The big idea: Good life choices come from narrowing to a few real options, choosing with your head and your gut, letting go of the rest and learning from failure with a team beside you.
In 60 seconds
- Narrow to a few real options, then choose with your head and your gut.
- Once you choose, let go of the other options so you can commit.
- Treat failure as information, and build a team to design your life with.
Do this: complete Get Choosing, Let Go and Move On, Not All Failures Are Alike and Build Your Team.
How choosing, failure and your team work
The last chapters of Designing Your Life by Bill Burnett and Dave Evans cover what happens after you prototype: how to choose well, how to stop agonizing, how to treat failure as information and who you need around you. The short version: choose with your whole self, then let go, and do not do it alone.
Choosing well: four steps
Gather and create options
List real options, including ones you invent by combining or reshaping others. Your prototypes feed this list.
Watch for: only one option, which is not a choice.
Narrow down
Cross options off until you have about three to five. Crossed-off options are not failures; they just are not live right now.
Watch for: keeping everything open.
Choose
Weigh the shortlist with your head and your gut. Picture living each one for a week and notice how it feels.
Watch for: spreadsheet-only choices.
Let go and move on
Commit, close the door on the others and stop reopening the choice. Your energy goes into making this path work.
Watch for: agonizing after the decision.
Why letting go matters
Burnett and Evans point out that the unhappiness people feel after a choice often comes from keeping the other options alive in their heads. A good process followed by a clean letting go tends to feel better than a “perfect” choice you keep second-guessing.
Failure immunity: not all failures are alike
Screwups
You are usually good at this and slipped: a missed deadline, a typo in a client deck.
Response: own it, fix it, move on. No deep lesson needed.
Weaknesses
The same failure keeps showing up, and years of effort have not changed it much.
Response: accept it, design around it and lean on teammates.
Growth opportunities
A failure with a clear cause you can fix: you rushed the analysis, you never asked the client.
Response: this is where to spend your learning energy.
Building your team
Who is on it
- Supporters. People who cheer you on and listen without fixing.
- Family and close friends. People who know you best and will live with your choices.
- Mentors. People with experience who help you find your own answer.
- A life design team. Three to five peers who meet regularly to work through each other’s designs.
How to use it
- Name people. Write real names next to each role.
- Ask for counsel, not answers. “Help me think” gets better help than “Tell me what to do.”
- Meet on a rhythm. A life design team that meets monthly beats one that meets in a crisis.
- Give back. Show up for their designs, too.
Choosing with your whole selfHead, gut and a quiet moment
Most business students are trained to choose with analysis: pros and cons, weighted criteria, a spreadsheet. That part matters. Burnett and Evans add that your emotions and body hold knowledge too, and a good choice uses both.
- Live with it for a day. Act as if you chose option A. Notice your energy and mood. Tomorrow, do the same with option B.
- Tell it out loud. Imagine telling someone you trust what you chose. Does your voice sound relieved or flat?
- Get quiet. A few minutes of quiet reflection or journaling before deciding makes the gut signal easier to hear. The workbook calls this trusting your inner voice.
If your head says yes and your gut says no, do not override either one. Ask what the gut is noticing that your list left out.
Running a failure logTurn setbacks into data
- List recent failures, big and small, from school, work, teams and life.
- Label each one: screwup, weakness or growth opportunity.
- For each growth opportunity, write the insight in one line: what would you do differently next time?
- Look for patterns across entries.
The authors share a free Failure Log worksheet (PDF) (opens in a new tab) you can print. A failure log fits naturally in your private journal.
High-achieving students often swing between imposter syndrome and overconfidence. Both get in the way of learning from failure. Dr. Morris explains both in the syllabus; read Feedback, Imposter Syndrome and Blind Spots for how to take feedback well.
Mentors: advice or counsel?Get the help you actually need
Advice is someone telling you what they would do. It is shaped by their life, their values and their era. Counsel is someone helping you work out what you should do. Both have a place, but for life design choices, counsel is usually more useful.
- Ask “What questions should I be asking myself?” instead of “What would you do?”
- Listen for the story behind the advice. It tells you when it applies to you and when it does not.
- Collect counsel from several people, then decide yourself.
The conclusion: keep designingA well-designed life is a practice, not a finish line
The book ends with the idea that life design never really ends. You will reach new decision points after graduation, after a first job, after a move. The same loop applies each time: get curious, try things, reframe problems, know it is a process and ask for help. Celebrate what you have built so far, then keep going.
For applying the same mindsets to the job you will have, see Designing Your Work Life.
Try it: Choose and Let Go Planner
Tool · BUAD 427
Choose and Let Go Planner
Narrow your options, choose with head and gut, then let go, plan for setbacks and name your team.
- 1Narrow
- 2Choose
- 3Let go
My choice
All checks
Put it to work: your choosing, failure and team workbook assignments
This part of Dr. Lane Morris’s BUAD 427 brings your life design work to a decision. The Designing Your Life Workbook assignments are Get Choosing, Let Go and Move On, Not All Failures Are Alike, Build Your Team and Trusting Your Inner Voice, along with finishing your Conversation Tracker. Workbook assignments are pass/fail and must be complete for credit. Bring your thinking to class: participation is pass/fail and counts.
Gather and narrow
List every option from your Odyssey Plans and prototypes, then cross off until three to five remain.
Your deliverable: the Get Choosing assignment with your shortlist.
Choose with head and gut
Gut check each option, make a choice and write one reason from your head and one from your gut. Use the Choose and Let Go Planner if it helps.
Your deliverable: your choice and why, in the workbook.
Let go
Name what you are letting go of and when you stop revisiting it.
Your deliverable: the Let Go and Move On assignment.
Log and sort failures
List recent failures and sort them into screwups, weaknesses and growth opportunities. Pull one insight from each growth opportunity.
Your deliverable: the Not All Failures Are Alike assignment.
Name your team
Write real names for supporters, mentors and a three to five person life design team. Plan when you will meet.
Your deliverable: the Build Your Team assignment.
Listen inward and bring it to class
Spend a quiet 10 minutes journaling about how the choice feels. Bring one insight about choosing, failing or your team to the discussion.
Your deliverable: the Trusting Your Inner Voice assignment, plus your prepared contribution.
Do this, not thatChoosing and letting go well
Do this
- Create at least one new option instead of only choosing among offers.
- Narrow to five or fewer before you analyze.
- Use a gut check alongside your list of reasons.
- Sort failures before you judge yourself.
- Ask mentors for counsel, then decide yourself.
Not that
- Keeping ten options open “just in case.”
- Choosing from a spreadsheet alone.
- Reopening the decision every week after you commit.
- Treating every failure as proof you are not good enough.
- Asking ten people what they would do and averaging the answers.
Before you submitCheck your workbook pages
- [ ] At least five options gathered, including one you created.
- [ ] A shortlist of three to five, with the others crossed off.
- [ ] Every shortlisted option has a gut check.
- [ ] Your choice has a head reason and a gut reason.
- [ ] You wrote what you are letting go of and when you stop revisiting it.
- [ ] Your failure log sorts each failure as a screwup, weakness or growth opportunity.
- [ ] Your team lists real names, including a mentor and a life design team.
- [ ] Your inner voice reflection stays in your private journal unless you choose to share it.
Go deeper
Back to all BUAD 427 topics · Next: Designing Your Work Life
Part of BUAD 427 Designing Your Life and Career, taught by Lane Morris, PhD, in the Smith GLS human-centered leadership program, toward the Human Centered Consulting Certificate.
Frequently asked questions
How do you choose between career options using Designing Your Life?
Bill Burnett and Dave Evans describe four steps. Gather and create options, including ones you invent. Narrow the list to about three to five. Choose by weighing the shortlist with both analysis and gut feeling, for example by living as if you chose each option for a day. Then let go of the others and move on without reopening the decision.
Why should I narrow my options to five or fewer?
When too many options stay live, every choice feels harder and less satisfying, because you keep comparing against the paths you did not take. Narrowing to three to five makes it possible to think clearly about each one. Options you cross off are not failures. They are simply not your focus right now and can return later.
What is failure immunity?
Failure immunity is the idea that you can treat failures as information instead of as a verdict on your worth. Designing Your Life suggests logging failures and sorting them into screwups, weaknesses and growth opportunities. Screwups get fixed and forgotten, weaknesses get designed around, and growth opportunities get your learning energy because their causes can be fixed.
What is the difference between a screwup, a weakness and a growth opportunity?
A screwup is a slip in something you usually do well, like a missed deadline. A weakness is a failure that keeps repeating despite real effort, so you accept it and work around it. A growth opportunity is a failure with a clear, fixable cause, such as rushing an analysis. That last group is where you learn the most.
Who should be on my life design team?
Build a mix of people. Supporters cheer you on, family and close friends know you best, and mentors share experience while helping you find your own answer. A life design team is a small group of three to five peers who meet regularly to work through each other's plans and choices. Name real people for each role and set a meeting rhythm.