Well, it all started with COVID – and the sponsor CSL Berhing not being able to attend the #wetechtogether Conference 2021 onsite. This circumstance provided the chance to offer to the #wetechtogether community the Design Your Life workshop to appropriately kick off a new year to build your best career.

At first, to get the participants to start thinking about their own potential journey in 2022, three CSL-professionals shared their inspirational career path. What were their motivation along the way? How did this materialize? A very good start to think of, how our own life and career journey could look like.

Afterward Prof. Dr. Sebastian Kernbach was at the helm to navigate us through the day long workshop. He shared methods from within the areas of Design Thinking, Positive Psychology and Behavior Economics on how to design your life. The touched fields of knowledge intrigued and inspired us very much. Therefore, let us share our key take-aways.

Areas to get you into the driver seat of your life

The Design your Life workshop was guided along the areas to get you into the driver seat of your life and your career in 2022 and onwards. As such, we we are summarising herewith the key takeways.

Structure your day

If you want to excel, you should know when is the best time of the day to do so. You can work almost magical in your Prime Time hours of the day. Admit Low Time to ensure regeneration, and if possible do not plan anything challenging in this phase. Because you are easily irritated in this phase when not focusing on regeneration.
But yes – we cannot always choose it to be on our own way, external drivers stir us here now and again (our vis-à-vis, fixed working hours, ect). Don’t let you drive mad by this, just try to use this knowledge when you have a choice! Obviously big time when working or living in a more self-organized/-managed way.

Social Support Networks

Don’t forget, happiness in life is closely linked to positive relationships (beyond romantic definition). Read the article on The secret to happiness? Here’s some advice from the longest-running study on happiness – Harvard Health for more insights.

As humans, we are social animals and therefore highly influenced by others. Looking at this a bit more closely, we basically learn from each other and support each other all the time. To achieve your dream, check which person could support you emotionally on your journey. With whom do you need to exchange to gain knowledge and expereince that is still missing. Additionally, you might need to acquire new connections to fill a position you recognise someone is missing for you to keep sane (e.g. that afterwork beer/prosecco partner to reflect your day and stem off). The list is not conclusive. Just try to write down as many relations you feel needed and play part in your big dream and approach them.

Science of Action

Now looking at how to start things, there is not one single way of how to come into action. And not all methods work for all the same. But generally spoken there are two ways to tackle a gap: either you make the gap smaller or you get extra energy to jump over the gap.

To reduce the size of the gap, use methods that activate you (e.g. by nudging, signalling/priming), set clear boundaries (say no to things) and apply structure and visualization, in the case you feel overwhelmed. For getting extra power, you might look again at your energy levels, social support and the attractiveness of the aim.

A guide to tackle your big dream

Sebastian’s engaging workshop lead, left us highly inspired and thinking to look at our life from various perspectives to support us in decision making towards a happy and fulfilled life.

Find below a quick guide how you can tackle your big dream.

1. Break up your big uber ambitions dream into smaller, tangible and in real life testable bits. It’s more likely that you really start with dedicated action to move actually towards your big dream.
2. Execute this test, side project, hobby or anything you broke your big dream into a smaller testable piece. Look to incorporate the knowledge of the above briefly described areas.
3. Analyze the outcome. How did the test(s) affected you and reexamine your big dream. You might use following questions for that assessment: Are the drivers behind the dream really based on your inner voices (head, heart & gut) and not implanted by your environment? What did you feel? How did it feel? Now answer this: Do you want to pursue the original dream? Then expand your field of action by executing more of your testballons.

Did you find another driver behind your original dream you would like to follow up on? Then adjust your big dream and start testing again.

Remark: Of course, no short blog does justify the vast amount of information, methods and hands-on tasks experienced we received during this day long Design your Life workshop to build the career of our dreams. Further informaiton can be found on Selbastians’s LifeDesign Lab Website.

Our thanks go out to CSL Behring to offer this Design Your Life workshop as part of the #wetechtogether conference 2021.

Wanna read related stuff

Life Design by Sebastian Kernbach and Martin Eppler
The 100-year-life by Linda Graton
Reinventing Organization by Frederic Laloux
The Nature fix by Florence Williams
Flourish by Martin E.P. Seligman
Chatter: The voice in our head, why it matters, and how to harness it by Ethan Kross
Manage your Engery, not your time. by Tony Schwartz and Catherine McCarthy

Be invited to participate a Life Design survery and get the chance to win one of 10 books of the bestseller “Life Design” by Professor Sebastian Kernbach and Martin Eppler.