Bill Burnett

And, you know, these conversations aren't transactional.

You're not trying to extract information from people.

You're just trying to get their story.

I think if you're looking backwards, you'll notice that, yeah, the life is sort of a zigzag of different things.

Nobody's career is a straight line typically.

But if you're looking forward, I'll say this, it's pretty hard to plan your life.

And particularly nowadays with the disruptions of AI and other things going on in careers and life, it's pretty hard to plan your way forward because there's an old military expression, no plan for the battle survives first contact with the enemy.

And I don't know about military stuff.

So I would say no plan for your life is going to survive first contact with reality.

But I do think you can design your way forward because design is essentially a flexible strategy, right?

Designers generate lots of ideas, not just one idea or two ideas, lots of ideas.

And then they prototype into the future because, you know, you don't exactly know where you're going, but you want to know you're on the right path.

So you do some work to understand your coherency.

Am I looking for something?

And is the thing I'm looking for coherent with who I am and what I believe?

And then you come up with three things, three plans.

And then you start exploring those plans.

And as you move forward, you know, things will change and things will happen.

But because you have this sort of flexible strategy rather than a planning strategy, I think it's more generative.

And what I often tell my students is don't you hope that five years from now, 10 years from now, you're doing something amazing that hasn't even been invented yet.