As someone who has spent the majority of my career in product, I'm familiar with the concept and process of "design thinking". In fact, a former colleague who attended the Stanford d.school was kind enough to share much of what she learned there with me and a few others through a series of design thinking workshops about a half-dozen years ago. So, when I stumbled upon the following Tedx Talk by Bill Burnett, I knew it would be well worth the 25-minute investment.

Bill is one of the founders of the Life Design Lab a Stanford and the author of, Designing Your Life: How to Build a Well-Lived, Joyful Life.

In this talk titled, "5 steps to designing the life you want", Bill discusses how design thinking principles can be applied to help you design your life.

Even if you decide to not invest the time and energy in following the five steps and even if you don't intentionally apply design thinking principles to your life, I believe there is value in adopting the simple encouragement offered at the close of the video.

  • Get Curious
  • Talk to People
  • Try Stuff

I don't know about you but I would do well to use those three bullet points as standing "to-dos" on my daily calendar.