Mike Carruthers

Instead of chasing purpose or waiting for clarity to strike, there's a practical approach to building a life that feels meaningful.

And here to explain how to do it is Bill Burnett.

He's the executive director of the Stanford Life Design Lab, an adjunct professor of mechanical engineering and design at Stanford, and the founder of the Designing Your Life Institute in Singapore.

He's also the co-author of the book How to Live a Meaningful Life, using design thinking to unlock purpose, joy, and flow every day.

Hey Bill, welcome to Something You Should Know.

Mike, thanks for inviting me.

Sure.

So, designing a meaningful life sounds like such a great idea, but I think we probably have to define some terms here.

What is a meaningful life?

How do you know if you're living one?

And given what you just said, given that definition, do you think most of us have a meaningful life, or we don't, or it just depends on who you are, or what?

So can you give me an example of that, of transaction and flow, what you just described, make it a real life situation?

So I saw in the introduction of your book where you talked about, I guess you talked about your other book, but the words were, get curious, talk to people, try stuff, tell your story.

Talk about that.

The other thing in the title of your new book, Design,

We were just talking about this, did an interview just the other day about this, about how life is hard to design.

That, in fact, life is, if you look back, is the result of a lot of coincidences and chance meetings and all that.

You can't sit down and design your life.

So when I see that in the title, I think, well, wait a minute, wait a minute.

Yeah.