Think Like a Designer: How To Design The Life You Love | Big Think

Think Like a Designer: How To Design The Life You Love
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Determining what defines a happy life is more difficult today than it was for previous generations. In this video, designer Ayse Birsel demonstrates how a shift in perspective can help bridge this newfound difficulty. Once you deconstruct your life, she explains, you'll be able to determine values, opinion, strategies, and vision for everything else moving forward.

For more, check out Birsel's new book, titled Design the Life You Love: A Step-by-Step Guide to Building a Meaningful Future.
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AYSE BIRSEL:
Ayse Birsel is co-founder and creative director of Birsel + Seck, an empathy-driven product design studio in New York City that partners with Fortune 500 clients to bring innovation to market. Her work is in the permanent collections of the Museum of Modern Art and the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum and has received numerous awards, including the IDEA Gold and ID Magazine Excellence Awards. She is the recipient of the 2001 Young Designer Award from the Brooklyn Museum of Art and the 2008 Rhode Island School of Design's Athena Award in Furniture Design. She has spoken on design at numerous conferences, including the Aspen Design Conference, Design Indaba, AIGA, and IDSA Conferences. Birsel is the author of Design the Life You Love: A Step-by-Step Guide to Building a Meaningful Future.
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TRANSCRIPT:
Ayse Birsel: Today I think there are no roadmaps as to how to have a good life. The old rules have disappeared and I was thinking about this the other day that, you know, when I grew up, there was kind of like a roadmap, a simple roadmap that if you went to school perhaps if you did your masters and you got a good job, you got married, you had kids, you know, you did your work. And that was the definition of a good life. And today I think that things have changed so fast that we don’t have that roadmap anymore.

One of the things that I ask people to do is deconstruct their life so that they can see what their life’s made up of. So deconstructing your life holistically, I suggest that you could do it against emotion, intellect, physical, and spirit of your life. And once you look at those four quadrants, it gives you really a sense of your life’s big picture, like 360 degrees. And then you could see: Oh I have a lot of this here and I don’t have a lot of this here. There is some repetitions and you start to see patterns. And once you start to see that, the next step is about developing a point of view. So if you feel that oh, you know, the emotional quadrant for example is not as fulfilling or rich as I want it to be, what I suggest is to maybe think of a metaphor, which is one of the creative tools. And metaphors are great for helping us imagine things using something that’s familiar to us. So maybe if you feel that you don’t have a lot of love in your life, maybe think of a metaphor that’s full of love. And then using that as a hook, imagine how you can bring more love into that.

So one thing that comes to my mind is, for example, a dinner party might be a great environment for love and kind of friendship. And then you could think about well, what’s in a dinner party? Like who’s bringing the food and how do we share it and people bring gifts and so could we use some of that to think well more sharing and more giving could be a way to bring more love into my life. And the metaphor kind of helps you through that process of thinking about love in a different way, which really what I love about design is it gives you tools and the process to think about the things you know differently. Life, like a design project, is full of constraints and challenges and we can’t have everything we want. And often what we want and what we need are opposing. So design process and tools are actually a great way to think about design and to think about the life we want with creativity and optimism.

Determining what defines a happy life is more difficult today than it was for previous generations. In this video, designer Ayse Birsel demonstrates how a shift in perspective can help bridge this newfound difficulty. Once you deconstruct your life, she explains, you'll be able to determine values, opinion, strategies, and vision for everything else moving forward.

For more, check out Birsel's new book, titled Design the Life You Love: A Step-by-Step Guide to Building a Meaningful Future.

videos

[meandmymouth]

People worry a lot about how they compare with others forgetting that really we are all different and all unique. That means that we have a completely different trajectory for our life than anyone else in the history of the universe. Don't try to fit in. Try to stand out given your unique circumstances and attributes. Try not to do evil if you can help it. I like to think that everyone else is mad and I'm the only sane person around.

[BeyondLucidDreaming]

1. Cut everything out of your life which does not make you happy (yes, even quit your job if that's the source of unhappiness)
2. Focus on your passions (or on discovering passions) and fill your free time with doing what you're passionate about.
3. Never be anything less than yourself in every situation. Regardless of who you are, be honest about yourself and don't be afraid to open up to people. This is how you find the people to fill your life, if you don't do this you won't click with people.
4. Never stop doing what you're passionate about, find new passions, explore, throw caution to the wind. If you want to do something, do it. You might not have a tomorrow, so why should you ever waste today?

Does this sound hokey, impossible, or ridiculous to you? If so, you're living wrong! Be a slave of circumstance or the master of your own life. The choice is yours and you've been making that choice one way or another for your entire life. If you tend to do the former, try the latter. The only thing you have to lose was already lost every moment you spent not being the leader in your own life.

[terri]

I feel ya King! Your life is yours to fulfill!

[rickiex]

she reminds me of my grandma. we start a good conversation about something, and she fills 1-2 hours full of bs that has no meaning. sorry grandma :/

[xlr]

This is not the video you are looking for....

[qhack]

Why the F**k would I want to over analyze life? That's a stress I don't need.

[knemetnejat]

This is another ad for a self-help book. Metaphors may work for some, but the author mentions the concept of metaphor for something missing in one of the quadrant of a person's, drops that idea completely and moves to action--an action that makes no sense whatsoever. I have seen better ads for insurance.

[TheAleksandros]

I just take risks, challenges and opportunities life is givin' me.
Then I make some mistakes and I feel fucked
but then again. I don't complain because I feel alive.. that's very fulfilling, even if you don't attain your goals//delusional phantasies :)

[sacmakiz]

Ne diyosun Ayşe'cim, bak beğenmemişler 😹😹

[Armbreakfire]

Guys, overthinking it. The key to a good life is more dinner parties. Plain and simple.

[Staminist-MMF-]

It's fuckin' easy to say "How to design your life" when you don't worry about shit, you get paid normally.

[andon]

Anyone else read it as "good lift"?

[CUMBICA]

"Today there are no road maps as to how to have a good life." Jeez tell me WHEN it had. In the mid-20th century? In the Victorian Era? IT. NEVER. HAD.

[mysunnybird]

I don't agree with all those delusional ideas. Some of what she says are common sense.

[OverLordGoldDragon]

Every time you see someone start speaking about life with a phony smile on their faces, and the first few sentences include "spirit, " you know it's time to get out.

Sorry, but blabbing a bunch of general, poorly-defined wisdom in a fancy vocabulary does not make it useful.