Bill Burnett

Stanford Professor: Don’t Build Your Life Around Your Kids

September 10, 2026 · 📺 The Prof G Pod – Scott Galloway

Stanford professors Bill Burnett and Dave Evans argue that finding your one true purpose is the wrong goal. Recorded live at Odoo Experience in San Francisco, they join Scott Galloway to discuss why “follow your passion” is often bad advice, whether your job needs to provide both money and meaning, and how small experiments can help you move forward when you feel stuck. Scott also opens up about sending his son to college—and what happens when the role that gave your life purpose begins to change. Their latest book, How to Live a Meaningful Life, is out now: https://www.simonandschuster.co…

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The Blueprint for a Happier Life: Stanford Life Design Lab’s Bill Burnett & Dave Evans

August 03, 2026 · 📺 Cresset

Listen and subscribe: Subscribe to Cresset Podcasts Newsletter: https://cressetcapital.com/podcasts/e... Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast... Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/033g1SC... Dave Evans LinkedIn:   / dave-evans-62148   Bill Burnett LinkedIn:   / bill-burnett-4225401   Designing Your Life: https://designingyour.life/ Eric Becker LinkedIn:   / ebecker1   Eric Becker: https://cressetcapital.com/about/team... The Long Game book: https://longgamebook.com/ Eric Becker sits down with Bill Burnett and Dave Evans, founders of the Stanford Life Design Lab, to di…

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Why Finding Your Purpose Is the Wrong Goal, ft. Bill Burnett & Dave Evans | Office Hours

May 18, 2026 · 📺 The Prof G Pod – Scott Galloway

In the first of a two-part special Office Hours series, Scott Galloway is joined by Stanford educators and bestselling authors Bill Burnett and Dave Evans to help listeners fight the attention economy, build better habits, and live more intentionally. Want to be featured in a future episode? Send a voice recording to [email protected], or drop your question in the r/ScottGalloway subreddit. Timestamps: 00:00 - In This Episode 01:17 - Burnout 06:42 - Productivity and Discipline 13:53 - Building an Intentional Life Music: https://www.davidcuttermusic.com / @dcuttermusic Subscribe to…

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Stanford Happiness Researchers Expose Why Everyone is Depressed & How to Fix It

March 16, 2026 · 📺 Rich Roll

Bill Burnett and Dave Evans created perhaps Stanford's most popular course, "Designing Your Life," and co-authored "How to Live a Meaningful Life." We discuss the myth of the best self, radical acceptance, prototyping your future, the flow world, and why meaning can't be found, only designed. READ MORE👉🏼 http://bit.ly/richroll975 ✌🏼🌱 – Rich This Episode Is Brought To You By… Seed: Save 25% OFF your first order👉🏼https://bit.ly/seedxrrp2025 BetterHelp: Get 10% OFF the first month👉🏼https://bit.ly/betterhelp2025rrp Go Brewing: Use code Rich Roll for 15% OFF👉🏼https://bit.ly/gobrewing2025 WHO…

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You Can Design Meaning Right NOW: Bob Waldinger, MD, Harvard & Bill Burnett and Dave Evans, Stanford

February 18, 2026 · 📺 Fully Alive By Design and Robert Waldinger

What does it actually feel like to live a meaningful life? Bill Burnett, Dave Evans, and Harvard's Dr. Robert Waldinger sat down to answer that question - live, with real student questions. No scripts. No theory. Just three of the world's leading thinkers on meaning, purpose, and the good life going deep together. In this conversation, Bill and Dave bring their life design framework into direct dialogue with decades of Harvard research on what actually makes life worth living. They cover the difference between impact and meaning, why overachievers are often the most disconnected from what ma…

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Designing a Life of Play, Purpose and Possibility | Bill Burnett (Stanford)

December 26, 2025 · 📺 Play to potential podcast

Bill Burnett is a designer, educator, and co-author of Designing Your Life. He leads the Life Design Lab at Stanford and has spent decades helping people apply design thinking to careers, choices, and the bigger questions of meaning and fulfillment. In this conversation, Bill shares his journey from toy design and Apple to teaching life design, and explains why curiosity, play, and small experiments matter more than rigid plans. We talk about reframing problems, prototyping your future, and the idea that there is no single right life, only many possible good ones. Bill also introduces concep…

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5 steps to designing the life you want | Bill Burnett | TEDxStanford

May 19, 2017 · 📺 TEDx Talks

Designers spend their days dreaming up better products and better worlds, and you can use their thinking to re-envision your own life, says design professor Bill Burnett. He shares five tips to try, whether you’re at the start of your career or contemplating your next act. Executive director of Stanford’s design program at the d.School, Bill Burnett uses design thinking, a career’s worth of starting companies and coaching students, and a childhood spent drawing cars and airplanes under his Grandmother’s sewing machine to inform his work on how to design your life. In five eyebrow-raising f…

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Designing Your Best Life with Bill Burnett and Dave Evans

April 27, 2017 · 📺 Chicago Ideas

Bill Burnett and Dave Evans are designers who have managed to translate their skills into everyday life. In their book, "Designing Your Life," they break down the best practices for anyone to build a life that thrives.

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Stanford Webinar - Design Thinking = Method, Not Magic, Bill Burnnett

April 20, 2016 · 📺 Stanford Online

Design thinking gets a lot of buzz for being a “one size fits all” strategic process to drive innovation. In this webinar Bill Burnett, consulting assistant professor and master in design thinking at Stanford University, as he shares three barriers organizations face when adopting an innovative culture and how to overcome them. Explore Stanford Online's Innovation and Design Thinking courses: https://online.stanford.edu/innovatio... Presented by the Innovation Masters Series: Design Thinking and the Art of Innovation (http://scpd.stanford.edu/design) 0:00 Introduction 0:11 Design Thinkin…

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Bill Burnett - Stanford Design Program

November 05, 2015 · 📺 Italia Innovation Program

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Designing Your Life - Bill Burnett

February 04, 2015 · 📺 Stanford

“The notion that you need to have a passion and follow it is a destructive idea." Bill Burnett, executive director of the Design Program at Stanford, talks about bringing a d.school approach to the "classically wicked problem" of figuring out what you want to do when you "grow up." Your major doesn't have to determine your career, and a single decision won't plot the trajectory of the rest of your life. Worldview Stanford's blended online and on-campus course "The Science of Decision Making" opens Feb. 23. Learn more at: http://stanford.io/1uCPMCP

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Stanford Open Office Hours: Dave Evans and Bill Burnett

January 30, 2014 · 📺 Stanford

"Don't try to decide your way forward; just do something." Dave Evans and Bill Burnett bring a design-thinking approach to life and career questions in this session of Stanford Open Office Hours. Like Stanford on Facebook to receive updates on future sessions of Open Office Hours:   / stanford  

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