I live in a world of choices.  Choices that are being wrestled with.  Choices that I have to make, but more frequently, choices others are struggling with.  Sometimes it’s the colleagues, students or parents who stop by to talk for just a second; or my family and friends who are choosing between an Option A or B or an unknown Z; or the alumni who might check in once in a while to share a new life conundrum.

Some choices blossomed from hard work and effort.  Some choices emerged from missteps made along the way.  Most choices are of our own making.  Others were cruelly forced upon us. 

Some settle the day to day - How do I respond to this email?  What am I gonna eat for dinner?  What book do I want to read?  What do I want to do before falling asleep?  How do I want to spend my holiday?  How do I handle this frustrating class?

Others are way more consequential - What school am I going to go to?  What’s going to be my major?  Where am I going to live?  Do I want to keep this friend/this group of friends?  What’s going to be my next career?  

What am I going to do?

I was recently shared a TEDTalk - “5 Steps to Designing the Life You Want” - and I decided to steal (OK “borrow”) some of his ideas and play them out in my own world.  And now, I’d like to share a few of the stickier points from Professor Bill Burnett (yes, his last name sounds oddly familiar).

Dr. Burnett is big on applying the model of Design Thinking to the human experience.  He takes the premises from Stanford’s Design School - define your needs, brainstorm possibilities, prototype, test, implement - and instead of using them to build a better car or a more sustainable form of energy, he talks about using them to design your life.

And here’s what you do…

Before you even start to design, you have to own your stuff.  Recognize your “Gravity Problem” (we all have them).  Your Gravity Problem is the “circumstance, reality, or limitation that you cannot change, no matter how hard you try.”  Until you own this problem and move beyond it, it will gravitationally suck all your energy away from moving forward.

Gravity Problems come in many forms - You’re too short.  You’re tone deaf.  The puberty gods haven’t been kind.  Your boss suffers from pleonasm.  You come from embarrassing roots.  You have a chronic physical/mental illness you’ll never shake.  Your girlfriend, your friend, your cat doesn’t want you.    

What’s your Gravity Problem?  Do you see it?  Do you accept it?  Once you have, you can start to design.

Step #1: Define your needs.  Figure out the actual issue.  What’s the question you’re trying to resolve?  It’s like the email, dinner, book, sleep, holiday, class, school, major, friends, career questions from up above.  

Step #2: Go Ideate in the Multiverse.  See what’s possible.

For those of you familiar with comic book movies, the multiverse is a plot device where there are an infinite number of yous living in an infinite number of worlds living an infinite number of lives.  Although the existence of actual multiverses is fairly debatable, you can actually see yourself in different worlds.  Your mind can see yourself eating spaghetti or tacos or an ice cream sundae.  Your mind can create pictures of you living in Sofia or Plovdiv or Timbuktu.

So, ideate 3 versions of your answer to your question.  Three versions of your life.  Version #1 - this current version of you.  Play out this life, this current path, and be as detailed as possible about what will happen in the best of conditions.  Add in all the fun, vivid details that will make your life on this path truly remarkable.  

Version #2 - imagine Version #1 is dead.  It can’t happen.  It’s not an option.  No matter what.  What would you then do next?  What’s the next most logical option, and play that one out, adding again all the details.  

And then there’s Version #3 - the version where you remove two factors - money doesn’t matter and people’s opinion of you doesn’t matter.  What would this life look like if you took this choice?  What would you do if the two biggest limiters for people (money and what others think) were not part of the equation?

Version 3s sometimes are seen as the super silly roads-less travelled.  The “never-actually-considereds” or the “the ones that would never work.”  If you don’t make the basketball or volleyball team.  Stop trying sports, try the musical.  Are you looking to go to university at big name schools in California and New York?  Ignore the US altogether, and consider a small arts school in Barcelona.  Not feeling comfortable sitting with Friend A and Friend B.  Get out of the cafeteria and sit with the silly kids that are always laughing.   

Whether or not you eventually choose Version 2 or 3, it’s important to at least ideate down that path.  Maybe there’s details in those versions you add to the current you.  Now…go make that choice, go design that life.

That Dr. Burnett (not this regular Mr. version) recommended never just quitting something and starting something new.  Instead he talks about the next step - prototyping.  Dip your toe into the water of that choice, before committing yourself 100%.  See if it’s a good fit.  See if your body feels right in that world.  In that choice.  You can do this by prototyping conversations or prototyping experiences. 

The prototyping conversations are ones where you talk to people who are already living the version of your life you’re considering.  Someone’s doing right now what you want to do.  Science fiction writer William Gibson stated, “The future is already here.  It’s just unevenly distributed.”  So go talk to those people who are already living the world you’re imagining.  Go talk to the alumni who went to that school in Barcelona.  The students who didn’t drop that English class and stuck it out until the end.  The older kid who got out of a toxic friendship and said goodbye to this lifelong friend.  Hear their story.  Feel if their story could be your story.

Or have a prototyping experience.  Go sit in that other world for just a bit.  Observe it from nearby before tossing everything aside.  Look closely at all the details of that decision and see if that story you see could be your story.  Nibble, sample, volunteer, shadow.  Try before you buy.

And then the final step, just do it.  Make the choice.  And don’t go back. Psychologists have found that the regret of what could have been, keeping that old door open, prevents growth.  Prevents happiness.  Close, lock, block that old door.  Remember, you left that old choice for a reason.  Leave it behind.

In the next hour, in the next day, someone will come to you with a conundrum.  A choice that needs to be made.  Could be petty.  Could be momentous.  Fight the urge to solve the problem for them.  Fight the urge to give advice.

Instead, show them the power of design.  Show them the steps to visualize and then show them how to choose from the liveS available.

Show them how they have the power to design their life.