some thoughts about life design & feeling behind

how to design a life you love

[Inspired by conversations with loved ones about feeling “behind”. You’re not.]

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I spent most of 20s ticking boxes that were unintentionally drawn on my life script. We get handed these scripts early:

-get into a fancy university at 18,

-graduate with honors at 21/22,

-get a well-paid corporate job and climb the ladder at 23,

-find the love of your life by 27,

-marry by 30,

-buy a home by 30.5,

-first child by 31,

-second by 33

Ticking these boxes in my 20s led to many wonderful things. But as I step beyond this decade (and fail to check off expected milestones), I’m recognizing the importance of drawing my own boxes.

I want to learn how to design this decade, my life, in a way that relieves me of the weight of expectations, which I think means being self-aware enough to know what I’m truly looking for and being bold enough to live authentically according to those desires.

So how does one design a life? More importantly, a life on your terms?

Engineering vs. Design

One popular school of thought says that to achieve success and have a great life, you should have a clear idea of where you want to go (i.e. your goals). The billion-dollar self-help industry of January resolutions, vision boards, accountability pods, manifestation rituals is grounded on the very premise that step one to getting what you want is knowing what you want.

Goal → Plan → Act. Makes total sense.

But.

These days, I'm learning that this method isn't quite working for me. All the good things that have happened in my life - meeting M in university, meeting S, stumbling into a career that I wasn’t trained for, the wonderful relationships I have in my life - happened not because they were on my January resolution list or on my proverbial vision board (I've never actually made one). That is, they happened not because I knew precisely I wanted those things.

In contrast, aiming for the things I (thought I) wanted didn't always lead to success or happiness. When I graduated with my economics degree, I thought I wanted to work in some sort of policy job. I got a fancy internship at the Bank of England. I loved the idea of wearing a white shirt and black pencil skirt to go to work at Threadneedle Street Monday to Friday like some important person. But the actual work (analyzing exchange rate fluctuations and how they impact consumer price) I found boring and dry. The work didn't energize me and the problem didn't engage me, even though the vision of myself going to work in some prestigious institution as a young 20-something intern was alluring.

My staff card from Bank of England internship days. Summer 2016.

So here's what I'm thinking: maybe the secret to falling asleep with a full heart and waking up with excitement isn't about having a crystal-clear vision of the destination. Maybe it actually risks taking us down the wrong path.

The traditional vision-board method asks us to think like engineers. But - as Bill Burnett and Dave Evans argue in their book Designing Your Life - living a great life is a design problem, not an engineering problem.

Engineering problems are focused on achieving a clear goal, which usually means plotting the shortest distance between where you are and where you want to get to. In contrast, design problems don't really have a predetermined goal. They simply seek to address a problem in some effective way.

When I ended up at the Bank of England, I was thinking like an engineer: I want to have a fancy policy job at a well-known institution so that I can impact policy → let me look for internships in these given institutions → oh look, there's this Bank of England one. This anti-experience at the Band of England taught me that sometimes achieving what we think we want reveals we’re asking the wrong questions all along. This lies at the heart of what it means to treat life as a design problem.

I. Reframing the problem

Treating life like a design problem rather than an engineering problem changes how we frame the challenge.

If I had approached the internship as a design problem instead, I would have asked different questions: What environments energize me? What kinds of problems do I enjoy solving? What parts of economics light me up? The “problem” wouldn’t have been "how do I become successful in the policy world?” but rather “what sort of work feels more like play than work?”

Another example (which

Henrik Karlsson

touches on in this wonderful article): Let's say that the “situation” we're faced with is that you’re female, 39, and haven't found a partner but want biological kids.

An engineer would reduce this to a formula: maximize relationship potential f(x,y,z) where x is income compatibility, y is shared life goals, and z is geographic proximity, all subject to a biological deadline. The solution becomes a numbers game: go on a certain number of dates per month, optimize dating profiles for maximum matches, follow these steps to choose the best candidate.

A designer would probably step back and ask different questions: What does family mean to me? What am I really looking for —partnership, parenthood, or both? Asking these questions will probably reveal that we're actually dealing with several subproblems and desires:

• The desire for a loving partnership (which can't be rushed),

• The desire to nurture (which might be fulfilled in various ways),

• The desire to have biological children (which has its own timeline for women).

The problem of having biological kids is quite different from the problem of finding a partner. And the problem of finding a partner to have kids with is also quite different from finding a partner you love. By separating these threads, we can explore solutions we might have missed while trying to solve everything at once.

Now, consider someone in their mid 40s contemplating a career change. An engineer would focus on minimizing risk and loss: calculate the salary hit, estimate years to catch up to current income, weigh pension implications.

A designer would ask: What skills bring me alive? What problems do I want to solve? What does "security" really mean to me at this stage? The solution might not be a traditional career change at all, but rather a creative hybrid that combines existing expertise with new pursuits.

II. Expanding the solution space

Treating life like a design problem rather than an engineering problem expands our solution space beyond conventional boundaries because fewer solutions are “off-limits”.

Let's go back to the problem above: 39, female, and haven't found a partner but want biological kids.

The engineering problem setup is what leads to applications of formulas and rules to these life problems. The infamous “37% rule” suggests you should reject the first 37% of potential partners you meet, then choose the next one who's better than all those you've seen before. It's elegant mathematics that reduces the complexity of human connection to an optimization problem.

A designer's approach to building a family might include the engineer's solution of finding a partner within a set timeframe.

But it might also include alternatives that might initially seem unconventional: having children independently, adopting, co-parenting with a friend, or building family through community.

These options often get dismissed not because they're flawed, but because they don't match our predetermined vision of how life “should” look.

III. Finding beauty in the unexpected

Treating life like a design problem rather than an engineering problem opens up the possibility of choosing happiness in the unexpected.

When we approach life as an engineering problem, we often feel confined to a single correct path. Success becomes binary: either we achieve our predetermined goals, or we've failed.

I think this is where the feeling of “falling behind” comes from. We treat life like a race with predetermined checkpoints, ourselves as runners whose diet, sleep, and dreams need to be optimized for victory. When life's an engineering problem, watching people post about big promotions, engagement photos, keys to their beautiful new house on Instagram feels like watching runners effortlessly glide past while you’re panting and struggling to catch your breath on the track.

But what if life is more like creating art than running a race? Artists don't “fall behind” by taking time to develop their unique style or by exploring unconventional techniques. In fact, some of the most meaningful works emerge precisely because the artist dared to break convention.

In this mindset, you give yourself permission to find beauty in the unexpected. The career pivot that leads to unexpected joy, the unconventional relationship that brings deep fulfillment, the life that looks nothing like we planned but feels inexplicably right—these become not compromises, but discoveries.

In the end, maybe that's exactly what a well-designed life looks like: not frantically ticking off boxes others have drawn for us, but thoughtfully creating our own checkboxes—and being open to the possibility that some of our most meaningful moments might happen in the margins of the page entirely.

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Keep drawing your own boxes,

Ines