We’ll explain a few simple ways to do this, but first you need to understand one really big point: Designers don’t think their way forward. Designers build their way forward. What does that mean? It means you are not just going to be dreaming up a lot of fun fantasies that have no relationship to the real world—or the real you. You are going to build things (we call them prototypes), try stuff, and have a lot of fun in the process.

Want a career change? This book will help you make that change, but not by sitting around trying to decide what that change is going to be.

5: Design Your Lives

“You are legion.

Each of us is many.

This life you are living is one of many lives you will live.

Now, we are not talking about reincarnation, or anything with religious implications. The plain and simple truth is that you will live many different lives in this lifetime. If the life you are currently living feels a bit off, don’t worry; life design gives you endless mulligans. You can do it over at any point, at any time. “Correction shots” are always allowed.

Working with adults of all ages, we’ve found that where people go wrong (regardless of their age, education, or career path) is thinking they just need to come up with a plan for their lives and it will be smooth sailing. If only they make the right choice (the best, true, only choice), they will have a blueprint for who they will be, what they will do, and how they will live. It’s a paint-by-numbers approach to life, but in reality, life is more of an abstract painting—one that’s open to multiple interpretations.

A team led by Professor Dan Schwartz evaluated two groups. One started with three ideas in parallel, then subsequently had two more ideas on the way to their final idea. The second team started with one idea and then iterated four more times. Each team generated five rounds of ideas, but the parallel team did much better—generating more ideas and clearly better final solutions. The serial team—who started with just one idea—tended to keep refining the same idea over and over, never really innovating. The conclusion is that if your mind starts with multiple ideas in parallel, it is not prematurely committed to one path and stays more open and able to receive and conceive more novel innovations. Designers have known this all along—you don’t want to start with just one idea, or you’re likely to get stuck with it. Try not to think of your Odyssey Plans as “Plan A, Plan B, and Plan C”—where A is the really good plan and B is the okay plan and C is the plan that you really hope you don’t get stuck with but that you would accept as tolerable if absolutely necessary. Every Odyssey Plan is a Plan A, because it’s really you and it’s really possible.

Life design is about generating options, and this exercise of designing multiple lives will guide you in whatever’s next for you. You aren’t designing the rest of your life; you are designing what’s next. Every possible version of you holds unknowns and compromises, each with its own identifiable and unintended consequences. You are not so much finding answers in this exercise as learning to embrace and explore the questions, and be curious about the possibilities.

Remember, there are multiple great lives within you.

You are legion.

And you get to choose which prototype to start working on next.

Much like Gary has created three different buckets of possibilities for himself, Burnett and Evans suggest that you get your juices flowing with an “Odyssey plan” made up of three alternative realities:

• What life will look like in five years if you continue on your current trajectory (Plan A).

• What you would do if Plan A can’t happen and you need to pivot.

• What you would do if money and time were no object.