How to Live a Meaningful Life & Design the Future You Want

Dave Evans (00:22):

The best way to design your life is to recognize there is no getting you right. There is no right life. There's just getting it going. You have it in you to be something you find your way by living into your life. You build your way forward. There is no knowing. There is only doing learning and growing. The job is not working. The marriage isn't working. There's something I'm really unhappy about. But that doesn't mean there aren't other parts of your life where more meaning and more aliveness are lurking, latently, waiting for you to discover them. Don't let those go.

 

Bill Burnett (00:54):

There's more life in you than you think. There's more possibilities than you think. Just try something, try something really small and see if you can find that little piece of joy or that just like a pointer towards something that, that wakes you up. We know you can do it.

 

Dave Evans (01:08):

At the end of the day, what we're really doing, we're just giving people permission to live their lives. So instead of working on the what is the meaning of life, we are here to give you tools to design more meaning in life.

 

Mel Robbins (01:25):

I am so excited for you to experience this episode. It is incredible. You're gonna love these two professors, but first I have an ask of you. See, I just learned from my team that 53% of you that watch the Mel Robbins podcast here on YouTube are not subscribers. I have this goal that by the end of the year, that number drops to 50%. So I'm just talking 3% that 50% of the people that watch here on YouTube are subscribers. It's the best way that you can support me and the team. If the subscribe button is lit up, it means you're not a subscriber. Just hit subscribe. It's free. You're not gonna miss a thing. And it tells us you love this podcast. You love the world renowned experts that we're bringing you here for free. You love this as a resource. I really, really, really appreciate it. And you know what else? I appreciate you. I love that you spend your time watching something that's helping you create a more meaningful life, and that's exactly what this episode is gonna do. So let's get into it.

Dave Evans (02:22):

Mel, thanks for having us. We're thrilled to be here.

 

Bill Burnett (02:23):

Yeah, this is fantastic. We're excited.

 

Mel Robbins (02:25):

You two have been at the top of my list since I started this. I have been waiting for this moment. I hope you don't disappoint me. No, I'm just kidding, you,

 

Dave Evans (02:35):

You could have called sooner. We would have come sooner.

 

Mel Robbins (02:39):

Oh my gosh.

 

Dave Evans (02:40):

Okay.

 

Mel Robbins (02:40):

Here's where I wanna start. How will my life be different if I take to heart everything that you're about to share with us today?

 

Dave Evans (02:48):

Yeah.

 

Mel Robbins (02:48):

And I apply it to my life.

 

Dave Evans (02:50):

You're gonna get freer. You're gonna feel more agency in your life. You're gonna realize you actually know how to find your way. And as you go along it, you can make meaning every day.

 

Bill Burnett (03:01):

You know, everybody's so busy and there's so much going on. It, it, it's all, you're gonna learn that it's not about cramming more stuff yet. It's about getting more out of what you've already got and what you can, you know, what you can design for. Um, and I think that helps people just relax, you know, and understand that they, they probably have enough.

 

Mel Robbins (03:23):

Bill, what do you think it is about the popularity of your, both of your books and the course? What does all of this interest say to you about what we're searching for?

 

Bill Burnett (03:37):

Yeah. Well, I mean, particularly amongst the students, and I've taught at Stanford and I've taught all over, all over the place. And we've got over 600 schools now teaching the class. We've trained 600 schools with the students. It's, it's really, it's really clear. And it's gotten kind of worse lately in the last five or six or seven years. Social media and other things. It's, um, you know, will I find a good will I have a good life? Will I find a good job in it? You know what, what's, what's, I want meaning and purpose, but people tell me jobs aren't purposeful. Uh, the Gallup pulse is 70% of Americans are disengaged from their jobs. Is that the world I'm going into? It's gonna be that bad. And so the, for the students, it's that kind of anxiety about how do I get started? And, and I had been in office hours for students for years and years and years before Dave and I said, put this together. And it seemed clear to me that designing the, the, the new thing in the world, 'cause I've been teaching designers to design iPhones and iPads and, and websites and things for years. Designing the new thing in the world was just like designing the you. Like, what am I gonna be in my future? And so everybody had that problem. And then we started working with folks like in, you know, sort of mid careers, 35, 45. And, and they're having the same question. You know, it's like, gee, it isn't as much as wasn't as cool as I thought it would be, or kind of done with this job, or I need to pivot

 

Dave Evans (04:53):

Now what?

 

Bill Burnett (04:53):

Now what? And I haven't thought about that in a long time, and I don't have any framework for thinking about it. And I've been doing work with folks who are retiring, you know, in their fifties, sixties and, and older. And, uh, or folks that are, um, you know, sub empty nesters. And they're like, well, geez, I organized my whole life. My wife and I are empty investors, organized my whole life, life around with my kids. And now it's just me and my wife. Like, do we even know each other? Do know, do we even like each other anymore? What are we gonna do? So this question just keeps coming up. And it's about, will my, will my life? Will my future be meaningful? Can I find something to do that is got some purpose in it? And, and, and a lot of the sort of, a lot of the structures of that, it used to be, well, you had a community. Everybody grew up in the same town, and so you knew where you fit in. Or maybe you had a faith community or a church or something. And a lot of those communities have gone away. There's this huge loneliness epidemic. People really feel isolated and lonely and things are changing so fast, right? That they, they don't know. They don't know where to turn for even a way to get started.

Dave Evans (06:12):

We say all the time, all of us contain more aliveness, more personhood than one lifetime permission to live out. There's more than one of you in there. Which is why, by the way, Maslow's idea about self-actualization through fulfillment is dead wrong. Because he literally says in the 1943 paper, you achieve that by becoming all that one can be. No, you can't possibly be all that you can be because you're way bigger than your own lifetime. Look, I've buried plenty of people. None of them were done. That's the good news.

 

Mel Robbins (06:42):

Oh, whoa. I wanna make sure that that, that you didn't miss it. We've buried a lot of good people and none of them were done.

 

Dave Evans (06:49):

Yeah. I mean, I'm in an age. I many know plenty of dead people closely, and they all left with a long to-do list. That's the good news. You're far bigger than your lifetime. So the chance of you being bored or running outta things is zero if you're paying attention. Right? That's the good news. So the best way to design your life is to recognize there is no getting you right. There is no right life. There are lots of good lives. Let's go lean into the, and by the way, you don't know the future. You might have a good idea and implement it poorly. You might have an idea you thought was good and it didn't work out very well. Whoops. Oh, I blew it. No, I learned my way forward and I'm gonna keep going. Yeah. There's no getting it right. They're just getting it going.

 

Bill Burnett (07:38):

Imagine this listener. Um, we have this linear accelerator at Stanford. It's not the big, and it's not as big as it used to be 'cause we have bigger ones now, but this one's pretty good. Still runs. And I can put you, I can put you in the tube and fire you to the end of the accelerator. It's two miles long. And by the time you get to the end, you're going 99.999% the speed of light, at which point you'll experience the multiverse. And you can have as many lives as you want simultaneously. You could be the astronaut and the ballerina and the mom, and, and you'll know about all the universes at the same time. And then we ask the, the, the, I said on the count of 3, 1, 2, 3, tell me how many lives she won. I go, 1, 2, 3. And people go everywhere from one the really bored, burned out guy. Two infinity. Yeah. Something. But on average, seven, seven or eight is the average. Seven or eight people want eight lives. And I go, well, that just proves our theory. There's more than one life in you. If you could have all those lives, wouldn't it be cool?

 

Dave Evans (08:39):

And if you have seven lives worth of interest in you, and you get one life, you're going to be 14% of your personhood.

 

Mel Robbins (08:46):

Right now. Oh,

 

Dave Evans (08:47):

By the time you die,

 

Mel Robbins (08:48):

Wait, hold on a second.

 

Dave Evans (08:50):

Yeah,

 

Mel Robbins (08:50):

Hold on. Because I imagine a world where your one lifetime

 

Dave Evans (08:58):

Yeah.

 

Mel Robbins (08:58):

Could have seven different lives in it.

 

Dave Evans (09:00):

Sure.

 

Mel Robbins (09:01):

Which means where you are right now. Right. In this particular chapter is just 14% of what you will experience.

 

Dave Evans (09:10):

That's also true.

 

Mel Robbins (09:11):

Which means you have the opportunity if you change your mindset

 

Dave Evans (09:15):

Yeah.

 

Mel Robbins (09:16):

To really design the next 14% section, whether it's from age 71 Yeah. To 74, Dave. Yeah. Or I don't know how old you are, Bill. But I,

 

Dave Evans (09:29):

A little younger.

 

Mel Robbins (09:29):

A little younger. We won't hold that.

 

Dave Evans (09:31):

Starts with the six.

 

Mel Robbins (09:31):

We won't hold that against. Um, but if you really think about it that way,

 

Dave Evans (09:36):

Right?

 

Mel Robbins (09:37):

That means you could create whatever you wanted, right. That was meaningful to you.

 

Bill Burnett (09:41):

Well, and particularly now, I tell my students, don't you hope five, 10 years from you're doing a job that hasn't been even been invented yet? I mean, do you really want to constrain yourself to I'm just gonna be this computer scientist, or I'm just gonna be this economi or something. Because first of all, jobs are gonna change, right? We're in the age of ai, everything's gonna be different. And, and you can look at that and be terrified, or you can look at that and go, wow, there's gonna be so many new things that show up. All I have to do is pay attention. You know, as these jobs disappear and reappear, like when I got outta Stanford long years ago, when, you know, dinosaurs still roed, you know, white plaza, you had to learn drafting to be a designer, drafting on a drafting table with a, with a pencil. Nobody's done that in 40 years. And now I can just do something on my phone and print it on a 3D printer. It's amazing. And so, if you stay in the growth mindset, if you stay curious, the next 10 or 15 years are gonna be amazing for jobs, for careers, for possibilities, and, and get, you know, like get, get your boat in the water now. You know, learn some ai. Get some, get, get, figure out how to, I think it's actually gonna be a renaissance in creativity, because it'll be possible for everyone to do a video, to do a drawing, to do anything, to write a song.

 

(11:00):

This generation feels a little bit despondent. You know, there's a lot of stuff going on in the, in the news. And I think like, this will be the first generation that doesn't have more than their parents. This will be the first generation that can't afford a home. This is the first gen. The kids aren't getting married 'cause they just don't see a, you know, they don't see a future. And, um, I think the design mindset, um, it's an inherently optimistic mindset. It's like, I can't make the, we are off to this design, but I can make a better one. You know, I can make a better one than the one I've got.

Bill Burnett (11:41):

Yeah.

 

Mel Robbins (11:41):

Given some of the factual research about the cost of living and absolutely changes that are happening. And the headlines, like,

 

Dave Evans (11:47):

Look, first of all, if you're 20,

 

Mel Robbins (11:49):

Yes.

 

Dave Evans (11:51):

Be encouraged by the following fact. Your neocortex, which is the part of your brain that allows you to have an executive function and actually allows you to have full empathy for other people, isn't formed until 27 or 28, a little later in men. Big surprise there. Um, so if you're 20, 21, 22, you're not even here yet. We remind our graduating seniors, you're not broken. You're 22. Your 22-year-old job is not to figure it out because the you, that's you ever maybe even gonna have a shot at figuring it out is six or eight years away from you. So your 20-year-old self job is to give your 28-year-old self some interesting options. Now, don't mean sit on the couch at mom and dad's house and wait for something to land in your lap. Get out there, start living, do things, learn your way forward, all that stuff we talk about in all our books.

 

(12:41):

But if you're 20 something, it's gonna get more interesting. So don't give up yet. Now, externally, the macro situation we're all living in. I mean, the, the macro situation I was living in in 1976 when I graduated college is pretty radically different from what's going on right now. 50 years later, uh, people are feeling powerless for a good reason because people with power are hanging onto it and exercising it pretty egregiously right now, personal point of view. That being said, okay, there are systems that are bigger than you. The question then says, do you wanna spend your time working on those systems? Uh, Bill's got a son named Ben, who's currently working, you know, in Congress. Yeah. He's gonna go directly after the problem. You know, I'm not going directly after the problem. I'm writing books about meaning making for everybody else. In the meantime, I hope that leaves the campground a little better than I found it. So find what you can do within the constraints of reality. Maybe it's different than your parents' generation. Maybe it's who cares? That was then. This is now what world are you in? What is available to you? How can we make the most of what is not complain about what isn't? But I get that it's hard. It is hard.

 

Bill Burnett (13:52):

It's hard. And I see this in lots and lots of our students, that they're willing, they're, they're willing to work, really. People say, oh, the Gen Zs don't wanna work hard, and they wanna be pampered. It's like, not the ones we know. The ones I know, they'll do a startup, they'll work a hundred hours a week if they believe in something. And so, you know, it's, it's, I'm, I'm very optimistic about the generation coming up and the generation that's already out there and say, well, you know, what can I do?

Bill Burnett (14:29):

Yep.

 

Dave Evans (14:29):

Yeah.

 

Mel Robbins (14:30):

Can you just walk the listener through a little bit? 'cause it can help you see other lives in yourself and how to live a meaningful life to lean into.

 

Dave Evans (14:39):

So you, so we know you have to have more ideas to get your best ideas.

 

Mel Robbins (14:43):

Hmm.

 

Dave Evans (14:44):

And if you get stuck on the one idea, you're gonna get stuck on a corner. So if we're gonna plan the future possibilities, we gotta hear from more than one of you. So three's kinda a magic number because it really gives you some freedom. Um, and one of them is probably the life you're already in. The other one is, if you can't do that, what else would you do? And the third one, the wild card, if money were no object, you know, and nobody would laugh at you, what would you do? That's the wild card. Well, maybe I would open the Beanie Baby store, um, um, or I'd start the button shop, you know, uh, whatever The crazy thing is, the reason we ask people to have a crazy idea, it's not because the crazy idea is a good idea. It's because we need to train you to quiet the internal critic.

 

Mel Robbins (15:22):

Hmm.

 

Dave Evans (15:22):

So as soon as you say, well, you know, the 54-year-old woman says, I mean, I'm thinking about going back to medical school. I always wanted to do that. I don't think it's too late, but my friend say I'm all crazy. What do you think? So her internal critic is being encouraged by all of her friend's, internal critic, going, well, that's crazy. You can't do that. Um, and that's the part of the evolution that keeps you from being eaten by the saber tooth tiger. You know? So there's a negative bias built into your brain, evolutionarily less you be eaten. Um, so you have to learn how to overcome that critic. So the Odyssey Plan helps you imagine there's more than one way you can live, and it helps train you to quiet your internal critic so you get the rest of your ideas back.

 

Mel Robbins (16:01):

So I wanna make sure that you really got that. So the way that you help yourself imagine

 

Dave Evans (16:08):

Yep.

 

Mel Robbins (16:08):

Different possibilities in your life, right? Right. Is through the Odyssey planning, you ask yourself three questions.

 

Dave Evans (16:14):

Right.

 

Mel Robbins (16:15):

What happens in my life if I change? Absolutely not. Nothing. Keep it going. Where am I for five,

 

Dave Evans (16:19):

Yeah.

 

Mel Robbins (16:19):

Five years from now?

 

Dave Evans (16:20):

And assuming it goes well.

 

Mel Robbins (16:21):

Yeah. Well, I I, I thank you for that.

 

Dave Evans (16:23):

Yeah.

 

Mel Robbins (16:23):

Like, let's just assume it goes well,

 

Dave Evans (16:24):

Let's assume it goes well,

 

Mel Robbins (16:25):

What happens in five years?

 

Dave Evans (16:26):

Yeah.

 

Bill Burnett (16:26):

Yeah.

 

Mel Robbins (16:26):

What does my life look like?

 

Bill Burnett (16:27):

Who am I?

 

Dave Evans (16:28):

Yeah.

 

Mel Robbins (16:28):

Who am I? Okay, second one is, all of this disappears.

 

Dave Evans (16:31):

Yep. Can't do that.

 

Mel Robbins (16:33):

Can't do that. But I gotta pay my bills and

 

Dave Evans (16:35):

Plan B.

 

Bill Burnett (16:35):

Yeah.

 

Mel Robbins (16:35):

Gotta have a plan B, five years, what am I doing?

 

Dave Evans (16:38):

Yep.

 

Mel Robbins (16:38):

What am I doing? And the third is money's no object.

 

Dave Evans (16:41):

Yep. Whatever you want.

 

Mel Robbins (16:42):

Whatever you want. Nobody's gonna laugh.

 

Dave Evans (16:44):

Yep.

 

Mel Robbins (16:44):

It's gonna work out.

 

Dave Evans (16:45):

Yep.

 

Mel Robbins (16:47):

What are you gonna do?

 

Dave Evans (16:48):

Yep.

 

Bill Burnett (16:48):

Yeah.

 

Dave Evans (16:49):

If you do those three, and we've done this with, I mean,

 

Bill Burnett (16:52):

Tens of thousands,

 

Dave Evans (16:53):

Tens of thousands of people, including people like, I'm not doing this you know, and we give them 12 minutes.

 

Mel Robbins (16:59):

12 minutes?

 

Dave Evans (16:59):

We get 12 minutes to do

 

Bill Burnett (17:00):

Sometimes longer

 

Dave Evans (17:01):

Sometimes 15.

 

Bill Burnett (17:02):

Yeah. Yeah.

 

Dave Evans (17:02):

Um, and absolutely, I mean, 99.7% of the people do it just fine. I'm standing behind this 57-year-old chiropractor at, you know, we were looking guy at one. We had 600 people in the room. This one guy's sitting back from the room just looking at the paper going, not. So I come up to him, I said, um, so how's it going? Fine. I go, you, you're just gonna sit this one out? He goes, no, no, I'm, I'm doing it. I go, well, you're not doing much. It, you gotta pick up the pen. He goes, yeah, I'm a little stuck. I go, well, what do you do? I'm a chiropractor. Okay, great. You like it? I like it a lot. How long have you been doing that? 27 years. Okay. You wanna die doing that? I said, what? I said, by the time you die, do you wanna still be doing this? He kind of goes, well, I don't think so. I said, oh, then at some point you're gonna do something else. He goes, well, I guess. So I go, and what might that be? He goes, oh, I guess I am gonna do something else, aren't I? I said, yes, you are. Write that down. He goes, oh, okay. I mean, he had it in him. He just had to get over himself.

 

Mel Robbins (18:06):

I love this. And I'm gonna encourage you as you're listening, unless you're driving a car, do this right now. Think about it. It like, if you, if nothing changes, it goes, well, what does life look like five years if everything disappears and you gotta go to plan B, what does life look like in five years? And what are you doing? Yeah. What's the something else? Yeah. And what is the crazy wild thing that you don't need money and nobody's gonna laugh at you.

 

Dave Evans (18:29):

Right.

 

Bill Burnett (18:29):

Yep.

 

Mel Robbins (18:30):

What is that thing?

 

Bill Burnett (18:30):

They'll say, that's cool. You know, and here the other thing in our classes and lectures, it's a series of these, these little workshop things and design exercises. So then people get in threes and they read each other. I, I read my Odyssey plan to the other two people and reteach them to listen very generatively. And in tens and tens of thousands of these. The last question I ask when I'm debriefing the class, I say, you know, those wild card plans that you heard from everybody in the class of the listeners? How many of you think that person could actually do the wild card?

 

Dave Evans (19:01):

It's not nearly as crazy as they think.

 

Bill Burnett (19:03):

A hundred percent.

 

Mel Robbins (19:03):

A hundred percent.

 

Bill Burnett (19:04):

It's not as crazy as you think. And again, we're not trying to get people to quit their jobs and, you know, and join the circus. Join the circus. It's just that it's proof. There's more life in you than you think. There's more possibilities than you think when you think in threes, not binaries or ones

 

Mel Robbins (19:19):

You, you know, you light up like the Sicko sign in Boston when you talk about this. Yeah. What is your wild card the last time you did this

 

Bill Burnett (19:27):

Artist

 

Mel Robbins (19:28):

Be an art like a painter?

 

Bill Burnett (19:29):

I am a painter. I have been a painter. So I went off to Stanford, which is, was even back when I did. It was kind of expensive. And, um, uh, I wanted to be an art major. And my dad was a pretty practical guy. And he said, look, if you wanna be an art major, yeah. Come back and go to go to UMass. You know, UMass, uh, UMass was $300 a year or something. He said, I'm not paying for Stanford. But I found this design thing, and that was pretty cool. Was that, 'cause art design major was a combination of art, engineering, and psychology. But I did make a promise to that 18-year-old kid that someday I would be an artist. And so I have a studio, I a digital studio for music and one for painting. And painting is my thing. And when I'm in the studio painting, that is flow, that is a constant state of, of, of flow. I don't know if I'm any good. I don't care. Um, Robert Henry is a famous, uh, painting school in New York in the, in the 1920s. His phrase was, the, the goal isn't to make art. The goal is to be in that marvelous state of mind that makes art inevitable.

 

Mel Robbins (20:29):

Do you know that's the mission of how we do work here.

 

Bill Burnett (20:34):

Yeah.

 

Mel Robbins (20:34):

That quote,

 

Dave Evans (20:35):

Cool.

 

Bill Burnett (20:35):

I I can tell. So that's on the door of my studio.

 

Dave Evans (20:39):

Yeah.

 

Bill Burnett (20:39):

And to be, and to be in that marvelous state of mind, um, yeah. It's, it's, it's a very special place.

 

Mel Robbins (20:46):

Yeah.

 

Bill Burnett (20:47):

And so I promised myself that that will be my, that is, that is my wild card. And that is coming up.

 

Mel Robbins (20:52):

Dave, what's yours?

 

Dave Evans (20:54):

Well, there are a bunch of them. One probably, uh, came very close to becoming an actor. Um, but there's a particular version of performance art that I've long thought would be really fun to try, which is to be a waiter in an extremely elite restaurant.

 

Mel Robbins (21:09):

Really?

 

Dave Evans (21:10):

Yeah. Which I think is absolutely performance art.

 

Bill Burnett (21:13):

I mean, it's the first time I've ever heard this. So tell me more Dave.

 

Dave Evans (21:16):

How to read, how to read the room. I mean, so, um, you know, that people are coming in, their expectations are incredibly high. And this couple's having an argument and that, you know, family is celebrating the kids' graduation. And, and can you read, can you read the room? Can you maximize this incredible experience? 'cause you go to a fine dining experience for a particular kind of celebration or a particular kind of, you know, outing and the right wait service catalyzes it beautifully the wrong way. Service wrecks it. And can I deliver the improv performance that has nine different stages at the same time, called tables, playing nine different parts, having every one of those people have an amazing experience in real time. Can I pull that off? I mean, it, running a really, really amazing restaurant is a really, really,

 

Mel Robbins (22:03):

Oh my god.

 

Dave Evans (22:03):

Really hard thing. It's really hard.

 

Mel Robbins (22:04):

That's definitely not on my fantasy.

 

Bill Burnett (22:06):

No.

 

Mel Robbins (22:06):

My fantasy list.

 

Dave Evans (22:07):

I don't wanna be in the kitchen. It's too scary.

 

Mel Robbins (22:08):

Mine for sure is I want to write a fantasy trilogy.

 

Dave Evans (22:13):

Oh, okay.

 

Mel Robbins (22:13):

Yes. All about angels that are among us in the theme of are you born good or bad. Right? Are you born good or bad? And I have this whole, I've been thinking about it for 10 years and I'm, I I'm going to do it.

 

Dave Evans (22:27):

Yeah, yeah.

 

Bill Burnett (22:28):

Right.

 

Mel Robbins (22:28):

I'm going to do it. Like, but it's, it's always in there. And I love that you shared that. And for you listening or watching, I, I want you to share your wild card.

 

Dave Evans (22:41):

Yeah.

 

Mel Robbins (22:41):

Either with us or put it in the review or the comment of the show. Or when you share this episode with somebody that you care about, be a little cryptic and say, my wild card is this. And you'll know exactly what I mean when you listen to this. And then I want you to tell me yours.

 

Bill Burnett (22:59):

Yeah.

Bill Burnett (23:18):

And because right after the Odyssey plans comes prototyping, what on your plan do you wanna learn about? And then they prototype and they

 

Mel Robbins (23:24):

Oh, that's the next step.

 

Bill Burnett (23:25):

They come back. That's the next step. Yeah. They come back to the next class and they go, you know, did you know you can actually make a living in the circus? I had one student who was a gymnast at Stanford, and she wanted to go to medical school. Her parents wanted to go to medical school. She cut a deal. Can I, can I do something before I go to medical school? She's now been C de Soleil in China, and she is a circus clown, which was on her Odyssey plan

 

Dave Evans (23:50):

And she's having a great time.

 

Bill Burnett (23:52):

But people have a hard time even imagining something so wild. It's not possible. And when they talk about plan one, it's kinda like, yeah, well, so I'm gonna just keep being an account and I'm gonna do this thing and you know, I'm pretty good at it and da da da. But when they talk about their wildcard, they're like, you know, I really love diving and underwater photography, and I'm wondering if I could be a, a dive instructor who does photography maybe for National Geographic. And I said, well, I happen to know a guy who started a company building underwater cameras. Would you like to have a prototype interview? And they're like, really? They go, yeah.

 

Dave Evans (24:27):

When you know that you don't know what you're doing. Right. The competence of, you have to be competent at your incompetence. You have to be good at knowing when you don't know what you're doing. Called the future. I haven't figured out yet.

 

Mel Robbins (24:38):

Yes.

 

Dave Evans (24:39):

So you make a move then learn something, make a move, learn something, go back. You know, so that, that keep making moves until you finally iterate your way forward through prototyping. That's what we teach. Life is a series of incremental prototypes. You find your way by living into your life. You build your way forward. We keep saying there is no knowing, there is only doing learning and growing.

 

Mel Robbins (25:02):

So I know I'm gonna get a ton of questions about this. Can you guys give a couple examples of what actually a prototype looks like?

 

Dave Evans (25:11):

Clowning. Clowning is actually a thing. And, and there's, is it the Shriners? Is it there's, there's some outfit where they trend the members and they do clowning in hospitals to visit kids. Oh. So you could probably call the local hospitals. And does anybody do clowning with the children? Oh, great. Do they have a training for that? So you could go, you know, trust me, there's somebody who will train you to be a clown. Be a little bit of clowning that you could go into the children's ward and try cheering some, maybe just ride along with them. Watch them. You know, I mean, there are ways to get at the thing that you think you're thinking about.

 

Mel Robbins (25:46):

So you're a 20 something. You see your friends living in Montana. Should I live in New York? Should I go to Montana? Should I go into iBank? Should I be a ski bum? Like, I don't know what to do with my you, you're 28. What, what? Like, what's a, an example of a prototype. Here's another one. A, uh, stay at home mom. The kids are gone. Now it's my turn. Right? What am I doing? Am I going back to nursing school? Am I finishing my degree? Like,

 

Bill Burnett (26:12):

Am I writing that novel I was thinking of writing?

 

Mel Robbins (26:14):

Am I writing that novel that I'm thinking about? Like, what does that mean in terms of just a couple specific things that you've seen people do Sure. To give the person listening an idea.

 

Dave Evans (26:22):

Okay. So I'm sitting with the 57-year-old suddenly empty, nested mom who left a couple of things behind, doesn't know what to do. Great. So let's quickly come up with your list of things that might be at all interesting.

 

Mel Robbins (26:33):

Okay.

 

Dave Evans (26:34):

Oh yeah. I'm thinking about being a ski bum. I'm thinking about going back to medical school. Actually talk to a 54-year-old about that. You know, and I'm thinking about being a novelist. Okay, fine. Um, now maybe I should, oh, I'm gonna go back and, and get a master's degree in creative writing and spend three years and $30,000 and then write one blog. And I didn't like it that much. Terrible idea. That's jumping way off the cliff. So the prototype I do would say talk to people, try stuff. So go out and have a bunch of narrative conversations, not with, oh, you're a novelist and how much do you make? And what did you school did you go to? Those are transactional conversations, not narrative conversations. Like, what's it like to be you and what do you enjoy and what do you not enjoy? And tell me all about that. And I have these narrative conversations with people in the world I'm thinking about being in. Yeah. Which is what Dan Gilbert at Harvard, not a bad school would say, is surrogation not simulation. Quit reading about it. Go talk to people about it because you're a person. And when you encounter a person who tells that story, that story becomes real. You'll actually learn more from persons in the world you're thinking about than reading about it.

 

Mel Robbins (27:35):

You'll feel something too.

 

Dave Evans (27:36):

You'll feel something, you'll experience something. And then maybe some of 'em can get you a ride along and a visit. And you can, you can do some experimentations, try stuff long before you overcommit. And then eventually after enough iterations you'll make a better decision.

 

Mel Robbins (27:49):

You know what's interesting? 'cause I wanna build on this.

 

Dave Evans (27:51):

Yeah.

 

Mel Robbins (27:51):

'cause so many people probably say to you, well, I have no idea. I have no idea what I wanna do. And I,

 

Dave Evans (27:57):

That's almost never true.

 

Mel Robbins (27:58):

I agree with you. And if you're saying that right now, like, I don't know what my life's about. I don't know what I like, I I love this 14% thing and this idea and the invitation you gave us to step into a time machine accelerator of thingy. Yeah. And the average person says, I've imagined eight lives.

 

Dave Evans (28:15):

Yeah.

 

Mel Robbins (28:16):

So you're in one of them,

 

Dave Evans (28:17):

Right.

 

Mel Robbins (28:17):

You've got another seven.

 

Dave Evans (28:19):

Yep.

 

Mel Robbins (28:19):

What are the other seven lives you would imagine in the fantasy of your mind?

 

Bill Burnett (28:23):

Right.

 

Mel Robbins (28:23):

And those are the things to then lean into and get curious about. Correct?

 

Dave Evans (28:27):

Yeah, absolutely.

 

Bill Burnett (28:28):

I always wanted to be a dive instructor. I love diving, but I don't do nothing better. I always wanna be a photographer. But you can any of these things and find out, like for instance, I, you know, I, I I wanna have a podcast. Okay. Before you jump into a podcast, try writing, you know, a 2000 word essay every day for five days. See how that feels. Oh, that was really hard. It was really lonely. Dave hates writing. 'cause it's lonely. I'm the introvert. He's the extrovert. I love sitting in a room talking to myself all day long. It's wonderful. And he can't stand it. Um, so like, try the trying stuff and the talking to people. If you talk to writers, they'll say, writing is very lonely. If you can't handle that, you're probably not, it's not gonna be a good thing for you. And you wouldn't know that unless you talk to somebody who, so you can have these little, it's, it's almost like time travel.

 

(29:12):

You can have a little experience of talking to somebody who's the person you think you might wanna be. They're already 10 years down the road doing it. And that experience that, but that conversation is so much more powerful than, oh, I'm gonna look up on the, on, you know, on Google, how many mm-hmm. You know, how many writing hacks are there, you know, when when did the five most famous writers write, you know, they wrote in the morning, they wrote in the afternoon. There's no patterns, any of that stuff. So, uh, you can prototype anything. And, and the lack of the lack of curiosity isn't really true. I, I've got, I have no ideas. So you really have no ideas. Okay. You know, what did you, what was the last show you watched that you think I thought was interesting? Pick something simple. We're not talking about the thing you'll do for the rest of your life. We're talking about what do you wanna do next week?

 

Mel Robbins (29:57):

So as all of this opens up for somebody and they have this sense of what might create more meaning.

 

Dave Evans (30:05):

Yeah.

 

Mel Robbins (30:05):

Right. And I wanna get curious. Yeah. I wanna prototype the fear of failure and the fear of what other people are gonna think.

 

Dave Evans (30:12):

Yeah.

 

Mel Robbins (30:13):

Probably comes in like a sledgehammer.

 

Dave Evans (30:15):

Oh, it's a huge,

 

Bill Burnett (30:15):

Right.

 

Mel Robbins (30:15):

What do you say to people in your classes when they get this moment of clarity and then it's like,

 

Dave Evans (30:22):

Start really small. I mean, get cut yourself some slack for God's sake. I mean, um, we talk about failure immunity because the purpose of a prototype is to learn something not to succeed. We don't prototype to make sure Oh, will it work? No. Just what do I need to know more about? I'm, I'm gonna go ride along, you know, and, and be an auditor of the children's clowns, you know, at the hospital. You know, and I might say the wrong thing. I mean, did I blow it? No, no, no. I'm just, I'm just trying to learn what it's like here. Yeah. So first of all, have your prototypes not bet the farm. You know, like maybe my, maybe what I'll do is I'll, I'll, you know, I'll go to Sheez Panis in Berkeley, you know, one of the most expensive restaurants in all of California. And see, because I know a friend who's really close friends with Alice Waters, and she could probably get me in as the waiter. So my first night as a waiter is in front of Alice Waters in Sheez Panis. That is not a prototype, that's a performance. So cut yourself some slack. And I'm likely to fail.

 

Mel Robbins (31:18):

I probably wouldn't even wanna serve the bread there.

 

Dave Evans (31:20):

Yeah.

 

Mel Robbins (31:20):

So like that's

 

Dave Evans (31:21):

That's, I mean, so, so make it easy, make it small where almost nothing is at stake. Um, of which there are plenty of opportunities. Give yourself a break. Make it interesting. Make it fun. Cut it down small. Don't shoot too high.

 

Bill Burnett (31:35):

We're, we're really big on set the Barlow, you know, set the Barlow and clear it. I mean, you've written about this. This is, this is the whole psychology behavior change. Yeah. You're not gonna change if you make something so big. You know, this is the new year and people have made their resolutions, I'm gonna run a marathon this year. It's like, well probably unless you break that into very, very small steps, it's not gonna happen. And so we really, we really go for super simple things. Uh, and that, and that builds up your confidence too. If you try something and you, you know, try some prototypes, you learn some stuff, you get a little more confident eventually, you know, when you flip into these, these designer's mindset, you realize, oh, I can prototype anything. There's really no failure here. You know, the failure is, is just a rule I made up in my head. And, uh, once I get rid of that rule, I'm, I'm much more free. But yeah. Fear drives a lot of people to, to not try.