Designing Flow, Finding Happiness
Two Roadmaps for Personal Change — Depending on Where You’re Starting
Opportunity for change shows up in all kinds of ways. Sometimes it’s a gift — a free ticket to a ball game, an unexpected job posting overseas, or a chance meeting with someone you’ve been hoping to run into. Sometimes it’s a deadline — retirement, graduation, the end of a project.
Sometimes it’s simply the quiet realization that what once energized you now feels flat.
And yes, sometimes it’s because you were let go.
As a business and life coach, I’m always looking for frameworks that help people navigate these moments. Since their first book Designing Your Life came out in 2016, I’ve been a fan of Bill Burnett and Dave Evans. The are both design engineers by training, and based on that process created a course at Stanford which has filled auditoriums for more than a decade. I’ve taken their coaching course, brought them into corporate events, and used their tools with clients.
So when their newest book, How to Live a Meaningful Life, came out, I grabbed it immediately.
Two weeks later, serendipity struck again. I met Ruchika Singhal, author of Happiness Is Right Here — The Reinvention Playbook™. I picked up her book out of curiosity and ended up loving it. It’s writing is both crisp and poetic, and the narrative of change is quite practical. If you appreciate bold, original writing, Singhal’s book is a joy on its own.
I was delighted to see how much these two books agree on one central idea:
You don’t need to blow up your life to change it. Small moves, done consistently, create sustainable transformation.
The interesting twist in this overlap is that the authors start from very different emotional events and places in one’s life. But either book can help you now matter where or why change is needed. Let’s look at the audiences they focus on because that influences which to read first.
Where You’re Starting: Fired, Fed Up, or Just Flat?
Singhal writes for the high achiever who looks successful on the outside but feels overwhelmed on the inside. Her first instruction is simple and radical:
Pause.
Stop the momentum.
Stop the reflex to fix everything with a new project.
Stop long enough to hear yourself think.
From that pause, she guides you to identify your anchors — the parts of your life that aren’t broken and still hold you steady. Once you know where you are, she talks about boundaries you need to make change possible. In some sense, you need to have space, and be free, to make change. With that understanding you then can pivot with curiosity instead of fear.
She talks of change, but also blows that up bigger, with her own carefully crafted definition of reinvention:
Reinvention starts with pausing, then pivoting to something new. Then you propel yourself with a series of small, continuous shifts that eventually become part of who you are. This is not dramatic change, but carefully paced, curious, and creative change. And the goal—happiness. Added bonus: If you appreciate bold, original writing, Singhal’s book is a joy.
Now let’s look at Bill & Dave’s version.
Burnett & Evans: For When LifeWorks but Feels Flat
Burnett and Evans start from a calmer place. Their reader isn’t in crisis. Life is fine — maybe even enviable — but something essential is missing.
Their approach is playful and design‑minded:
- Look at your life like a curious engineer
- Run low‑stakes experiments
- Put on what they call “wonder glasses”
- Follow the activities that absorb you completely
Their goal is “flow”— a state where time dissolves because you’re fully engaged, energized, and at peace. It’s not about achievement. It’s about aliveness. And it too uses different words than pause, pivot, propel, but the process is similar. However the difference is that their end goal is doing things that can, though not always, lead to timeless sense of engagement. To flow. And in flow, you are rewarded with both meaning and happiness.
Where You’re Headed: Flow, Happiness, and the Quiet Truth About Both
Burnett and Evans aim for flow — a state of deep engagement that makes life feel meaningful in the moment, not someday.
Singhal aims for happiness right here — the internal quiet that comes from turning down the volume on who you used to be so you can hear who you are now.
Neither approach advocates big change. Both approaches come with a need for perserverence, practice, and patience.
And both require giving yourself permission to stop deferring meaning in your life due to fear, inertia, or being to busy. Because both believe that meaning is already there in your daily lives—you just have to discover it, make space for it, and then lean into it.
You don’t need a new life. You need to look at the one you have with patience, creativity, and curiosity — and make small changes that add up.