Designing Your Work Life by Bill Burnett and Dave Evans

There is something special about reading a good book. But there is something even more special when a friend drops by with a beautifully packed and delicious cake.

What began as a quiet reading time quickly became one of my favorite reading experiences.

The cake was thoughtfully layered, intentionally and perfectly balanced between vanilla and red velvet layers and a creamy topping.  I told myself I would enjoy it slowly, one bite a day while reading Designing Your Work Life. But let me be honest, that promise did not last long. The cake was gone by day two.The good news? I finished the book too.

With a glass of red wine beside me, the entire experience felt deliberate. It was a reminder that designing your work life is not only about productivity or career moves. It is also about creating space for joy, rest, and presence. Sometimes learning lands deeper when it is paired with pleasure.

Designing Your Work Life by Bill Burnett and Dave Evans builds on the ideas from their first book, Designing Your Life, but shifts the focus more to how we can design and engage with work in a meaningful and fulfilling way. Rather than chasing a single “dream job,” the authors encourage us to redesign our relationship with work through small reflective experimental process that involves design thinking principles.

One of the most valuable aspects of this book is its emphasis on six core mindsets:

• Be curious

• Try stuff
• Reframe problems
• Know it’s a process
• Ask for help
• Tell your story

Through these mindsets, they invite us to stay open, learn by doing, challenge the narratives we have created or learnt about our work, and involve others as we shape our paths forward.

What I appreciated most is how practical the book is including the inclusion of some related examples and exercise at the end of each chapter. These exercises are simple yet meaningful, one that get as much as you put into it.

If you like some aspects of your job but feel frustrated by others, this book offers ways to not only salvage your current job, but to edesign it into something you genuinely enjoy.

One quote that really stayed with me:

“Before you can start designing and redesigning your work life, you need to learn to think like a designer… designers don’t think their way forward. Work designers build their way forward.”