This post consists of notes that I took when I read the book as part of a virtual book club that I hosted from May to July 2017.
They also include in parts some personal reflections on the way through including responses to the exercises that I set which I merged with the exercises at the end of he chapters in the book.
The section at the end of the post includes my thinking re what I could do next from September 2017 and also some Working Out Loud and Designing Your Life considerations.
A - BOOK CLUB WEEK 1 - INTRODUCTION: LIFE BY DESIGN
Dysfunctional Belief 1: your degree determines your career
Reframe: three quarters of all college grads do not end up working in a career related to their majors
SF: I did Business Studies/ Management Science at Stirling University. This included 4 semesters of economics, 2 of law, 1 of financial accounting, 1 of management accounting, 2 of business subjects (e.g. marketing, organisation and control with a majority of management science (lots of stats, simulation but also project management). I make a point of explaining to people that although my degree was a BA, I did virtually the same number of semester units in Management Science as those student doing Single Honours Management Science. I even pitched in to get the degree changed to a BSc before I graduated.
When I graduated I did not know what I wanted to do because my interests were wide due to the course I did. Ideally, a role would have been varied and may be not just for 1 end-user organisation. I applied for 8 positions, was interviewed for 2, got 1 second interview and started with Asda (a food and non-food retailer that pioneered superstore retailing in the UK, now owned by Wal-Mart). This role had me doing every role in the superstore. After 8 months, I started in Asda's IT team in Leeds. From that point to the present day all my roles have been IT-related.
With a bit of hindsight, I would say my interest back then is similar to now re understanding how organisations function, how to improve them, seeing change being successful and having lots of variety across all sectors (public, private and third). IT was an ideal area to explore all of this. I remain more on the business side as a consultant/ project manager than a technical person (e.g. no programming, server admin, DBA expertise) but do have some technical awareness. I currently project manage new solution delivery as well as supporting live solutions.
So all that to say, I fell into the course that I did based on poor A level results but I loved the course from day 1 and wanted to use practically what I had learned. This was further the case a few later when I did an MBA by open/distance learning. I got deeper into consumer/organisational marketing, operations management and strategic management. 2 of my fave ever text books were from these days.
Dysfunctional Belief 2: if you are successful you will be happy
Reframe: true happiness comes from designing a life that works for you
I could definitely be happier but I am not in despair.
Need to define what happiness is to me!
Need to define what successful is to me!
I would say that I am reasonably successful but I could probably be more successful.
I suspect people would say that I have not capitalised salary-wise on my MBA.
Dysfunctional Belief 3: it is too late
Reframe: it is never too late to design a life you love
SF: The "why am I doing this?" is the classic question. As per Simon Sinek and his "Start with Why".
The looking in the mirror reminding me of John Stepper's blog post "Looking in the mirror".
Design and engineering.
If there is no clarity then it is time to brainstorm.
SF: What are my own life design problems?
Can design help me? I am certainly open to this but I know the resistance messes with my head re the how and what.
I had minimal careers advice at university. But noted that the course I was doing was trailblazing at the time with its technology and business input at a "new" university. This could be said to be an issue for all of us these days with the pace of change (cf emerging roles around enterprise social networks and how these are evolving as tech platforms make different ways of working possible).
Loved the story of how the DYL course started at Stanford.
"Design Thinking": don't start with the problem, start with the people, start with empathy
"reframe" (aka "pivot): when we take new info about the problem, restate our point of view, start thinking and prototyping again
"Wicked Problem": resistant to resolution
The book helps you answer the questions:-
- How do I find a job that I like or nay be even love?
- How do I build a good career that will make me a good living?
- How do I balance my career with my family?
- How can I make a difference in the world?
Your life cannot be perfectly planned.
There is not just one solution to your life.
This is a good thing.
Your life is an experience.
Fun in designing/ enjoying the experience.
NOT who do you want to be when you grow up BUT who/ what do you want to grow into
NOT a destination.
The process helps you.
Life design.
Applies to all ages.
SF: yay! we are each other's support group in this book club.
I am not psychic so I can only understand as much about you as you are prepared to post and say.
Design thinking states that the best results come from radical collaboration and lead to unique solutions.
Be a genius at your life design but do not be a lone genius.
Designers do not think their way forward. They build their way forward.
Need curiosity and creativity.
Required mindsets to design your life:-
- curiosity
- helps you get good at being lucky
- bias for action
- you are committed to building your way forward
- reframing
- ensures your are working on the right problem
- awareness that this is a process
- many ideas will get binned
- radical collaboration
- ask for help!
- many best ideas will come from others
Anti-passion
Most people do not know their passion.
You need time to develop a passion.
For most, this comes after you try something.
Passion is the result of a good life design not the cause.
Most people do not have just one thing that they are passionate about.
SF: this is me in spades!
You need to see what really resonates with you.
A well-designed life is a life in which who you are, what you believe, what you do all line-up together.
Make sure you learn from the positive and negative things through the process.
SF: excited about what is going to happen in this group as we read and apply the book together.
I look forward to more of the co-incidences etc as we spend this time together.
What IS next?
Some of the questions above that I have asked of myself I have left unanswered as I suspect there will be specific content and exercises on these later in the book. I hope that some of my content here helps the reader understand me and input to me as we go through this process.
B - BOOK CLUB WEEK 2 - Chapter 1: Start Where You Are
You can build your way forward from wherever you are regardless of life design problems you are facing
Problem-finding + problem-solving = well-designed life
Our problems become our story and we can all get stuck in our stories
Can spend years trying to solve a problem
We need to check in with ourselves that we are tackling the right problems
Gravity problem: not real, if it is not actionable, it is not a problem
- totally unactionable ones
- functionally unactionable ones
Some problems you cannot change but you can change your thinking
Acceptance is key to gravity problems
How's it going?
Answered via life design assessment:-
- health: are you well in mind, body, spirit
- Relative importance of each is up to you
- Impacts your quality of life
- more than just a checkup at doctor's
- well in mind, body and spirit
- work: things you do regardless of whether you get paid or not
- make a list of all the ways you work
- assess yourself overall
- play
- This is all about joy
- What brings you joy purely in the doing?
- love
- affection, community, eroticism
- parents, kids, lovers, colleagues
- that sense of connection
- when none, your world is not as bright as it should be
- as critical to feel loved by others as it is to love, has to go both ways
How you measure is down to you
The idea is to pick what to design first and be curious about how to design this area of your life
Awareness and curiosity are the design mindsets you need to begin building your way forward
The Health, Work, Play, Love Dashboard
Dysfunctional Belief 4: I should already know where I'm going
Reframe: You can't know where you are going until you know where you are
Health at bottom of diagram as it is foundational
Different people of different ages and life stages will view the balance of these differently
There will be an appropriate mix for you
Only you know what is good enough or not good enough - right now.
Further through the book, you may revisit this - iterative process of prototypes and experimentation
Each dimension is never done
Only done when we die!!
Check first for a gravity problem
Check for balance-ish
Once you design something, it changes the future that is possible
Exercise responses
(1) Write a few sentences about how it’s going for you in each of the four areas: health, work, play and love from the dashboard.
scored the 4 areas, commentary:-
not that easy to score, are we supposed to score highly if we have work or whether we are happy with our work etc?
- Health
- general fitness not great
- I do walk 3 miles a day Monday -Thursday round the block at work
- I like my food
- Overweight
- I do not know my ideal weight
- I know I need to lose weight
- I like a glass of beer etc
- 2-3 times a week, never to excess
- Teeth running out
- Eyes not great
- Sleep
- get off straight away
- often wake up earlier than alarm
- be great to sleep all the way through
- Work
- Paid
- could be happier in my work
- live more for what I do outside work
- ideally be more influential at work pre-contracts being won
- would love to increase my influence more widely on work-type subjects
- I know I could be earning more by working elsewhere but like the flexibility where I am
- Do not ideally want work to take over my life and impact family unless it was something that I totally wanted to do with no stress impacting family relationships
- need to get my job back even in the mundane
- new starters are helping as I talk to them and I get animated
- Unpaid
- Church
- do numbers of roles at church that take time, some more enjoyable than others, the less enjoyable things are part of the role as being part of the leadership team
- Online Learning
- love MOOCs, Twitter Chats, WOL - these never feel like work, is like exercising my brain
- Church
- Paid
- Play
- be interested where others think I should put online learning and this book club etc?
- is that play or work?
- suspect I should be trying to make it work and earning me money e.g should build the project mgt MOOC I started last year
- Book Club
- if the books were ones I wanted to read this would be better!
- Eating out
- we love doing this as a family
- no sport activity
- often have people round for meals in large-ish numbers
- probably spend too much time online
- watch loads of TV with wife, but only things we have pre-recorded so not wallpaper in background
- be interested where others think I should put online learning and this book club etc?
- Love
- Could be a better husband, dad: no major issues
- very few close friends IRL
- more affinity with people I interact with online and in lots of cases they know more about me than people I know IRl mainly due to my interests
- lead a life group at church, close relationships with people in that group
(2) What do you observe about yourself (and are you being fair)?
Unhappiness with work life. Excitement with non-work life. Wondering if I can address the work life.
Health is a known issue. Nothing been said to me emergency-wise.
(3) Mark where you are (0 to Full) on each gauge on the dashboard and list the scores.
(note I also redid a Michael Hyatt exercise – “Life Score Assessment” – with scores also included in ther chart below)
(4) What design problem(s), if any, would you like to tackle in each of these areas?
Explore how I can use my recent learning and WOL experience as part of my paid work.
(5) For each such problem, is it a gravity problem? Explain your answer.
I do not believe so.
(6) If you could make 1 or more incremental adjustments to increase these scores, what would it be and mark your increased score on the dashboard and list the scores.
Work at Love relationships. Needs more careful thought.
Work is the biggest challenge and would love to make that difference up.
Health needs to improve.
(7) What would you get if you could attain this revised level of balance? How would life (really) change for you?
I would be more focused at work and living more for the excitement of work.
(8) What incremental change could you attempt to move in this direction? What would it take for you to live this way for 2 weeks?
Deliberately get through the mundane work at work to get on to the more exciting stuff.
(9) Share whatever you would like to on the above in your "#design-" channel and the #wk02 channel.
(this whole doc is added there)
(10) It would be great if you would tweet (using #dyl17q2), post in FB, blog etc about your experience so far so we do some of this journey "working out loud".
(tweeted that I was doing the dashboard and the Life Score)
(11) It would also be great if we encourage one another between calls e.g. by those on the week 1 call contacting at least 1 person not on that call to introduce each other.
(contacted 3 members of the group)
(12) Anything else you would like to do that is not listed here, We are limited simply by our imagination
(redid the Michael Hyatt Life Score and added it to the chart)
C - Book Club Week 3 - Chapter 2: Building A Compass
Many of us obsess about our life instead of designing our life
classic questions to ask:-
- why am I here?
- what am I doing?
- why does it matter?
you need 2 things to build your compass:-
- a Workview
- what work means to you
- what is work for
- why do you do it
- what makes good work good
- if you can articulate your philosophy of work, you will be less likely to let others design your life for you
- a Lifeview
- everyone has one
- is your ideas about the world and how it works
- what gives life meaning
- what makes your life worthwhile or valuable
- how does your life relate to others in your family/ community/ world
- what do money/ fame/ personal achievement have to do with a satisfying life
- how important are experience/ growth/ fulfillment in your life
after doing these 2 and the exercise, you will have your compass and be on path toward a well-designed life
these views will change over time and specifically in seasons of your life
you just need your compass for where you are in your life right now
beware using someone else's compass for your life
your goal for your life should be coherency:
a coherent life is one lived in such a way that you can clearly connect the dots between:-
- who you are
- what you believe
- what you are doing
note there may have to be compromises along the way, the key thing is that you make such compromise decisions consciously
connecting these 3 dots increases your sense of self, helps you create more meaning in your life, have greater satisfaction
Workview reflection
needs to be written down, 30 minutes, 250 words, less than 1 page
should address the critical issues related to what work is, what it means to you
a general statement of your view of work, your definition of what good work deserves to be
example questions:-
- why work?
- what is work for?
- what does work mean?
- how does it relate to individual/ others/ society?
- what defines good/ worthwhile work?
- what does money have to do with it?
- what do experience/ growth/ fulfillment have to do with it?
this is a new idea for most people to do this thinking and write it down
NOT WHAT (e.g. your ideal job description) but WHY you work
this is your work manifesto
not just what you do to make money or for a "job"
“people who can make an explicit connection between their work and something socially meaningful to them are more likely to find satisfaction, and are better able to adapt to the inevitable stresses and compromises that come with working in the world” (Martin Seligman, "Flourish: A Visionary New Understanding of Happiness and Well-Being" )
SF: located TED Talk while doing these notes and remembered saving this article due to someone in a Twitter chat using the word "flourish" last week!)
Lifeview reflection
needs to be written down, 30 minutes, 250 words, less than 1 page
write down your critical defining values/ perspectives provide foundation for your understanding of life ("matters of ultimate concern")
example questions:-
- why are we here
- what is the meaning or purpose of life
- what is the relationship between individual/ others
- where do family/ country/ rest of the world fit in
- what is good, what is evil
- is there a higher power, God, or something transcendent and if so what impact does that have on your life
- what is the role of joy, sorrow, justice, injustice, love, peace and strife in life
note that design is values-neutral and authors do not take sides
the questions are to provoke your thinking
you decide which to answer
no wrong answers
the only way to do this incorrectly is not to do it at all
be curious, think like a designer
SF: post the curiosity podcast episode
Coherency and Workview/ Lifeview integration
consider:-
- where do your views on work and life complement one another?
- where do they clash?
- does one drive the other? how?
important part of the process for a-ha moments
in most cases, reflection will result in some editing of 1 or both views
if these 2 views are in harmony, you increase your own clarity and ability to live a consciously, coherent, meaningful life in which who you are, what you believe, and what you do are aligned
with an accurate compass, you will never stray off course for long
True North
these 2 views give you your "true north"
SF: cf Covey stuff on this
will tell you if you are on course or off course - if you use it!
cf times in harbour, close to shore, open sea, stormy etc
may need to do compass recalibration from time to time e.g. annual
cf checking tyres, smoke detector
Dysfunctional Belief 5: I should know where I'm going
Reframe: I won't always know where I'm going - but I can always know whether I'm going in the right direction
whenever you change something in your life, stop - check your compass and orient yourself
Exercises
1. Write a short reflection about your Workview. This should take about 30 minutes, around 250 words - less than a page of typed writing:-
Prompts:
Why work?
- Mandated by God. As He also mandated rest on the Sabbath
- To do something useful
- To get paid and provide for yourself and your family
- To pay taxes for the wider community and nation to support those who cannot work and provide for themselves
- To appreciate holidays and rest
- To use your gifts and talents
- To do good
- To have relationships beyond the immediate family
- What's work for?
- To stop me being lazy and just resting the whole time
- To provide useful output including looking after kids, poorly family members
- To get paid and to get "job" satisfaction
- Includes hobbies, pastimes, education, training
- What does work mean?
- "activity involving mental or physical effort done in order to achieve a result"
- How does it relate to the individual, others, society?
- each individual in a society depending on age and health/ability to work should work to provide for themselves without relying on the state to support them
- the same individuals should work to pay taxes to support others who cannot work
- Out of the money people earn, we should save for the future when we cannot work to support ourselves
- wide range of jobs need to be done by people for the wider good: teachers, nursery nurses, doctors, nurses, military, emergency services
- black economy came to mind: "the part of a country's economic activity which is unrecorded and untaxed by its government"
- I am a free marketeer so governments need to ensure that the market operates purely
- What defines good or worthwhile work?
- work that gives the worker meaning and a purpose, making use of their skills and abilities
- NOT drudge to the person doing it
- something that the worker finds enjoyable, a challenge and a sense of achievement
- is this is not the case, the person should change jobs
- What does money have to do with it?
- helps people live and pay for things, cf Maslow's hierarchy of needs
- redundancy focuses your mind on the importance of money to eat, the bottom level of Maslow
- taxes are levied in part to support those who cannot work and who demonstrably cannot work
- What do experience, growth and fulfilment have to do with it?
- if these are not happening, you should question if you are in the right job
- starting to question if living more for things outside work is a good thing and starting to think the unthinkable for me which is how can this happen for me at work and is it meant to
- SF: should I have also said something about what sort of work I want to do?
- how orgs work
- applied research, I want to do things
- project manager, analyst, consultant
- job that requires research, learning
- cross-sector - public, private, 3rd
- not just talking about stuff
- not sure should be doing L&D unless part of a wider role
- large/small orgs
- WOL/PKM
- producing courses?
- not necessarily line managing
- always had fear of freelancing re biz dev, risk
- probably not church-related unless a part of a wider brief
- like autonomy, is this a lack of accountability or I just like going rabbit trailling in a focused way when I get started
- a job with collaboration face to face and virtually
- learning about new orgs, sectors
- would rather earn less than take work home
- use social in a formal setting ie core to mission of org not for the sake of it
- not sure what I think about retirement
- started thinking about this issue with Dad's death last year after Mum's 2 years earlier and estate admin as a result
- does not feel like I am coming to the end of anything
- way too enthusiastic about things to not work
- still got lots of contributions to make
- I want to show up with all of who and what I am to bring to bear on the issue, challenge, work at hand
2. Write a short reflection about your Lifeview. This should take about 30 minutes, around 250 words - less than a page of typed writing:-
Prompts:
- Why are we here?
- God created us male and female in his image
- to worship God through Jesus and live in the power of the Holy Spirit
- work, rest to recreate
- I am not an accident, God decided to create me, He knows all about me and how many days I have to live
- What is the meaning or purpose of life?
- to love God with all our heart, soul, mind and strength and love our neighbour as we love ourselves
- What is the relationship between the individual and others?
- fundamentally intertwined
- we have to be aware and look to address the needs of others without being overwhelmed
- Where do family, country and the rest of the world fit in?
- family is still the basic building block of society and much of society's ills is due to the breakdown of that unit
- the power of real communities, walled communities are an issue
- What is good?
- anything that conforms to what God wants as revealed in His Word
- non-believers do good things too!!
- What is evil?
- anything that does not confirm to what God wants as revealed in His Word
- everyone has a line that is unique to them, some we may agree on e.g. murder, paedophilia, domestic violence
- Is there a higher power, God or something transcendent, and if so, what impact does this have on your life?
- YES - see above
- core to who I am as a person
- used to live as an orange, now as a peach, no segments
- lots of my free time spent on church-related events re leading/ attending
- keen that others should come to know Jesus for themselves, not a ram it down people's throats sort of person
- it is a personal decision not one for parents to make for their kids
- What is the role of joy, sorrow, justice, injustice, love, peace and strife in your life?
- God made us as emotional beings, I love laughter, tears too, we are not robots
- For me tears flow in everyday life when I overflow with the Holy Spirit in response to what I see, experience, feel
- TV drama, real-life programmes can make me have tears, I refer to such times as "breathtaking TV" e.g. clips from The West Wing, NYPD Blue, Blue Bloods, The Newsroom
- tears increasing as I age (NOT all the time!! no need to worry about me!)
- in a church or work setting, there will be people who are experiencing the whole range of emotions from joy to sorrow, we need to be aware of that as we lead things
- do not be legalistic about one best way of doing things
- justice/injustice central to Christian life/teaching
- I need people to play by the rules
- I need people to do what they say they are going to do
- re-negotiate when they can't deliver
- SF: other things
- I want to always integrate everything I do and not have compartments
3. Read over your Workview and Lifeview and answer the following:-
Where do your views on work and life complement one another?
- would love to know what others think about this if they read this
- they seem to, I do not think that they clash
- my current employer is not out to screw the customer for lots of cash, it is refreshing
- making me think that current employer is fine
- may be I need to crack on and do some job crafting
- feel like I am being excluded from some futures stuff that I believe I can contribute to
- defo needs a convo with boss who is also owner of the company
Where do they clash?
- mainly just that I am not being used to best effect
- culture at work could be better but nothing that cuts across my core values
- more communication would be great
- some co-workers never share info on prospects and biz dev work
- their view may be that this is for confidentiality reasons
- reminder to me that I am an account-type person, developing relationships
- defo feel I need to be able to contribute more and get in people's faces about it
Does one drive the other?
- historically they have run in parallel
- work defo came first before my Christian worldview was firmed up
- now they are intertwined
How?
- may be I need to see the Christian worldview as more solidly driving my workview but it defo feels like there are no issues
4. Summarise what you now know and incorporate your thinking from Week 2
- not a major gap
- do not feel fulfilled totally
- would like to have the same level of joy and excitement in work as out of it
- sort out what that might look like and where
- clear the decks in current role and crack on with the newer more exciting stuff
- challenge why I am not involved more in the current future work
- feels like my assessment this week is not as bleak as my dashboard from last week
- still do not want to be always doing work stuff
- being influential was more prominent in last week's thinking for me
- starting to think again of "expert" vs "visionary" vs "thought leader" and what that might mean for me (via Sonsoles chat during WOL circle)
- how make use of my new found confidence from MOOCs, WOL circles, book club re starting things and being more fearless
5. (optional) The material in this chapter reminded me of "Core and Flex":-
- watch the video: https://youtu.be/trPOurwfB4w
- List out your "core"
- commitment
- loyalty
- truth telling
- do what I say I will do ditto from others
- keep promises
- integrity
- justice
- punctuality
- showing up
- passion
- enthusiasm
- completer/finisher
- learning new things that are needed now or build future capability
- my Christian faith
- List out your "flex"
- how people's faith is expressed
- how people want to report progress back to me but I do need that progress!
- how others do what they do to meet my requirement unless I mandate it for good reason
- do not expect immediate responses from non-work comms, that is the whole point of Slack, email, tweets, FB posts
D - Book Club Week 4 - Chapter 3: Wayfinding
Dysfunctional Belief 6: work is not supposed to be enjoyable; that's why they call it work
Reframe: enjoyment is a guide to finding the right work for you
wayfinding: ancient art of figuring out when you don't actually know your destination
over
for wayfinding you need a compass and a direction, not a map
there is no one destination in life, you cannout put your goal into your GPS to get turn-by-turn directions
pay attention to the clues in front of you
the 1st clues are engagement and energy
Engagement
when do you feel bored, restless or unhappy and what were you doing then?
when do you feel excited, focused, having a good time and what were you doing then?
both these inform your life design work
design thinking has bias for action
logging when you are/are not engaged and energised will help you pay attention to what you are doing and discover what's working
Flow: Total Engagement
flow is engagement on steroids
when time stands still, the challenge matches your skill, so neither bored as too easy or anxious as too hard
a flow experience:-
- complete involvement in the activity
- sense of ecstasy or euphoria
- great inner clarity - knowing just what to do and how to do it
- totally calm, at peace
- time stands still - or disappearing in an instant
hard to describe, but you know when you feel it
need to identify it for yourself
these experiences have special place in designing your life so get good at capturing them in your Good Time Journal
flow is play for grown-up, one key to what we call adult play
a really rewarding & satisfying career involves a lot of flow states
essence of play is being fully immersed/ joyful in what you are doing without being constantly distracted by concerns about outcomes = being in flow
flow is therefore something we should strive to make a regular part of our work life and all other parts of our lives
SF: I call this being "in the zone"
Energy
change in jobs from physical work to mental work re knowledge workers
brain takes 25% of our energy just to function
therefore the way we invest our attention is critical to whether or not we feel high/low energy
some activities sustain our energy, others drain it
once you track your energy your lives can design life to maximise your vitality
so DYL not necessarily about big change but is about getting most out of your current life
cf tuning your life not changing the engine
energy and engagement are not the same thing
Joy
wayfinding requires you to folllow the joy, follow what engages and excites you, what brings you alive
SF: a fave new tune is Live Alive (Rend Collective):
video: https://youtu.be/J5qZ7PIa8D0
lyrics: https://youtu.be/LarwSdIxIEg
if most of what you do at work is not bringing you alive, it is killing you
work is fun when you are actually leaning into your strengths and are deeply engaged/ energised by what you are doing
What about Purpose?
we looked at workview and lifeview to build your compass - crucial for you to assess how well your work fits your values/priorities - how coherent your work is with who you acre and what you believe
we are not saying concentrate solely on energy and engagement
Good Time Journal Exercise
recommend using paper to sketch!
do it! regularly!
elements:-
- Activity Log
- where I record where I'm engaged and energised
- enter daily ideally, at least twice a week
- when you assess yourself be as specific as you can be
- Reflections
- where I discover what I am learning
- noticing trends, insights, surprises, any clues to what does/does not work for you
- at least 3 weeks
- once a week
- on blank pages
Zooming in, getting to the good stuff
when you have some entries, go into more detail
become as precise as possible
get to the why you assessed yourself in this way
some things can be interpreted in various ways, go deep to get to the essence
AEIOU
5 sets of questions when reflecting
- Activities
- what were you actually doing?
- was this structured/unstructured activity?
- did you have specific role to play (team leader) or were you a participant (at the meeting)?
- Environments
- where were you?
- what kind of place was it?
- how did it make you feel?
- formal or informal?
- Interactions
- what were you interacting with - people or machines?
- a new kind of interaction or one you were familiar with?
- Objects
- interacting with any objects or devices?
- what were the objects that created or supported you feeling engaged?
- Users
- who else was there?
- what role did they play in making it positive/ negative experience?
as before, no right or wrong answers, do not judge yourself
Mining the Mountain Top
also think about past mountain top experiences - these can be telling
especially helpful when no current activities are helpful
- e.g. between jobs, just starting career
be honest! no rose-tinted specs for past or dark ones for present
Enjoy the Journey
map current and past, start to see new opportunities for the future
Exercise Responses
My Good Time Activity Log: This is my first attempt. Mainly from memory of recent work tasks as well as wider at home/ church type things. Need more time to explore further. Not convinced by the scores. I was rushing to get the xls completed for posting here in case it helps others. As always, happy to take any feedback/ observations etc.
E - Book Club Week 5 - Chapter 4: Getting Unstuck
"Grant didn’t completely hate his job, but he couldn’t think of a single time when he had ever experienced anything close to a state of flow."
"Grant felt defeated because he thought that all he could do was what he’d always done— and because he wasn’t thinking like a designer. Designers know that you never go with your first idea. Designers know that when you choose from lots of options you choose better. Many people are like Grant: they get stuck trying to make their first idea work. Grant needed to start thinking like a designer. "
Dysfunctional Belief 7: I'm stuck
Reframe: I'm never stuck, because I can always generate a lot of ideas
Dysfunctional Belief 8: I have to find the one right idea
Reframe: I need a lot of ideas so that I can explore any number of possibilities for my future
Most people look at job listings and look for a job they can get = 1 of worst ways to get a job & has lowest success rate
this is NOT design thinking
may need to do the above for a period of time for survival but when that eases off, need to wayfind to get a job you may actually want
being stuck can be launch pad for creativity
you can't know what you want until you know what you might want, so you need to generate a lot of ideas/ possibilities
Ideate This
venture to the world of "what you might want"
ideation; come up with lots of ideas
quantity has a quality all of its own
in life design, more is better, more ideas = access to better ideas, lead to a better design
more ideas also = new insights
designers learn to have lots of wild ideas because they know that the number one enemy of creativity is judgement
defer judgement and silence inner critic to get all ideas out
crazy ideas help us see new and innovative possibilities that can work
our goal: energise/ expand on your capacity for generating lots of solutions to myriad problems that arise when designing your life
as a life designer, embrace two philosophies:-
- you choose better when lots of good ideas to choose from
- you never choose your first solution to any problem
do NOT fall in love with your first idea/ solution
- most often are average and not very creative
Mind Mapping
1st ideation technique to use
great tool for ideating by yourself
great method for getting unstuck:-
- simple free association of words, one after another
- open up the idea space
- come up with new solutions
- graphical nature means ideas and their associations are captured automatically
- teaches you to generate lots of ideas
- visual so bypasses your inner logical/ verbal censor
Steps:-
- pick a topic
- making the mindmap
- making secondary connections and creating concepts (mashing it all up)
- pick from outer layers of mind map
may not mean new job, may mean using current job as springboard to next
do not censor yourself
do this fast
big piece of paper/canvas
Stuck on Steroids: Anchor Problems
anchor problems: hold us in one place, prevent motion, gets worse with time
if we are going to practice good life design, important to notice when we are stuck with an anchor problem
do not make a do-able problem into an anchor problem be wedding yourself irretrievably to a solution that just isn't working
reframe the solution to some other possibilities
prototype those ideas
get yourself unstuck
anchor problems not only about our current, failed approach, they are really about the fear that no matter what else we try, that won't work either and then we'll have to admit we are permanently stuck
the way forward is reduce the risk (and fear) of failure by designing a series of small prototypes to test the waters
OK for prototypes to fail, they are supposed to
well-designed prototypes teach you something about the future
prototypes:-
- lower your anxiety
- ask interesting questions
- get you data re potential of the change that your are trying to make
fail fast and fail forward
reframe challenge of anchor problem as exploration of possibilities instead & then decide to try series of small, safe prototypes of the change you'd like to see happen
Mind Mapping with your Good Time Journal
do 3 mindmaps:-
- each has 3 or 4 layers, at least 12 elements in outer ring
- map 1 - engagement
- pick 1 of greatest interest areas to you or a flow activity
- make it centre of your map
- generate lots of related words
- map 2 - energy
- pick 1 of greatest energy giving areas
- make it centre of your map
- generate lots of related words
- map 3 - flow
- pick 1 of greatest flow
- make it centre of your map
- generate lots of related words
now, invent interesting though not necessarily practical, life alternative from each:-
- for each mind map
- look at outer ring of one of the maps, pick three items that catch your eye (they jump out at you)
- combine those 3 into a job spec that would be fun and interesting to you and would be helpful to someone else
- name your role and do a quick visual drawing
Now what?
this may have been positive for you or may be you thought was silly
the whole point was to defer judgement & quiet your internal problem-finding critic
look again or try again in a few days
point of the exercise is not to generate a specific result but to get your mind going all over the place and ideating without judgement
the combining 3 elements exercise moves you out of problem solving (what do I do next?) into design thinking (what can I imagine?)
you are now working with a designer's mindset with lots of important ideas documented in a creative format
time to start innovating three real alternative lives
time for Odyssey Plans
Exercise Responses
Mindmaps
So I did the exercise, I suspect I reverted to type and went into classical work breakdown structure-mode but I did do 3 mindmaps:-
- Event Facilitation
- Creating Content
- Run Community (Implement ESN)
I did try to get my mind running riot but it didn't get that riotous!
My 3 roles:-
- Workshop/Event Process Consultant
- helping teams devise/run workshops/events
- coach people in doing that
- Content Creator
- working freelance or internally to produce content of any sort
- Community Manager
- on the back of implementing an ESN
- for communities that are delivering large-scale change and projects
- ideally including customers and suppliers
F - Book Club Week 6 - Chapter 5: Design Your Lives
This life you are living is one of many lives you will live.
What you are doing now is not necessarily all you will ever do.
Mistake to think you have to come up with one plan and that if you only make the right choice (the best, true, only choice).
That is a paint by numbers approach but in reality life is more of an abstract painting.
We all contain enough energy, talents and interests to live many different types of lives, all of which could be authentic, interesting and productive. Asking which life is best is asking a silly question; it is like asking if it is better to have hands or feet.
See if there is a way to practically explore all options.
Dysfunctional Belief 9: I need to figure out my best possible life, make a plan and then execute it.
Reframe: There are multiple great lives (and plans) within me, and I get to choose which one to build my way forward to next.
Embrace Your Multiple Personalities
One of most powerful ways to design your life is to design your lives.
Write up three different versions of the next 5 years of your life: Odyssey Plans.
Whatever you think, you have three viable and substantially different possibilities in you. We all do.
We can only live out one at a time but we want to ideate multiple variations to choose creatively and generatively.
Generatively: capable of producing or creating.
If your mind starts with multiple ideas in parallel, it is not prematurely committed to one path and stays more open and able to receive and conceive more novel innovations.
You don't want to start with just one idea or you are likely to get stuck with it.
These are not to be thought of as Plan A, B and C. Each is Plan A.
Odyssey Plans are sketches of possibilities that can animate your imagination and help you choose which wayfinding direction you will actually take to start prototyping and living into next.
So many lives, so little time
So called because life is an odyssey - an adventurous journey into the future with:-
- hopes
- goals
- helpers
- lovers
- antagonists
- unknowns
- serendipities
all unfolding over time in a way we both intend at the start and weave together as we go.
Take the time to imagine multiple ways you could launch the next chapter of your life's journey, your quest.
quest:
- a search or pursuit made in order to find or obtain something
- an adventurous expedition undertaken by a knight or knights to secure or achieve something:
Create three very different plans for the next five years of your life
- Two years is too short: makes us nervous that we have not thought far enough ahead
- Seven years is too long: we know stuff will happen that will change things by then
Must do three plans.
Three gives you real choice and will stretch your mind so you do not know you have just come up with an obvious answer.
Make them really different.
Suggestions to get you thinking:-
- That Thing You Do
- your current life or the hot idea you have been nursing
- deserves attention
- That Thing You'd Do If Thing One Were Suddenly Gone
- cf redundancy, you can't do nothing, you need to make a living
- The Thing You;d Do or the Life You'd Live if Money or Image Were No Object
Don't get stuck. Don't overthink it. But do really do it.
The exercise will change your life.
Literally.
Odyssey Planning 101
Each plan needs:-
- a visual/graphical timeline
- including personal, non-career events as well
- 6 word headline name describing the plan's essence
- questions that this alternative is asking - 2 or 3
- a good designer asks questions to test assumptions and reveal new insights
- in each timeline, you will investigate different possibilities and learn different things about yourself and the world
- what do you want to test and explore in each different version of yourself?
- dashboard
- resources (0 - 100)
- time, money, skill, contacts
- likeability - I Like It (cold - hot)
- are you hot/cold about this plan
- confidence (empty - full)
- confident/uncertain about this plan
- coherence (0 -100)
- does the plan make sense within itself
- is it consistent with you, your workview, lifeview
- resources (0 - 100)
- possible considerations
- where will you live?
- what experience/learning will you gain?
- what are the impacts/ results of choosing this alternative?
- what will life look like?
- what particular role, industry or company do you see yourself in?
Other ideas:-
- this is not just about career and money, there are other critical elements that you want to pay attention to
- any of the above may be a springboard for alternative lives
- if you get stuck, go mindmap-ping
- do NOT overthing it
- do NOT skip doing it
Odyssey Plans can define important things still to do in our lives and help us remember dreams we may have forgotten.
Do one which is at least a little bit wild. Your most far-fetched and crazy idea.
You may want to do different alternative plans for the different areas of your life: career, love, health, play.
Or combine them.
The only wrong way to do this is not to do it all.
Odyssey Plan Exercise
Complete three alternative five year plans
Sharing the Three Versions of You
The best way to interact with your alternatives is to share them aloud with a group of friends, ideally, with your Life Design Team (see chapter 11), or the group you are reading this book with.
The most fun/effective way is with three to six people, including you, even if you are the only person with plans.
You need to get feedback and ideas.
Invite people who will ask good questions but not offer critique or unwanted advice.
You want them to reveive, reflect and amplify.
Or record yourself presenting each plan then playback, what do you hear?
You are not designing the rest of your life. You are designing what's next.
Every possible version of you holds unknowns and compromises, each with its own identifiable and unintended consequences.
You are not so much finding answers in this exercise as learning to embrace and explore the questions and be curious about the possibilities.
Remember, there are multiple great lives within you.
Exercise Responses
I did the three Odyssey plans for Workshop/Event Process Consultant, Content Creator and Community Manager.
I posted the following in the Slack team for the group after the group call:
Apologies for taking up a lot of time in the call this week with my outputs - the Mind Maps and the Odyssey Plans. The latter was a necessity as it was the only set of such plans that were available to walk through in the call and, going back from those to the mindmaps, I was keen to explain the background in those maps that had led me to my Odyssey Plans.
I am grateful for all your feedback prior to and during the call.
Hopefully, the Odyssey Plan template that I created and used will also be helpful to you if you wanted to complete yours electronically.
Off to go looking for my "wild" side ....
I mentioned this in passing in the call, the Working Out Loud circle exercise re "50 Things". Sonsoles' feedback re me and "beer" in the call reminded me of this.
This is from Week 5 "Make It Personal" of the Working Out Loud circle guides:
==========
"Exercise: So much to offer! (15 minutes)
At the beginning of chapter 14 of "Working Out Loud", there’s a quote from the author Murakami:
“The fact that I’m me and no one else is one of my greatest assets.”
But most people think far too narrowly about what they have to offer. This exercise will help you think more broadly. For example, here are ten facts about that could be the basis of yet more contributions:-
- Whether you have children, and facts about them.
- Places you’ve lived.
- Where you grew up.
- Your gender.
- Places you’ve worked.
- Vacations you’ve taken.
- Physical challenges you had to deal with.
- Career mistakes you’ve made.
- Schools you attended.
- Things you love doing.
Each of these can form the basis of a shared experience with someone, especially if it’s framed as a contribution. Listing them can help you make the shift from offering universal gifts to making contributions that are personal and specific to you. Their personal nature increases their value both to you and to potential recipients.
Now try to write 50 facts about you. When I first did this exercise, I struggled because I felt the things on my list had to be big accomplishments. Now I know that any part of my experience might be interesting to someone else if I frame it as a contribution. Here are a few from my list that have each been the basis of a connection with other people:
- I live in New York City.
- I have five children.
- I became a vegetarian in my 40s.
- My wife is Japanese.
- My mother had diabetes.
- I attended Regis High School & Columbia University.
- I studied computer science
- I practice yoga & meditation.
- I self-published a book.
- I recently learned to play piano.
For this exercise, don’t worry about who the gift is for. Free yourself, and try to write down as many things as you can that make you you."
============
The following text includes part of my response to the above exercise I adapted for use on the #SocialAgeMooc in response to an exercise in the unit on Democratised Publishing and specifically looking at capturing provocative writing to inspire change.
==========
I am relatively new to Working Out Loud ... thinking out loud .... wondering whether you are truly Working Out Loud if you adopt multiple personas in multiple physical and online spaces .... is Working Out Loud not actually about the authentic "me" in all my guises .... I have been heavily affected by this video on living life as an orange with multiple segments operating differently in each one versus living life as a peach where there are no segments, compartments, demarcation lines ... so I bring the whole of myself to all those parts of my life and the roles I perform ... until about a decade or so ago my life was all about compartments ... now I am totally a peach .... https://youtu.be/pCYRc4u79yM
... so when you interact with me online or IRL you interact with a ....
-
Disciple of Jesus
- IT Professional
- Project Manager
- Husband
- U2 fan (since 1980)
- Film Club/Culture Club leader
- Thai food lover
- Cook (not that good!)
- Learner
- Dad
- Reader
- Occasional stammerer/stutterer
- Music junkie
- Loyal friend
- Business Change-er
- #WOL-er
- #PKM-er
- Pray-er
- IT service deliverer
- Coach
- Facilitator
- Book club member (IRL/ virtual)
- Blogger
- Twitter chatter
- Eat out-er
- Exotic beer drinker
- Beer glass collector
- All Age Worship event leader and co-creator
- Church leader
- Scotsman (50/50 English, prouder of Scottish part!)
- Isle of Skye lover
- Gaelic music lover
- Pipes and Drums lover
- Bible Study Group leader
etc etc
... and I bring all of that to the table and apply that, usually appropriately, to whatever the issue is at hand in whatever the context ...
... I am the same person to everyone I interact with ....
... love this Hugh McLeod cartoon: https://goo.gl/45QSc ....
for more on changing the world, see: https://youtu.be/8cTAzgQ1EHA
and this BBC interview: https://youtu.be/1LyktvOaRnk
G - Book Club Week 7 - Chapter 6: Prototyping
Design your life step by step by thinking like a designer and building your way forward by doing small experiments (prototypes).
You may discover a future that had not only been unknowable but also unimaginable.
Dysfunctional Belief 10: If I comprehensively research the best data for all aspects of my plan, I'll be fine.
Reframe: I should build prototypes to explore questions about my alternatives.
Building is thinking. When coupled with a bias-to-action mindset you get a lot of building and thinking.
Anything can be prototyped from a physical object to public policy.
Given that prototyping is such an integral part of design thinking, we need to make sure that the "why" is as well understood as the "how".
Lots of data in other subject areas for prototyping but not so much for designing your life e.g. reliable data about your future. This is a "messy" problem.
Prototyping the life design way is about:-
- asking good questions
- outlining our hidden biases
- assumptions
- iterating rapidly
- creating momentum for a path we'd like to try out.
Prototypes should be designed to ask a question and get some data about something you are interested in.
Good prototypes isolate one aspect of a problem and design an experience that allows you to try out some version of a potentially interesting future.
Prototypes help you visualise alternatives in a very experiential way allowing you to imagine your future as if you are already living it.
Prototyping helps you involve others early and helps build a community of people who are interested in your journey and your life design.
They are a great way to start a conversation and often one thing typically leads to another.
They frequently turn into unexpected opportunities - they help serendipity happen.
They allow you to try and fail rapidly without over-investing in a path before you have any data.
Best way to get started is to keep your first prototypes very low-resolution and very simple.
Isolate a variable and design a prototype to answer that one question. Be prepared to iterate quickly.
A prototype is not a thought experience, it must involve a physical experience in the world
Prototyping is also about building empathy and understanding.
Summary; we prototype to:-
- ask good questions
- create experiences
- reveal our assumptions
- fail fast
- fail forward
- sneak up on the future
- build empathy for ourselves & others
When you realise this is the only way to get the data you need, prototyping becomes and integral part of your life design process.
Not prototyping is a bad and sometimes very costly idea.
Slow and Steady
Beware jumping into a career change without prototyping.
Even if you are in a rush, we recommend you prototype your life ideas. You will get a better design and save a lot of time/ diffficulty.
Prototype Conversations: Life Design Interview
Simplest/ easiest form of prototype is a conversation.
Life Design Interview:-
- get someone's story
- someone who is either doing or living what you are contemplating or has real experience and expertise in an area that you have questions about
- to get the personal story of how the person got to be doing that thing s/he does, or got the expertise he has and what it is really like to do this
- what they love and hate about the job
- typical day
- how they got there - their career path
Words to the Wise Guy:-
- it is not a job interview - ask questions, do not answer them yourself!
- make sure the other person knows clearly that you are not after a chat with them for a job at their organisation
- do not use the word "interview", it is a conversation
- if you are referred by someone, tell the person who that person was!
Prototype Experiences
Convos not enough. You want to actually experience what "it" is really like - by watching others doing it or preferably doing some part of it yourself.
Prototype experiences allow us to learn through a direct encounter with a possible version of us.
Hands-on experiences are a bigger challenge to arrange. Worth the effort to get them. cf car test drive.
Conceiving prototype experiences is real design work and requires you having lots of ideas.
Brainstorming Prototype Experiences
Design brainstorming: a collaborative technique for finding lots of ideas.
Take your odyssey plans and specifically the questions you have listed on each one.
What are your questions? What would you like to understand better by prototyping the experience?
Steps in life design brainstorming:-
- frame a good question: open (e.g. "how many ways can we think of to ...?")
- do not include the solution in the question
- do not be vague, it needs to be about a specific thing
- warming up
- see Improvs and Warm Ups on book web site
- use of Play Doh
- SF: play Pictionary or Taboo
- the brainstorm itself
- needs to be facilitated
- each participant notes down their own ideas
- rules
- quantity not quality
- defer judgement, do not censor ideas
- build on ideas of others
- encourage wild ideas
- to break out of the box of typical thinking
- wild ideas often contain the seeds of the most useful things to prototype
- naming and framing the outcomes
- often neglected
- do not just take picture of the wall
- count the ideas & state the number
- group ideas by subject/ category
- name the categories
- e.g.
- most exciting
- the one we wish we could do if money were no object
- dark horse - probably won't work, but if it did ...
- most likely to lead to a great life
- if we could ignore the law of physics
- e.g.
- frame the results with reference to the original focal question
- vote (silently so no influencing)
- after voting and counting, decide what to prototype first
- conclusion
- e.g. "we had 141 ideas, we grouped them into 6 categories, and based on our focal question. we selected 8 killer ideas to prototype, we prioritised the list, and our first prototype is ..."
A great way to do this would be to combine your Odyssey Plan presentation gathering (chapter 5) with a prototype experience brainstorm session.
Your collaborators will have a much better time if they are able not only to give you feedback but also to contribute directly to your life design with ideas and actionable prototype possibilities.
Exercise Responses
The exercise this week was to actually do some Life Design conversations.
C: ESN Implementation/Community Mgt
Questions the Prototypes Should Answer
- Is this just a romantic view of this subject area and would I get bored too easily?
- How do my skills and experience tool me up for roles in this service area?
- Is there a conflict with implementing ESNs and being a community manager given that once an ESN is implemented it will be there for n years? 4.
- Are the two roles impossible for one person to do in parallel beyond the first implementation?
Life Design Conversations
Identified three people at the outset to have half hour chat with
- Rita (Oz)
- Rationale
- online relationship
- beer/wine connection on IG
- #ESNchat-er
- exchanged tweets previously
- her team recently won global award for ESN implemention
- co-author with lots of others in a book on social out this month
- wanted to further develop our relationship
- Outcome
- Accepted saying John Stepper had encouraged her to read this book!
- Really generous with her time with the call ending up at 1.25 hours, she did most of the talking as we are told in the book should happen! easy chat, amazing, encouraging, inspirational
- no downsides to role mentioned
- Kelly (New York)
- Rationale
- info: minimal contact online, none direct
- heard her on a WOL/community mgt podcast
- doing a community mgt role
- early in career
- practical experience of starting in that role
- Outcome
- again very generous with her time with the call ending up at just over the hour
- also encouraging and inspirational
- again no downsides to role mentioned
- X (USA)
- Outcome
- No response to date
- Dan Thomas (UK)
- Rationale
- Dan was mentioned as a UK contact by Kelly in our convo
- Dan turned up at a recent #ESNchat so I DM-ed him to introduce myself.
- Dan then interviewed me about the book for his podcast as being relevant to his audience in a 1 hour piece.
- I will be doing a Life Design convo with Dan in mid-August 2017.
All were invited for a half hour convo via email invite as follows:
Would you be willing to have a half-hour Zoom call with me in the next few days for me to understand a bit about your current role and career to date?
I am currently reading and applying the book Designing Your Life (which uses design thinking in its approach) to consider alternative career directions. One such direction relates to ESNs and community management.
I am at the part of the book covering Life Design conversations hence my request.
I would hope to discuss with you your current role, the joys and challenges of that role, your career to date and what skillset and experience you would ideally expect from someone in an ESN/community management role.
I would not use/publish any info you give me in any other context and is purely for my own personal learning.
I am typically available 17:00 - 09:00 your time.
Can you recommend someone in the UK for a similar chat?
For info: promo vid for the book: https://goo.gl/449vJh
I was also looking for contacts in the UK
- 1 person in mind as end user (global publisher)
- review further
- decide whether or not to pursue
- 1 person in mind as part of an ESN supplier (supplier A, in UK marketing team)
- review further, may be good to get a supplier perspective eg ITTs
- decide whether or not to pursue
- could look for a further contact but this one relating to my preferred platform from supplier B
- dig out a related job spec from them
- decide whether to do more Googling and then pursue or not
I was also wondering about contacting a global guru on community management but most of that input may be in their organisation’s reports. Will check there first BUT may just try it on! That person might be interested from their point of view to be asked. An opportunity since to further that relationship has developed.
Other Prototype Activities
Want to dig out job/role specs in suppliers and end users to understand roles.
Read industry reports for this year (I have at least one).
A: Consultant & Event Facilitator
Questions the Prototypes Should Answer
1. Can I carve out a role where these skills are used a majority of the time?
2. Can I leverage my current role to do these activities a significantly higher percentage of the time?
3. Should I do this for several organisations or as part of an internal consultancy team?
Life Design Conversations
None planned.
Candidate for brainstorming.
Other Prototype Activities
Want to dig out the course notes from Internal Consultancy Skills course as refresh.
Also revisit Brand You materials with stronger focus.
Use Innerspiration's Values Cards on me (previously agreed to do this with an #LDinsight chat-er)
B: Content Creator
Questions the Prototypes Should Answer
- Do I have a book in me?
- Will I ever be able to produce my own content instead of referencing others?
- What is my optimum medium and platform?
- Can I make money from doing this?
Life Design Conversations
None planned.
Candidate for brainstorming.
Other Prototype Activities
Blog through the list of blog subjects from WOL Circle and write/post 1 per free night as a challenge (simulating pressure of time and subject).
H - Book Club Week 8 - Chapter 7: How Not To Get A Job
Perfection does not play a role in life design
standard model of job search in USA used by 90% of job seekers with a success rate of 5%
standard model of job seeking:-
- look for job listing on internet or corporate web site
- read job spec
- you assess match
- submit CV and covering letter
- wait to be contacted
52% of employers admit that they respond to fewer than half of candidates that apply
fails because based on mistaken idea that your perfect job is there waiting for you
Mining the Internet
most great jobs in great job category are never publicly listed
orgs recruit internally and word of mouth and only post publicly when drawn a blank
using internet as only job-finding method is masochistic
if you insist on this method, some tips to improve chances of success
Understanding Job Descriptions
recruiter's point of view:-
- the job description on website is typically not written by hiring manager or someone who really understands the job
- job desc almost never captures what the job actually requires for success
Section 1: The Setup
Company X looking for a candidate for job X with the following:-
- skills listed
These are often the skills needed for any employee.
Also almost impossible to screen for by just looking at CV
Section 2: Skills
ridiculously detailed list of v specific requirements/skills
always based on skills of previous job holder
does not take into account job may change in future
Section 3: "What Makes The Candidate Special"
HR person accidentally decides to let truth out - this is the "you'd be crazy to take this job"
Fit In Before You Stand Out
job #1 is fit in using the same words as job ad
your CV will be discovered via keyword searches
add their words to your CV
in screening candidates phase, in the interview, use words that make match to spec
the time to stand out is later in process
Tips to make internet job search strategy more effective
- rewrite CV using same words as job poster
- if you have a specific skill that is posted as required, put it in your CV verbatim
- if you do not have that skill, find a way to describe your skills using those words
- focus your CV on the job as described
- focus on what you can do for them
- answer their needs
- always bring a fresh, nicely-printed CV to interview
- may be 1st time they have seen it in that format
The Super Job Description Syndrome
as seeker find out ASAP if the job desc is one of these (i.e. no one could qualify!)
age of ad helps re repeat postings etc
how many people have already been interviewed
if more than 8 interviewed, the process is broken AND you probably should look elsewhere
The Phantom Job Listing Syndrome
where someone internally lined up for position and external process is just going through the motions
a sign of this is rapid churn of vacancies on corporate website
Warning: Cool Companies and False Positives
a gravity problem where such orgs are more concerned about bad hires and reject good candidates
to work at cool companies you really do need to do prototyping convos with people inside those companies
The Way It Should Be
Job descriptions should say looking for candidates:-
- who would like to connect their Workview to their Lifeview
- who believe that good work is found through the proper exercise of their signature strengths
- with high integrity, the capacity to learn quickly & high intrinsic motivation, we can teach you all the rest
remember, life designers do not work on gravity problems - so we are not going to sort these issues out!
effectiveness in getting hired involves a simple yet important design reframe
Dysfunctional Belief 11: you should focus on your need to find a job
Reframe: you should focus on the hiring manager's need to find the right person
bottom line: there is no perfect job that you perfectly fit but you can make lots of jobs perfect enough
Exercise Responses
There were no exercises in the book. So I generated the following:-
For each paid job you have performed, list the job title, when you did it and where you heard of the job
List any job sites that you use, have used, are thinking of using with any commentary about your experience of using them
- No familiarity with current sites at all.
- Aware of Monster and Glassdoor. No sustained use of them.
- In the past mainly relied on ads in IT trade press.
- My research will be based on ESN-related roles.
- Job Sites
Identify any job descriptions that are the closest fit you can find to 1 or more of your Odyssey Plans
I have found some Slack roles that I have listed for info. I do not directly fit any of these and the locations are all no good at all.
Update your CV/resume to "apply" for 1 of the job descriptions
No time to do that this week but I have posted a copy of my last CV that I produced 5.5 years ago so is very out of date.
I would be interested if anyone could point me at any current best practice. I will check out Liz Ryan's book.
Happy to take any feedback on the current CV.
List any other thoughts that have come to mind as you have read this week's chapter
The WOL circle exercises of contributions I can see as being very helpful in gaining access to recruiters in organisations.
Ditto with Odyssey Plans. I may even try while we are still reading the book!
I - Book Club Week 9 – Chapter 8: Designing Your Dream Job
Dysfunctional Belief 12: my dream job is out there waiting
Reframe: you design your dream job through a process of actively seeking and co-creating it
most dream jobs are part of the hidden job market
in US only 20% of jobs are posted openly
the hidden job market is the job market that is only open to people who are already connected into the web of professional relationships in which that job resides
prototyping with Life Design conversations is exactly the best, if not only, way to get into the hidden job market in your field of interest
do lots of them! = asking for people's life stories
often the person who is talking to you turns the tables on you and asks you questions
if they do not, try "what steps would be involved in exploring how someone like me might become part of this organisation"
this is an open and not a closed question and invites possibilities not what is only available today
comes after you have already established a relationship with the other person
People: the other world wide web
to get these connections for a convo, you need to network (note from Simon: this is exactly what WOL is all about")
Dysfunctional Belief 13: networking is just hustling people - it is slimy
Reframe: networking is just asking for directions
cf people stopping in street and asking you for directions, our 1st inclinations is often to help, it feels good to help a fellow human being
"network" is more noun than verb - enter into the network and participate in the convo
the most common way for people to be introduced across professional networks is by referrals from personal networks - this is not favouritism, it ius just communal behaviour
the network exists to sustain the commnity of people getting the work done - it is the only way to gain access to the hidden job market
networking is one place where the internet really can transform your job search
web searching across social networking helps you identify the right people to do Life Design convos with
Focus on offers - not jobs
Dysfunctional Belief 14: I am looking for a job
Reframe: I am pursuing a number of offers
this is crtitical, it changes everything
shifts you from being a person deciding whether to take this job (which you know nothing about) to being a person who is curious to find out what kind of interesting offer you might be able to find in that organisation
moves you from judging to exploring, from negative to positive - a huge difference
in old ways, you lie or do not apply!
in this new way you do not have to be deceptive, you can be genuinely curious because it is true you would like the opportunity to evaluate an offer
this is not a matter of semantics, it is a matter of authenticity
with this reframe, you end up being more authentic, energetic, persistent, playful
ironically makes it more likely to get the offer
curiosity: one of the most important life design mindsets - pursuing latent wonderfulness
The Job Charming Fairy Tale
It is more than possible to use design thinking to get your first job, transform your current job, design your next job, and create a career that integrates your Workview and your Lifeview
there is no Job Charming coming to rescue you!
Exercise Responses
Again for this chapter there were no exercises in the book so I generated some myself.
I included this preamble:
This week I want to encourage all of you to do at least one Life Design conversation with someone either related to one or more of your Odyssey Plans or, if you do not have one of those (!), someone who is doing a role that you find appealing in any way to your future.
Please do not feel that if you do not do this you should not take part in the call. You all remain very welcome to sit in on any or all of the calls!
BUT I did 2 such convos last week and having read this week's chapter already, I believe it is critical to our understanding of the power of this approach to designing our lives that we all experience doing such a conversation.
Please ask me if you have any queries about any of this ....
- Remind yourself rapidly of the content in chapter 6 - Prototyping
- Do a personal brainstorm and list out your concerns, fears, issues, challenges, questions etc about the content of chapter 8 (and anything related to this in chapter 6)
Include any issues etc that you have had but have now addressed or got answers to - Identify specific named individuals that you could have a Life Design conversation with
Explain how and why you arrived at each name - Prepare for doing at least 2 Life Design conversations this week
How will you ask them to "meet" you?
How will you run the conversation? - Do at least 2 Life Design conversations this week
Trust me! This could be the most significant exercise you do not only in this book club but in anything related to your job search activities moving forward - Debrief/document each Life Design conversation, including:-
- How did you feel beforehand?
- How did the convo go?
- What was the relative percentage split of you talking them talking?
- What actions did you take away from the call?
- What will you do next as a result of this experience?
- Come to the next call, prepared, if you would like to, to run through all of the above.
J - Book Club Week 10 - Chapter 9: Choosing Happiness
Designing a career/ life requires lots of options, good alternatives per book to date AND ability to make good choices and live into those choices with confidence (you accept them and don’t second-guess yourself)
One goal common to all in this life design process is happiness
in life design, being happy means you choose happiness
secret to happiness in life design is not making the right choice, it is learning to choose well
nothing is certain so your choices do involve risk/ unknowns
beware poor choosing
the approach you take to choosing is important
Dysfunctional Belief 15: to be happy I have to make the right choice
Reframe: there is no right choice, only good choosing
choosing well almost guarantees a happy/ life-giving outcome & sets you up for more options & better future
The Life Design Choosing Process
steps:-
- gather and create options
- reminder of all the things done in process to date
- you can use these option-generating tools for any area of your life
- narrow down list to top alternatives
- if too few options, get more!
- may take months! this is not an overnight thing
- choose
- likely you will struggle with the possibilities
- we love having options
- we cannot deal with too many options
- 3-5 is OK
- 5 max !!
- too many options means no options
- when an option grows up it becomes a choice
- getting rid of some:-
- group into categories if related
- cross some off the list
- do whatever you need to do to shorten the list
- this becomes the list NOT a shortened list
- choose discerningly
- to make a good decision we need access to our feelings and gut reactions to the alternatives
- embracing our choice fully so we get the most out of it
- exactly what we do not need at this point is more info!
- deploy all your decision making faculties
- mind, heart, intuition
- get in touch with yourself
- see Grokking below
- let go of unnecessary options & move on
- do not agonise!
- you cannot make the best choice
- no one knows the end point and how the others will play out
- remember that imagined choices do not actually exist because they are not actionable
- we are trying to design a real/ liveable life NOT a fantasy life
- take action by starting with a choice
- only by taking action can we build our way forward
- you can always get more options in future!
- low investment at this point so easy to shift
- do not get caught with rearview mirror of decision regret
- letting go relies primarily on personal discipline
- find a life design collaborator or team to help remind you of your choice and how you decided that choice
- key to letting go is to move on and grab something else
- put your attention on something, not off something
Grokking
Specific technique that accesses the wisdom of your emotions - grok it
means to understand something deeply & completely
to grok a choice, you do not think about it, you become it
pick one option from your list & live it for a few days = live in Alternative A reality for a few days
reset to now for a few days
do the same with the other options
allows your choices to be explored in different ways
addresses our rational perspective always being the one that dominates
Dysfunctional Belief 16: happiness is having it all
Reframe: happiness is letting go of what we do not need
No more hamster wheel
life designers see the adventure in whatever life they are currently building and living into - this is how you choose happiness
Exercise Responses
No exercises in the book.
I made up the following:-
- Think of some examples of how you choose things and the process you go through
- holidays
- things to do when you are actually on holiday
- books or other cultural items
- what to put in your food shopping basket
- where to go to eat when you are out
- How are you responding to this week's chapter?
- How has your view of happiness changed while reading the book over these weeks?
- What is your experience of "grokking"?
- Watch "Happiness" video
- I saw Andy present at a recent session at the Bradford Literature Festival
K - Book Club Week 11 - Chapter 10: Failure Immunity
it is impossible to never fail
BUT you can be immune to failure
meaning that you can become immune to large majority of negative feelings of failure that burden your life needelessly
failure immunity gives you grit to spare
you are going to fail by design more with DYL than with other approaches
by life designing you cannot fail: you can only be making progress and learning from the different kinds of experiences that failure and success both have to offer
Infinite Failure
prototyping helps you succeed sooner (in big important things) by failing more often (at the small low-exposure learning experiences)
Dysfunctional Belief 17: we judge our life by the outcome
Reframe: life is a process, not an outcome
life design is just a good set of dance moves
life is never done (until it is) and and life design is never done (until you're done)
"Finite and Infinite Games" (James Carse):
just about everything we do in life is either a finite game (we play by the rules to win) or an infinite game (we play with the rules for the joy of getting to keep playing)
when you remember that you are always playing the inifinite game of becoming more and more yourself and designing how to express the amazingness of you into the world, you can't fail
Being and Doing
when designing your life:-
- you start with who you are (ch 1,2,3)
- you have lots of ideas (ch 4,5,6)
- you make the best choice you can (ch 8)
Dysfunctional Belief 18: life is a finite game with winners and losers
Reframe: life is an infinite game, with no winners or losers
failure reframe is a healthy habit that leads to failure immunity
Failure Reframe Exercise
- log your failures
- any you choose to lost from current, last year, all-time etc
- after done one, do it ongoing repeatedly
- categorise your failures
- screwups: simple things that you usually get right
- acknowledge, apologise, move on
- weaknesses: regularly happen, your abiding failings
- best strategy is avoid the situations that cause them instead of improvement
- growth opportunities
- identifiable cause that can be fixed
- direct your attention to these
- screwups: simple things that you usually get right
- identify growth insights
- from the growth opportunities, identify those offer invite for real improvement
- what is there to learn
- what went wrong (critical failure factor)
- what could be done differently next time (critical success factor)
- from the growth opportunities, identify those offer invite for real improvement
record these in a log with the failure as 1st colum with the abov 3 adjacent columns
Don't Fight Reality
in life design there are no wrong choices and no regrets
Exercise Responses
I did the failure reframe exercise. Interestingly there were examples in all three categories.
I also noted that there were not too many that came to mind and instead of encouraging me I was sensing that this was a me staying in my comfort zone safety issue!
- Recent issues:-
- infrastructure decommissioning of old and commissioning new slipped a lot - growth opportunity (training?)
- my ignorance of technical details of work required
- new person working on it
- lots of issues where had to wait for lengthy SQL Server machine jobs to complete in some cases 12+ hours
- never got definitive list of tasks required
- technical staff did not go into detail of what they needed to do
- issues when problems were 1st time they had seen them
- on the positive side, did complete with no issues and when old infrastructure wiped and removed from racks in data centre the new system continued to work! #miracle!!
- occasionally surprised when I forget non-work events but reminders in Google Calendar help e.g. Elders Prayerss at Church (screwup)
- I have been meaning to do Weekly Review (see Getting Things Done) and that would address this
- distractions (weakness)
- I know what I need to do!
- avoiding the hard tasks and procrastinating with them (weakness)
- I know what I need to do!
L - Book Club Week 12
Chapter 11: Building a Team
every great design was made great because there was a design team that brought that project, product, or building to life
designers believe in radical collaboration because true genius is a collaborative process
we design our lives in collaboration and connection with others, because we is always stronger than I - it’s as simple as that
Dysfunctional Belief 19: it is my life, I have to design it myself
Reframe: you live and design your life in collaboration with others
designing your life is an act of co-creation
using design thinking for designing your life is completely different from career development or strategic planning or even life coaching
a key difference is role of community
life design is about your life but it is not all about you - it is all about us
life design is intrinsically a communal effort
wayfinding requires contribution and participation of others
everyone involved is part of your design community
some will become core collaborators and play a crucial and ongoing part in your life design matter but all matter
inputs to how you will end up living do not exist yet!
think of all the people who have input to your process so far while you have read the book
Identifying Your Team
supporters
- those you can count on to care about your life
players
- active in your life design process
intimates
- those directly affected by your life design
- the most influential people in that design
- need to be kept informed if not directly involved
- may be a challenge involving them in the process as too close to you & may not be able to be objective
- do not just tell them your life design re e.g. emigrating at the end!!
the team
- those with whom you share the specifics of your life design project
- defo need some to do this with
- not necessarily best friends
- do need to show up, understand the process and not always full of answers/advice
- between 2 and 6 other people
Team Roles and Rules
focus is on supporting an effective life design
NOT your therapist, financial advisor, spiritual guru
ARE your co-creators in your life design
only role needing defining is facilitator: organises the meetings & what gets done in those meetings, usually you!
key is to make sure this is a convo!
Stanford team rules:-
- Respectful
- Confidential
- Participative (no holding back)
- Generative (constructive, not sceptical or judging)
Calling All Mentors
value of mentors:-
- counsel and advice
- former when someone helps you figure out what you think
- always helpful
- all legitimate mentoring is centred on giving counsel
- lots of questions to you
- spend most of their time listening then offering reframes of your situation
- latter when someone tells you what s/he thinks
- good when they have indisputable expertise
- BUT no expert advisor for your life
- former when someone helps you figure out what you think
- discernment
- mentors help you assess options, make sense of it all
- the long view and the local view
- lifelong mentors
- topical mentors on specific subjects
- ad hoc/ seasonal mentors
where to find them? being a good mentee helps - all you really need are mentor-capable people from whom you can extract a mentor contribution - you initiate - cf prototype convos!
Beyond Team to Community
the life design process is stimulating and life giving .. and pretty habit forming
to find a community as we intend it, look for a group of people that shares most/all of the following characteristics:-
- kindred purpose
- needs purpose
- meets regularly
- shared ground
- e.g. values, points of view
- to know and be known
- be engaged in each others' lives
- needs personal disclosure
Conclusion: A Well-Designed Life
balance of all dimensions of your life happens over time not every day
ditto with life design
balance is a myth
a well-designed life is a verb not a noun
Dysfunctional Belief 20: I finished designing my life; the hard work is done and everything will be great.
Reframe: You never finish designing your life - life is a joyous and never-ending design project of building your way forward.
we are all in different places - some read the book and are looking for significant life changes, others just to make minor improvements
but for all life designing is not over, it is not just a set of techniques, it is a way of living
in life design we only take on the question of how to design your life— not what life you should live or why one life is better than another
Disrupting Life
some of reframes may be disrupting, often unlearning harder to do than learning
we believe the book will not make you a different person but it will make you more like you
reminder of the 5 design mindsets from the start of the book
pay particular attention to your compass - workview and life view - and your practices in living your well-designed life
perhaps the most important recommendation we can give you to sustain a well-designed life is to invest in and commit to some personal practices of the variety we described in chapter 9
So - How's It Going?
life design is ultimately a way of life that will transform how you look at your life and how you live your life. The end result of a well-designed life is a life well lived.
Exercise Responses
- What is your experience of mentors, if any?
- Very limited.
- At a previous employer, I was given a mentor with all other middle managers following a training development programme.
- Not ideal being assigned one.
- Think mentor selection should be a two-way process
- The guy was OK but not a person I had a lot of respect for via his performance in projects I was a part of (he left shortly after we started mentoring sessions to become CEO of a small publisher.
- re 1:1 discipleship in a Christian context, I ran a survey at church years ago, virtually none of us had had a mentoring experience.
- If we have not had this experience how are we supposed to be a mentor ourselves?
- Do you think you have to be mentored before you should be a mentor?
- Make a list of three to five people who might be a part of your Life Design Team. Think of your supporters, your intimates, your mentors or possible mentors. Ideally, these will be three to five people also actively engaged in designing their lives.
- Topical question, I can think of a number of online contacts who I would love to be part of that team!
- Whether they would want to be is a different question
- May be I can target people who are in transition. 1 such person is starting up on their own shortly
- It has been great working with you guys in this book club as we have gone through the book! Some candidates there! ;)
- Do you intend to build this team? How will you do that?
- Defo considering now that I am aware that this is a recommendation.
- I could see the building of this team as a WOL Circle goal.
- Identifying people going through book is not an easy task. May need more PR work for the book. Mentioning in preamble to Life Design interview did spark some questions including me doing a podcast interview in which I was asked to summarise the book.
- How has this book group helped you through the life design process?
- Enormously!
- Never heard about the book until Q1 this year.
- Process new to me.
- Did have some understanding of design thinking before.
- Good to do exercises and discuss with others.
- Would have been good to have had more of us doing the exercises each week.
- Interesting how many people signed-up and then neither turned up on calls or input to Slack - no idea if they were lurkers - including those who had previously been through Creative Live and equivalent input from authors.
- I reckon this is easier content to process/apply as a group with others and not solo.
- Beyond this book group, what will you be doing next? If unclear, list some thoughts for discussing with the group.
- some brainstormed thoughts
Designing Your Life (before end of year not #1 priority)
- blog post of this experience and my notes
- doing a Life Design convo on 14 August with the guy in UK recommended by an earlier interviewee
- could try to find a Slack UK contact for convo
- contact made with a respected community person via another route by accident! now have their email address volunteered by them, need to follow up
- also thinking of seeking convo with leading UK community person
- want to revisit and possibly post Lifeview and Workview (I now have done in this post!)
- ideally, do wilder mindmaps using 50 Things output from WOL Circle
- review Odyssey Plans in the light of that
- read the Christian supplement to this book by Dave Evans!!
new assignment at work
- this may happen - implementing MS Dynamics 365 for a major UK retail organisation - could be ideal re what I want to do!
- did 2 day requirements workshop in London with a colleague and their property management team (directors and senior mgt team)
- a great start!
- love retail as an application area
- could do Dynamics training from free resources and do a related WOL Circle goal in a circle e.g. integration of social with CRM
- not clear if Q3/4 should be solo and consolidating year to date vs another multi-week group activity
book club
- new IRL club may be starting near my home shortly
- other books high on my list - solo or club?
- Deep Work
- One Minute Mentoring
- Reinvention Roadmap
- 42 Rules for Your New Leadership Role
WOL Circle
- be good to do another one some time as member or facilitator
- would love to do one with some movers and shakers especially if never done a full 12-week circle
- I need to do a fully "proper" WOL circle goal consistent with criteria
- may do invite where I spell out what is in my mind and encourage like-minded people to do a circle
- I am defo keen to be stretched more
- still happy to do a circle with anyone
Show Your Work
- increasingly aware that I need to read this Jane Bozarth book and compare to WOL and WOL circles
- almost feeling like there are camps!
- some people saying for example that they do not need to do a WOL circle because they already WOL
- what do I think about that? etc
Evernote Inbox
- or could just sort this out!!
Physical Clutter
- or could just sort this out!
- Revisit my One Word for 2017 - discipline (see my blog post)
- In the last call, there was some suggestion of us having a follow-on call or calls in the future. Is that of interest and if so what likely timing?
- Happy to do another call or calls as group or 1:1 any time
- Conscious that time slot was hopeless for some people
- also aware that Angelika and Monette (George) had connection issues
- What have you found the biggest challenges as you have read the book and done the exercises?
- being wild!
- time being wild with other members of the group on my mindmaps may have helped me eg Sonsoles mentioning beer pics on Instagram to me
- I can be but work was uppermost and blinkered me
- wondering what the value of some of my interests are even as play only
- now have Thai and Scandi cook books that I would love to run through and apply!
- I suspected Odyssey Plans were going to be a challenge for me and they were!!
- Try to catch up with the exercises from earlier weeks
- Think I have done all now - could obviously spend more time doing some where I could have improved on outputs
M - Zoom and Slack
As for the WOL Circle I facilitated in Q1 2017, I used Zoom for video conferencing and call recording and Slack for hosting all communications and file sharing as well as hosting the call vids once recorded. These worked well again for me.
N - Who would benefit from the book and how to benefit from it most?
We had a range of people in the book club including those out of work, those happily employed or freelancing and those who were looking at possible career transitions.
I would strongly recommend the book to anyone and everyone including those who are looking at first careers.
Interesting that in the group there were many of us who did not “Play” enough. One person “Work”-ed so much that when work was taken away their support structures outside of work was weak.
This is the kind of book not to quick read but to methodically work through doing all the set exercises.
I would also say that it would be a challenge to apply this book on your own without doing the book with others at the same time and place in the book. Indeed, while recruiting for this group, there were many who had been through online seminars with the authors and needed assistance or peer support to do the exercises. In some cases with this group, this sort of person signed-up expressing an interest and yet did not take part in any of the calls nor reviewed the Slack posts.
The book club was an amazing experience with a majority of exercises that I had neither seen nor done before.
Having now down a first pass going through the complete book in great detail and applied it to my life, I would also recommend doing the book as part of a group of people who you would want to stick around after your first pass to support you through the process. There are times in the book where “your team” are mentioned but if you do this in a group you already have a team of sorts but these may not be the people who would support you after the group ceases. I would advocate being part of a group where some of these longer-term supporters are going through the book with you.
Ideally, you need to be part of a group that reads the content as well as does the exercises. It often helped me seeing other people’s output. Moreover, I would have benefitted from being able to brainstorm doing some of the exercises with others to make me think wilder, deeper and not always on work-related scenarios close to what I am doing now. Clearly, when finding a group to do this book in, if you do not know the other people, you will not know how serious or otherwise they are in doing the work that needs to be done. It is definitely worth pitching recruitment to a group clearly so people are aware of what you ideally want from them in terms of commitment and showing up.
O - Designing Your Life and Working Out Loud Circles
I did my first WOL Circle in Q1 2017. While doing that I stumbled over the “Designing Your Life” book and as the circle ended I decided to read that book as my next personal development “project”. As a person who loves facilitating groups with a purpose, I decided to get some fellow travellers to journey through the book with me.
I used Slack and Zoom for this group as I had done for the WOL circle.
Like a WOL Circle, I ran the book club as a 12-week programme but this time I was clear that each call was at the end of our week’s “work” and in a sense we were “showing our work” in the call at the end of the relevant week. This worked better with this timing clarity than it had done in the circle.
Sonsoles and Monette who had been part of the circle with me were also part of this book club. Whilst we tried not to make the club a “love in” for circles, circles got mentioned frequently and naturally throughout the 12 weeks.
Doing a WOL circle first and then this book in a group is a potent sequence and combination. The best example of this is the Life Design Interviews in Designing Your Life where, in prototyping your life, investigating new life choices you need to contact people to understand what they do and how they do it, their joys and challenges and so on. For those that have done a full 12-week WOL Circle knowing, or getting to know, such people in the first place is simply a matter of making increasingly powerful contributions to such people. Personally speaking, when I got to the Life Design Interview part of DYL this was second nature or even easy to do. But for others in the group, this was a real challenge.
As it happens and spelled out in DYL, this sort of contact is required increasingly in today’s job market and I would speculate also for “freelancers” and solo professional services firms winning new business and gaining incremental business from existing customers.
It really felt like I was simply using the skills learned in a WOL circle and applying them in a new and even more powerful way.
Clearly, being part of a small group doing the WOL Circle content has a similar dynamic to being part of a group doing a life choices book with practical exercises for 12 weeks.
As I went through the DYL book, I increasingly considered how you could do DYL as your WOL Circle personal goal and whether it would be better to do them back to back as two separate but connected “programmes” in series rather than doing them in parallel and ultimately make your WOL circle personal goal totally related to DYL protototyping.
My current thinking suggests that doing them in series - WOL Circle first then DYL in a group second – is likely to be the best approach given that a person would be building a strong networking skills base prior to tackling DYL.
However, if someone was particularly keen and had the time to do both the WOL Circle content and the DYL content in one circle and there was at least one other person also doing both, I could see that being a powerful combination. Time would clearly be an issue and I would say that the DYL content would take 2 hours each week to read the book and do the exercises. This would be over and above the 1 hour circle meeting and whatever other time a person would spend on WOL exercises (1 hour minimum). The following table shows the current WOL Circle week titles and the DYL split that I used in the book club:
Hopefully that provides some food for thought for those involved or wanting to be involved in WOL circles and who are also looking at Designing Your Life content.
This is fabulous. Your meticulous notes and insights helped clarify and illustrate many of the DYL concepts for me. I'm developing a university class based on the same book and am glad I found your blog. Thank you.
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