Life by design
For a long time, I felt like my days were slipping through my fingers. I'd wake up, open my emails, spend the entire day reacting to the demands of others, and collapse in the evening exhausted, yet nowhere near accomplishing the things that actually mattered to me.
Category:
Speculative Design
Author:
Pavel Danyi
Read:
11 mins
Location:
Prague
Date:
The Life Dashboard
During a university course on the "Future of Work," I finally confronted the question that had been nagging me: why do I live so reactively instead of intentionally? Is there a structured way to find balance and direction? In a casual conversation with my classmate Lucie Z., a fellow information designer, we admitted we weren't alone in this. Many of us in the millennial generation are balancing on a tightrope between burnout, chaos, and the sinking feeling that we are missing out on something vital. That moment led us to a pivotal idea: what if we approached our lives as a design problem? Instead of reaching for another generic self help article or a time management app, I turned to the book "Designing Your Life" by Bill Burnett and Dave Evans. I was intrigued because it didn't offer platitudes like "find your passion." Instead, it offered concrete methods to stop, map out what works, and, most importantly, try things differently. I didn't expect miracles, but I hoped for a new perspective. And that is exactly what I got. Here is how I proceeded using the design thinking approach. The first method I used was the Life Dashboard. It is a simple, visual way to gauge how you feel about different areas of your life. I evaluated four core categories: Work, Play, Love, and Health. I assigned each area a score from 1 to 10 based on how fulfilled I felt. The data offered a surprisingly honest mirror. Work (8/10): this scored the highest. It reflected my dedication and the fact that I genuinely enjoy my work in UX design. However, I also felt that it was becoming overwhelming and I was losing perspective. Play (5/10): I realised I had indefinitely postponed creative activities, working on my portfolio, design challenges, or simply walking outside. Health (5/10): I knew what I should be doing, but practice lagged behind theory. Movement and quality sleep had been relegated to the back burner. Love (4/10): I was in a "single mode," with most contacts happening online. It wasn't a crisis, but it certainly wasn't growth. It was stagnation. This phase wasn't just about numbers, it was about stopping to reflect. The dashboard provided a clear map of where I was and what needed my attention most.
Work view vs. life view
The next method from the book involves reflecting separately on your Work View and your life view, and then seeing where they intersect or clash. I wrote two short manifestos and answered three reflective questions about how they complement or contradict one another. My reflection: I realised I love my work when it has a positive impact, helping others or advancing the world through service design or research. However, my work has a tendency to breach its boundaries and colonise my personal space. When that happens, I lose energy. The conflict: my life view reminded me that I don't want life to be solely about performance. I need space for stillness, for moments without an agenda. The takeaway was clear: when I let work dominate, my life narrows. But when I consciously seek balance and listen to my body and mind, I am better able to define what "good work" actually means. These two views are interconnected, one cannot grow without the other.
The Good Time Journal and mind maps
The third tool was the Good Time Journal. This method goes deeper than the dashboard, tracking daily activities based on two parameters: engagement (flow) and energy (does this activity drain me or fill me up?). I kept this log for three weeks. The findings: I noticed that creative activities, like morning sketching or finishing a research segment, put me into a state of flow and energised me. Conversely, reactive tasks like answering emails or fixing organisational snags drained me with zero added value. The pattern: my days lacked the variety I craved, often slipping into stereotypes. However, visualising this allowed me to redesign my weeks. I began to consciously schedule "recharging" activities and limit the energy vampires. Using the data from my Good Time Journal, I moved to Mind Mapping. I selected three areas where I felt most engaged: travel, friendship, and respect. From these maps, I extracted key values. Travel: experience, freedom, discovery. Friendship: trust, understanding, love. Respect: research, respect, design. Based on these, I brainstormed three hypothetical roles: field researcher/sociologist, combining travel, discovery, and freedom; social service worker, combining trust, empathy, and connection; service designer/researcher, combining respect, research, and design. This was a "mental warm up." It wasn't about picking a job immediately but connecting my intuition with concrete ideas to encourage experimentation.
