The Design Thinking Life Playbook: Empower Yourself, Embrace Change, and Visualize a Joyful Life

Get it, write in it, ideate, create, imagine - tons of fun in this guided book

I love this book, must try it once

Thorough and insight packed

As a design thinking practitioner, I always get excited when Michael Lewick releases another book explaining how this simple creative process can be applied to a 'new' area. Practical and actionable as always.

A book that screams out to be filled in, if you aren’t comfortable with marking, noting, annotating, or highlighting physical books, you may well want to give this one a miss!However, if like me, you relish writing in a book and really using it for all it’s worth, then I can’t recommend The Design Thinking Life Playbook enough.The first time I’ve ever encountered these playbooks; I wish I had come across something like this 10 years ago. At a crossroads and heading back to Uni, juggling a career and family, this would have been so helpful at that time.The layout, graphics and overall incentive to note down your thoughts and feelings throughout this book is nothing short of inspiring. But, perhaps most importantly, it is all purposeful as it all has a direction. That is, to live that better life – once you’ve discovered what it is.Taking you through potential life-changing decisions step by step and encouraging a sense of visualisation, this is similar to a personal development journal – but one that offers a bit more fun and indeed structure and guidance along the way.As for age, sex and status, I really don’t think there are any limits or boundaries here for the intended audience of this book. This is highlighted by the differing personas they use as examples throughout the book.As a mother of four and undecided about doing my masters and Ph.D. for some time now, this is perhaps the kick up the backside I need to get going.A fantastic book to work through on your own or a wonderful idea to gift to someone else, this is a fun way to work towards those better life choices.Timing-wise, with 2020 perhaps the worst year for so many of us yet, this life playbook has perhaps never been more relevant.

When I ordered this book I was expecting something that would help me a great deal. It does help but not as much as I would have wanted.The initial introduction of who John, Steve and Sue is one which I assume is suppose to draw you into the book with a "Yeah! These people are just like me". Unsurprisingly, they are not. (I've included the page so you yourself can see if you are similar to them, their names come up throughout the book at certain places.)I've also included some of the other pages at random so that you can get a 'feel' of it.If anything this book feels like a textbook and in that case I believe that a spiral bound version would be much better as it feels like I'm doing a lot of note taking. I would fully prefer to have the book lay flat. (This is more of an opinion).In the end its an alright book for which you have to be in the right headspace to complete as it tells you to do a lot of visualisation, to look inside yourself, research what you what and to take steps towards it.It has a lot of potential. It's just that that potential is wasted on me.

I am an amazon vine reviewer. I am reviewing the “Design Thinking Life Playbook” co-written by Michael Lewrick, Jean-Paul Thommen and Larry Leifer. Hereafter referred to as the DTL. It is 250 pages long. The coloured diagrams and tables are excellent and help you to work your way through the workbook.You follow the lives of Sue, John and Steve whilst they encounter certain “where am I and what’s next?” questions. Then you can write in the book and complete the blank tables, charts, flow diagrams, options that apply to your own circumstances. To “open yourself to new possibilities” (p19). The book refers to the path to “self-efficacy”. I double checked the definition of efficacy and it means – “capable of/or successful in producing and intended result”It is never too late to initiate a change. Sue is 30, John 60 and Steve has just graduated. Their needs differ. Sue is successful and works in Hong Kong. She can see gaps in her life – like a meaningful long-term relationship and being close to her relatives in Switzerland. John is retiring so how will he use his “free” days? He will impact on his wife’s routines – including visits to the dreaded in-laws. Does Steve follow his brother’s journey into a Doctorate -is that what he really wants?The DTL paradigm encourages you to free your mind and not to be in that hamster wheel – moving forward – but getting nowhere.The book goes through (eventually) 9 phases: -Accept, Understand; Observe; Define point of view; Ideate; Prototype; Test; Self-ReflectionThese phases can equally be applied to relationships, leisure, work and health etc. A grid on p36 lets you rate them today as an unhappy or happy face. The book uses a mobile that you find over a baby’s cot to show how all elements of your life are connected. If you increase your hours at work, you decrease your leisure hours. As John Muir said, if you pick up item A you will find it is related to many other items. Each phase is marked off by coloured pages- such as the interlinked circles of self-reflection / Acceptance / Understanding.Your glass half full/empty view will influence how you tackle change or give up. The graph on p55 shows the “Flow Channel” where your Challenges versus Skills are in tune.You keep an “energy journal” – for example, for John how he felt about riding his Harley bike versus visiting his in-laws. You can also turn these feelings into a timeline graph. Review these experiences every few weeks and see what they tell you about your overall lifestyle – what can be changed or improved?One key area is to carry out a self-reflection about your work, leisure, relationships etc and then – this is key – ask your friends, relatives and workmates how they see you. Sue was surprised to hear that she is impatient!In the Ideate stage, you break your progress down into several small stages which you can assess as to whether they worked or needed adjusting / removing / adding to. The whole DTL process is one of trying something, reflecting, iterating around and seeing what to do next. You can do so many diagrams and sketches and plans – but at some point, you have to act. You create many ideas in the divergent, brainstorm phase – but eventually you need to converge to just a few that you want to develop further. This whole iterative DTL process will be done many times in your life – it is part of your toolkit to get out when you stop that hamster wheel.You can rate all your ideas on a graph with “Cool” on the y axis and “Feasible” on the x axis.So, Sue’s plans could be to drive a flashy car which is cool but not feasible (money!)The small stages above can be laid out in pictorial form to see if they link up to produce a final outcome – like Sue finding a worthwhile relationship.Page 180-184 is an excellent review / self-check. For example, one question asks if you are responsible for your own actions – Yes? Partly? Not yet?From page 186 the DTL book focuses particularly on your work or professional planning journey. So, there is more focus here on Sue and Steve. Again, the idea of doing and then focusing and reiterating on good / poor outcomes is used again.There is an excellent method of seeing which of the 4 parts of your brain – Thinkers; Organisers; Innovators and Humanitarians – you are. You could be more right or left sided – and therefore which career path would bring these to the fore? So called brain dominance.If you don’t know which values are important to you page 202 has loads – you need to distil the list from your point of view. There are some very good life plan diagrams for Sue and Steve where a picture is worth a thousand words. Now do yours!The tetralemma (like dilemma I think) makes you think can I have option A or B – or why can’t I have both – or, neither?Finally, pages 246-247 make you reflect similar to pages 180-184 above. An example is – you are aware of the goal you want to achieve with the change and the areas of life the change will impact. Yes? Partly? Not Yet?I have a business MBA and one of the courses within that qualification was “Creativity, Innovation and Change”. I think the DTL is similar very good tool to use when considering where you are at the moment and want to have some structure in helping you to prepare and reflect on your “where next” questions. The DTL workbook says that you will go through the process of reflection, thinking and action many times throughout your life. Not just work as it only occupies about 15% of your total waking hours.With so many unfortunate people losing their jobs through Covid, there will be many more people chasing many fewer jobs in the foreseeable future. Many people are at home facing an unclear future. This DTL book may be a good investment to help reflect on a person’s total skillset – not just “I worked in a department store”. But “I have many transferable skills, and this is the time to really enable a route into another job altogether.I enjoyed going through the DTL book. I think it is an excellent facilitation tool to help you come up with practical ways going forward. The end of the book shows some real people and points the way to further studies and involvement. I rate the Design Thinking and Life Playbook at 5 stars.

This book puts all of the classic techniques together in its own way. The techniques are all very simple and common-sense based, so they would work for people in times of stress when most people find it hard to think straight, let alone logically.For example, it starts off with exercises to establish the reader's state of mind, followed by various ways of goal-setting. There are pages that are dedicated to personal journaling in which the reader keeps a track of their emotions and activities followed by an evaluation of the preceding weeks. Then there is a section on how to come up with ideas. Again, they are very straight-forward techniques which include neurolinguistic programming (NLP). The last section focuses on career goals: finding, setting and implementing them.The only aspect of this book I don't like is how the authors use 'we' all the time, as though the reader were part of a group. Some people may like this, but as I have never encountered it in a workbook before, I find it odd and a little patronising.I believe this book would be good for young people in helping them establish basic life skills in how to deal with emotions and set goals. It would also be a very useful tool for those going through difficult times in their life.