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How to Live a Meaningful Life

Using Design Thinking to Unlock Purpose, Joy, and Flow Everyday.

The #1 New York Times bestselling authors of Designing Your Life return with a groundbreaking guide to transforming your daily routine into one brimming with meaning.

Enter our early reader giveaway to get an advanced copy of the book

We’re giving away 100 advance copies of How to Live a Meaningful Life: Using Design Thinking to Unlock Purpose on Goodreads. Enter the giveaway here.

Learn why we wrote this book

“I’ve done everything right. Work, family, friends… I ‘figured it out’ but I still feel stuck”

We’ve heard this so many times. Even from the millions of people that Designing Your Life has helped figure out what to do with their life.

People are stuck. And they are stuck on the question of meaning. What is the meaning of life? This question has been around for as long as humans, but most people still haven’t figured out an answer to it. Well, we can’t blame them. “What is the meaning of life?” is not a good design question. “How to find meaning IN life?” is. In How to Live a Meaningful Life, we’ll give you tools and ideas to help.

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Early praise for
How to Live a Meaningful Life

  • "This book is a reminder for anybody feeling stuck that what got you here won't get you there. It offers practical design thinking tools to help get you unstuck by reframing problems, trying new approaches, and developing flow states for a more meaningful life."

    Kyle Westaway

    Author, Forbes

  • "This book answers the everlasting and ever yearning question about how to live a life of meaning. Dave and Bill's writing style is practical and fun, and the book is full of wisdom. Thank you for filling another void!"

    Liana Knudsen

    VP, Dell Computer

  • "What makes this book exceptional is how Burnett and Evans translate abstract concepts about meaning into concrete, practical tools anyone can implement immediately, at any stage of life."

    Bill King

    Managing Partner, MoVi Partners

A sneak peek into some of the ideas in the book that will bring meaning to your every day:

  • Why “impact” and “fulfillment” are dead ends

    And how to reframe meaning

  • The 5 Design Mindsets

    Think like a designer to solve problems where there’s no data (like your future)

  • The 4 Components of Meaning-making

    Wonder, Coherence, Flow, and Community

  • How to flip worlds

    Moving from the transactional to the flow world, where meaning is always around you

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A practical guide to designing the life that you deserve

Bestselling authors Bill Burnett and Dave Evans, the “empowering” (Publishers Weekly) visionaries behind Stanford’s renowned Life Design Lab, have already inspired millions of readers to use design thinking principles to craft lives and careers they love. Now, in How to Live a Meaningful Life, they take on the most profound design problem of all: how to make a life rich with meaning and purpose. Evolving their revolutionary framework, Burnett and Evans present the latest research on what makes life worth living, showing us how to bring wonder, coherence, flow, and community into our everyday experiences. Instead of cramming more into an already packed life, they give us the steps we need to extract more out of it, moment by moment.

Through actionable insights and with Burnett and Evans’s signature compassion and warmth, How to Live a Meaningful Life equips you with the tools to turn your ordinary days into an extraordinary life today.

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Who are these guys anyway?

(aka meet the authors)

Bill Burnett

Executive Director of the Design Program at Stanford, Adjunct Professor, Mechanical Engineering, Stanford

After years of drawing cars and airplanes under his Grandmother’s sewing machine, Bill Burnett went off to the University and discovered, much to his surprise, that there were people in the world who did this kind of thing everyday (without the sewing machine) and they were called designers. 45 years, five companies, and a couple of thousand students later Bill is still drawing and building things, teaching others how to do the same, and quietly enjoying the fact that no one has discovered that he is having too much fun.

Bill Burnett is an Adjunct Professor and the Executive Director of the Life Design Lab at Stanford. He received his Bachelors of Science and Masters of Science in Product Design at Stanford and has worked in start-ups and Fortune 100 companies, including seven years at Apple designing award-winning laptops and a number of years in the toy industry designing Star Wars action toys. He holds a number of mechanical and design patents and design awards, and, in addition to his duties at Stanford, he advises several of his students’ startup companies.

Dave Evans

Lecturer, Product Design Program at Stanford, Management Consultant, and co-founder of Electronic Arts

From saving seals to tackling the energy crisis, from imagining the first computer mice to redefining software—Dave’s been on a mission, including helping others find theirs. He began at Stanford dreaming of following Jacques Cousteau as a marine biologist, but soon realized he was lousy at it and shifted to mechanical engineering. After four years in alternative energy, the idea’s time hadn’t come. On his way to biomedical engineering, he accepted an invitation to Apple, where he led product marketing for the mouse team and introduced laser printing to the masses. When his boss left to start Electronic Arts, Dave joined as the first VP of Talent, committed to making “software worthy of the minds that use it.” Having shaped cultures at Apple and EA, he saw his best work was helping organizations build environments where people could do great work and love doing it. He later went out on his own, working with start-ups, executives, non-profits, and young adults—all asking, “What should I do with my life?” That question took him to Stanford and remains his life’s work.

Life has questions. They have answers.

The New York Times

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