It all started with a lunch.
When I was a kid, I used to sketch cars and airplanes under my grandmother’s sewing machine while the needle buzzed above me. I didn’t know it then, but that was the beginning of everything.
I wasn’t trying to make a career. I was just following my curiosity.
Fast forward a few decades: I’d designed toys, laptops, and startups — but the real design challenge turned out to be my own life.
How do you design a good life?
No one had a class for that.
Then, Dave Evans invited me to lunch. He’d been teaching a course on vocation at Berkeley and wondered if I wanted to try something together at Stanford.
Fifteen minutes into our first lunch, I said, “Let’s prototype it.”
Eight students showed up that summer. Two nights of exercises, a lot of laughter — and at the end, one of them said something that changed my life:
“No, we are not done yet.
This is important stuff and you don’t understand.
We have no place to have this conversation!”
That was the moment Designing Your Life was born — first a class, then a book, and eventually a global movement.
Millions of people have used these ideas to design their lives with more joy, purpose, and meaning.
After 20 years of doing this work, I’ve realized something simple:
Life design isn’t about seeing more.
It’s about seeing differently.
That’s what our new book, How to Live a Meaningful Life, is about. We can’t wait to share it with you in February.
But meaning design is a practice — so we don’t want to wait until then to get started.
Follow us on our new Instagram and TikTok pages at @fullyalive_bydesign so we can start making meaning-moments together.