 Hello everybody. Thank you for coming. I didn't expect so many people, so I had to print out a few extra booklets. So that's very flattering. So the mini workshop we're going to do is called Design the Life You Love. It's inspired by the book, Design the Life You Love, a step-by-step guide to building a meaningful future. All the templates are designed by the author, Isabe Ursell, so she gets most of the credit here. I'm just taking a lot of her material, reconstructing it, and we're going to run through it together. So to give a bit of background, the reason I got interested in designing my personal life and my own experiences as a product was really doing software design. You realize that a lot of the processes and tools and rituals can be applied in other areas and in really interesting and meaningful ways. So the process we're going to go through today, just to recap for anybody who missed the little spiel at the beginning, is first deconstruction, taking apart the whole of the life, breaking it into ingredients or building blocks. Next, changing our point of view about it, using metaphors and activities to see it differently. Finally, reconstruction, putting it back together, and then giving it form through a creative expression, making it unique, making it yours, making it saleable. Alright, so something you can imagine to give a metaphor for it is a chicken soup. Chicken soup, if you're to deconstruct it, consists of several ingredients. You have chicken, onions, salt, pepper, broth, a pot, a bowl, fire, a spoon to eat it with. So those are the ingredients. Those are the building blocks. You can add them, subtract them, take them away. Or you can change how you look at the soup. You can... I mean, your initial point of view might be that it's really a flu remedy, that it's something your grandma gives to you, that it's not vegetarian, that it's not easily portable. And we can take these preconceptions about the soup and start changing aspects of them. For example, instead of chicken, you could have tofu and make it vegetarian. That's a new product. You could puree it and then freeze it and then turn it into a popsicle soup. And that's a new product. So that's about recombining and rearranging the ingredients to create something new and something totally different. And then expression is maybe taking this frozen popsicle, this soup popsicle, and saying, hey, you know, this is a space pop. This is something that can be eaten on a space station. It lasts for a long time. It's not messy, easily portable, no drips. And it's a completely new product that you get to by deconstructing, looking at it, reconstructing, and then expressing it. So for the first activity, if you open up your little booklets, we're going to do a deconstruction map. So for five minutes, I'll start a timer, create a map of the ingredients or building blocks that make up the soup of your life. So just grab your pens, go with your gut. It doesn't have to be fancy. Just roll with it. All right. Five minutes. Starting now. Sorry, that was everything. And just keep adding on and on to the fill in the page until you totally run out of ideas and it's all squished together. Okay. One more minute. All right. Good. Okay. I hope you all got some good ideas mapped out. And now that you've become masters of deconstruction, if you flip to the next page, the four quadrants, you can then start mapping the different ingredients of your life into the emotional, the physical, the intellect, and the spirit. And this is where you can really see how your life balances out or maybe how it doesn't. You'll see that some of the quadrants are fuller than others. Some are empty. Some could use a little extra work. For example, some of the entries that could go in each quadrant, this was the page, in emotion that you love your cat, physical, you have a small apartment, intellect, learning one new thing each day, or spirit, spiritual things that are part of your life. For example, volunteering in a soup kitchen. All right. So four minutes for this one. Go. All right. One minute left. All right. And time's up. Okay. Let's move on to the next activity. So this is really about finding the opportunity areas or the gaps in your maps and your quadrants. So where are the areas that you had aha moments or found insights? One thing you had too little or too much of, an opportunity you might see, a place you could improve in your life, and some constraints. Because we always design within constraints, there's the reality of not enough time, not enough money, and these are the things that foster creativity. So five minutes, if you want to fill out the insights, what you have too little, too much of, one opportunity, and one constraint. All right. One minute left. All right. So next activity. As you constructed your life, I'm sure you came across things that you wished weren't there. We all have vices, conflicts, weaknesses. And the point is that we get to keep what we love, get rid of what we don't, and transform what we can't change into something we can use to create a more positive outcome. So one thing we're going to do to try and change your point of view is look at who our heroes are. Just out their name, draw an icon or symbol for them, and the qualities, attributes, values that adhere them to you, including, yeah, a symbol for each one. So three minutes for this. Just draw it to your heroes. Okay. Has everybody listed out their heroes? Raise your hand if you have, if you've had enough time. Yeah? All right. Okay. Now, next step, cross out their names and put in yours. Because their qualities are your qualities. The values you recognize and admire in your heroes are really your values. Because what you see in other people, the good you see, those are the things that are important to you. So keep those values in mind as we move into the next activities. What are the things in people admire that you want in your own life? So the next activity is a metaphor for today. This is a drawing. Do a drawing or some writing to describe your life the way it is today, and use a metaphor. For example, my life, I might draw Bangkok. My life is Bangkok. It's a little bit chaotic, it's a super, it's a fun city, but not quite as organized as I'd like it to be and a little polluted, a bit too much traffic. So that would be my metaphor for today. Bit of room for improvement. One minute left. All right, good. Hopefully everybody has their metaphors. So if you switch to the next page, we'll be drawing a metaphor for tomorrow. How you would, the picture, you would like your life to be in the future. Maybe it's something like a tree. It could be defined as a pomegranate tree, beautiful, bountiful, and in order to improve your own making, it's growing, it's giving life. Or it could be, another metaphor could be Cirque du Soleil, colorful, playful, energetic, chaotic. Or it could be a flying machine, inventive, creative, pushing you forward. There's all these different images your life could take on. Okay, five minutes to draw a metaphor for tomorrow, your life in the future. All right, one more minute. Hit. Let's move on. So let's take a minute to look back on all the work that you've done so far and gather the important pieces to select your key ingredients. What are the things that really matter to you? The parts that move you, the things that are next to your heart, that are dear to you, and that you want to hold on to in your future vision? Just make a quick list of about 15 to 20 words of the things that matter. The key ingredients for the life you love. One more minute. So the last step is Reconstruction, which is all about making choices. Pick just three things that you absolutely want to have in your life, and then note just one thing you're leaving out or that you want to avoid. For example, if your metaphor was Everest, the things you might need to do would be find a great Sherpa, value the amazing journey that you had, even the difficult hike up to the summit, and training for the mountain, the toughness of body, mind, spirit, and something you might want to avoid would be complacency, laziness, falling into old habits. Okay, 30 more seconds. Okay, a little short on time, let's jump to the last section. So this is Expression, taking your ideas, the components that you've decided you want to keep in your life, and expressing them in a way that's creatively, uniquely you. So there's three options here. You can create a vision map as expression, draw yourself at the center, add the visual details and inspirational quotes that relate to your life. This will be the you of the future, or create a manifesto of it as expression, a public declaration of your opinions and your goals, your beliefs, your intentions, and these will be your calls to action. Or, this is my preferred one, create a to-do list for the life you love. Simple steps, the actions you're going to take to get there, and don't forget to include long-term, short-term, as well as serious, playful steps or goals. So take five minutes for this last activity, choose any one of the means of expression, the to-do list, the manifesto, or the vision map, whichever you feel is more you. It looks like everybody's finishing up drawing. So, in conclusion, those were the four steps, setting an intention, and about your life, deconstructing it into the constituent parts, trying to come up with a point of view of one of the parts, realign how you think of it through metaphors, heroes, finding your values, and then reconstructing it into something new, combining the parts and expressing it in a way that's uniquely you. So these activities, some might seem a little cheesy, not quite you, but it's really that basic formula that's the big takeaway. And that's it. Any questions? Comments? Hi. Thank you for the recommendations and trips that design the life you love. So I have a question slide. So after you do this to-do list and the expression, for example, do you have any advice on how to make this life that you designed real not just like a to-do list? Because sometimes you might just try to draw somehow. Yeah, and I think part of that is really keeping this visible, putting it up somewhere that you can see on a regular basis, and then just aligning your actions to it every morning when you get up was a small thing that I can do to contribute towards this vision, this goal, and keeping that just somewhere visible and prominent that's a constant reminder for you. Yeah, discipline and have it there is just constant inspiration and it's always something that can be revisited because we're constantly changing, right? It's all about iterating, redesigning, failing quickly. So trying this out. Maybe you've come up with your to-do list, you give it a quick whirl, and actually it's not right for you. Going to the gym at six in the morning is not happening. And so you iterate. Maybe it's evenings, maybe it's something else. And so it's just about keeping it visible, going back, looking at it, redesigning it the same the same as we do with any piece of software, any product we're releasing for it. Thank you. Anybody else? Hi, I noticed there's a combination of drawing and sort of mind mapping. And could you maybe explain a little bit about how they help in framing? So is there perhaps an advantage to using more drawings of those works, for instance? And I just wonder how this might relate to concepts like the vision board or some of these, where some people might be more disposed to images or words and how they might help. Thanks. And so I think these types of activities that are very visual are great, especially for people who are typically less visual and more wordy because the step two, like coming up with a new point of view, it's really a lot easier when you're out of your comfort zone and doing things in a way you don't typically approach them. So a lot of people, especially, I'm guessing there's some engineers in the audience, don't use drawing, sketching, these kind of fluffy artsy activities as creative jumping points. So when they do get into it, it's a very different way of looking at things, and I think it just forces you to change your perspective even more. For somebody who is naturally more artistically inclined, visual, I'd actually say go the opposite way and do activities that are more writing or structured or mathematical to pull you out of your typical comfort zone. Anybody else? Between the 1, 2, 3, 4, like, the point of view somehow. I want to understand the logic of this design, like you have the point 1 deconstruction, point 2 point of view, point 3 reconstruction, and then point 4 expression. What's the logic? Yes, so I think it's kind of flow. Okay, so the flow, I think step one deconstruction, the reason we need to break it apart at first, is because life as a whole is just too big, it's too broad of a problem to tackle. So you need to first break it down and just select one part that's manageable, that you can address and take concrete steps toward. So I think that's why breaking it down is the first one. And then once you have a little piece of it, a little piece of your life, changing your point of view about it is necessary before you can do anything different with it. You have to take steps and push yourself to see it differently before you can combine it in a new way, to see it without the connections to other things that bias us when we're just in our day-to-day grind. And the reconstruction, I think, can only happen, of course, once you've seen it differently and you have a new way of looking at it. Then finally, expression comes last because it's really about the packaging, you know? The product is the elements that come together and then the expression, how you give it form, how you make it uniquely yours and show it to the world and share it and share your light is that comes last once you know what your goals are, what your life is made up of, how you present that is the last step, it's the packaging. If I know the metaphor for today and for future, I draw differently. And then, if that's me, I'm holding this information and I'm trying to understand myself better and more. So what should I? Is there anything that I can think of to draw the conclusion there that there will be something that I need to work on? Something like that, which brings me to one of the bike routes. Yeah, and I think a lot of them will be very personal and idiosyncratic and there's no one size. So it's really about first just acknowledging that there is a difference and seeing and using that picture to show what to you are the elements that are missing or broken and that's something really only you can see once you've drawn it out. It's not very helpful. Is that everything? Okay, I think I'm out. Thank you all very much for coming. I appreciate it if you want to chat after.