"Designing Your Life: How to Build a Well-Lived, Joyful Life" by Bill Burnett and David J. Evans

This was my first non-fiction read of the year. Generally speaking, I like non-fiction that is clearly organized, well-written and has lots of real life examples. This book certainly fits the bill ... to a certain degree. Let me explain.

I did get a lot of useful practical information out of this book. For example, keeping a journal to record which activities energize or drain you throughout the day is certainly helpful.  This information can be used to restructure your day such that you minimize the latter; or if they cannot be avoided, you plan activities that excite you right before and after.

I also liked their design approach to thinking. For example, there are no failures. In prototyping, if something does not work right, you learn from it, adjust and keep going. Their call to incorporate spiritual practices, meditation, or prayer in your day as well as to follow your intuition/gut feeling are certainly great for centering thought and learning to stay in tune with yourself and your surroundings.

Where this book falls short is in examples. All of them are about well-educated, highly experienced, or otherwise extremely privileged people. Even the example in the very beginning about a recent graduate who did not know what to do with her degree in geology is still about a privileged person who could afford to stay with her parents while she figured out what to do next.

I also did not quite agree with the authors' statement that job descriptions and job applications are pretty much useless. As someone who both wrote multiple job descriptions and interviewed scores of people who applied online, I think they make a gross over generalization by focusing only on highly selective companies to which majority of people reaching for this book will not have access anyway (think Silicon valley and elite financial institutions).

Most mid-tier companies, non-profits, government agencies, hospitality industry firms etc. do hire "from the street" and do review applications and resumes. Many companies also offer internships. To say that most jobs are posted only internally or "wired" is absurd and can be quite demoralizing for readers. Let's face it, most highly privileged for whom this book appears to be written, have either already gotten a job "wired" for them, or have taken the authors' class at Stanford. The rest of us who do not have an Ivy League degree and a readily available professional network to tap into, do apply for jobs online or through a recruiting agency. It is these people with normal jobs who are probably picking up this book in search of practical ideas on how to make their lives better. There are also other populations completely overlooked by the authors such as retiring military, stay at home moms looking to re-enter the job market, immigrants, recent graduates with student loans, etc.

I think this book does have good approaches that can be applied to all. However, the authors failed to use the breadth of examples needed to demonstrate the universal applicability of their method. Moreover, the focus on only the highly privileged, dilutes the message and distracts the reader from the practicality of their recommendations. Because of these shortcomings, I gave this book 3 out 5 stars. As I mentioned earlier, I did get several very good tips for myself. I see online that the second book is about to be published called Designing Your Work Life: How to Thrive and Change and Find Happiness at Work. I do hope it will have a broader focus and appeal to the general public.