give anything to have that person back with us, even though when they were with us, we were often frustrated by them or irritated by them or wishing that they would say or do something different.

51:14And of course, we recognize that we are actually happy with all those things when we don't have that person anymore. Yeah, you know, I had this experience in my 20s in my career where I suddenly realized that I was living entirely in the future that I would never get to. and then there was a time I was talking with an intensive care unit nurse about this problem of always the next thing, always the next thing. You know, we get there and then get the next goal, then the next goal. And frankly, you're never really enjoying the meal. You're just trying to get it over with. And she said, oh yeah, yeah, we have a term for that.

51:45We call it destination sickness. I go, what the heck is destination sickness? She goes, oh yeah, you know, here in the ICU, particularly at Stanford, we have all these highly accomplished people. And it was always, you know, when I finished the degree and then when I get the grad degree and then when I I get the good job. And then I make partner. And then I make my first million. And it's always their next thing will make me happy. And she said, and some of the people here, like the ones in their mid-50s who've burned their heart out and now they're actually going to die. There's nothing more we can do for them.

52:13They suddenly realize there is no next thing. And then they look back at all the things they ran through and they realize they missed the whole thing. and frankly she said and most of them die in despair and realize it's too late I mean I shuddered I said oh my god she goes oh yeah it's really rough by the way here's a tip don't do that

52:57Are the challenges we face in designing our lives the same as we go through different stages of our lives? Turns out, they are not. Designing your life when you are a high school or college student is a very different challenge than designing your life when you're in the thick of a career or when you're contemplating retirement. In our companion episode, available exclusively for our subscribers on Hidden Brain Plus, we look at how different design strategies apply to different stages of our lives. If you're already a subscriber, that episode is available right now in this podcast feed. It's titled Seasons of Meaning.

53:36If you're not yet a subscriber, please consider signing up. Go to support.hiddenbrain.org. If you're using an Apple device, go to apple.co.hiddenbrain. You can get a free trial in both places and you'll instantly have access to all our subscriber-only content. Again, that's support.hiddenbrain.org or apple.co slash hiddenbrain.

54:06Dave Evans and Bill Burnett are co-authors of How to Live a Meaningful Life, Using Design Thinking to Unlock Purpose, Joy, and Flow Every Day. Dave, thank you so much for joining me today on Hidden Brain. Thanks, Shakur. It's great to be here.

54:25Do you have questions or comments about how to live a more meaningful life? Have you felt stuck in life but then found a way forward? If you have a personal story you'd be willing to share with the Hidden Brain audience, or if you have a question or comment about design thinking, please find a very quiet room and record a voice memo on your phone. Two or three minutes is plenty. Email the audio file to us using the email address feedback at hiddenbrain.org. Use the subject line stuck. Again, that email address is feedback at hiddenbrain.org. Our conversation with Dave Evans continues next week.

55:05Many of us think of meaning as something we find, but meaning is really something we design. By staying curious, experimenting, and reframing our challenges, we can create lives that feel purposeful and grounded instead of rushed and depleted. In our conversation next week, we focus on what may be the most difficult challenge in designing our lives. It isn't about where we want to go. It's about accepting where we are right now. Please tune in for it. It's titled Radical Acceptance. Hidden Brain is produced by Hidden Brain Media Our audio production team includes Annie Murphy-Paul Kristen Wong, Laura Querell, Ryan Katz Autumn Barnes, Andrew Chadwick and Nick Woodbury Tara Boyle is our executive producer I'm Hidden Brain's executive editor If you liked this episode, please share it with a couple of friends Word-of-mouth recommendations are the way most people find their way to our show I'm Shankar Vedantam See you soon.

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