Designing the Work-Life Balance You Want

One of the results of the COVID-19 pandemic is that people are beginning to question the lives they lead. The old status quo of “living to work” is pivoting into designing the life you truly want, with work being a portion of it. Many leaders and employees are embracing the vision of designing the life you want, not the life you have.

The same principles that help us build a strong business can help lead us to a greater purpose in our personal lives, too. And isn’t that what’s most important? What good is having a strong business or career if we don’t live a life of purpose and passion?

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Yes, there will be seasons during which we need to focus more attention on our business and sacrifice in our personal lives. But if that’s the norm with no end in sight, then design the life you want and build your business/career to support it. Only then will you truly enjoy your work life and make an impact on the world that makes you proud.

In 2016, Stanford’s Bill Burnett and Dave Evans published the book, “Designing Your Life: How to Build a Well-Lived, Joyful Life.” The book introduced the world to the concept of design thinking — basically how designers build their way forward instead of allowing the fears of self-doubt and imposter syndrome constantly drag them down. Instead of pushing off the life they wanted to lead until later in life or retirement, Stanford students were taught how to design that life starting now!

I recently had the opportunity to talk with one of their disciples, Eugene Korsunskiy, an assistant professor at Dartmouth University, who specializes in human-centered design. I asked Eugene about design thinking and how it can be used to build not only a work life you love but also a truly joyful life.

As Korsunskiy explains, design thinking involves using both mindsets and tools. “Together, they are a really helpful framework from which to guide creative action,” he says. From a mindset perspective, this involves taking on cognitive dispositions such as embracing experimentation, curiosity, optimism, empathy and collaborating across differences. From a tools’ perspective, design thinking involves using research and ideation to constantly improve.

Design Thinking works well because it helps avoid allowing problems to derail you. Instead, you move forward with empathy (self-compassion) and an iterative mind (massive curiosity). Essentially, you research the people involved with their goal (for example, someone living the life you want) and design solutions that help you grow toward it.

Design Thinking for people looking to build a life of greater purpose and passion involves taking the same approach for your business or personal life. “When you are the person you’re designing for, when it’s your life or professional career or relationships, the No. 1 most important thing to do at the beginning is to build empathy for yourself,” Korsunskiy says. “Most people think they know themselves.

In reality, most people don’t know themselves as well as they need to or want to, which is why designers advocate reflection and journaling and paying attention to how you think and how you feel — what makes you tick and what your interests are and what your curiosities are in order to really understand. What kinds of things give you energy; what kinds of things give you joy?”

Let’s face it: all of us are redesigning and rebuilding our lives and our work lives right now, post COVID-19. Design Thinking creates a framework for building the life and career that could result in a truly satisfying work/life integration.