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Good morning. This is Laura. Welcome to the Before Breakfast podcast. Today's tip comes from Bill Burnett and Dave Evans' book, Designing Your Life,

which is about using design principles to craft the life you want.

They suggest using the design technique of prototyping to get insight into whether you want to pursue a particular life option.

If you're pondering a big move in 2020, professionally or personally, your best bet might be to start

small.

Here's what I mean.

According to Burnett and Evans, designers don't think their way forward.

Designers build their way forward.

They create a prototype, which is a simplified model,

to see how well a given idea will work in practice.

Just like you'd pilot a new feedback system with one team

before trying it on the whole organization,

prototyping a big move you're considering

can help you see what the

option would be like before you commit to it. Here's why prototypes work. Prototypes help you

visualize alternatives in a very experiential way, Burnett and Evans write. That allows you to imagine

your future as if you are living it.

A prototype is not a thought experiment.

It needs a component of the real thing, just not the full-fledged, real thing.

This allows you to evaluate what works and what doesn't, in a relatively low-stakes way.

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