About the Author
After a decade of teaching “Designing Your Life,” which Dave Evans co-created and taught with Bill Burnett at Stanford University, Evans and Burnett co-authored Designing Your Life. It was a #1 New York Times bestseller, sold over a million copies, was translated into twenty-four languages, and became a global phenomenon. A book for all ages, Evans and Burnett prove it is never too late to design a life you love.
How To Live a Meaningful Life, Evans and Burnett’s newest book, is a groundbreaking guide to transforming your daily routine into one brimming with joy, purpose, and meaning. Their design thinking principles have inspired millions of readers to craft lives and careers they love. Now, they take on the most challenging design problem: how to live a life full of meaning and purpose. With an evolved version of their revolutionary framework and the latest research, Burnett and Evans show readers how to bring wonder, flow, and community into everyday experiences.
From saving the seals, solving the energy crisis, imagining the first computer mice, and redefining software—Evans has been on a mission while helping others find theirs. Evans worked at Apple where he led product marketing for the mouse team and introduced laser printing. After leaving Apple, Evans co-founded the software giant Electronic Arts. An in-demand speaker around the country, he brings the same energy and passion to the stage, giving audiences the tools to turn ordinary days into extraordinary lives.
Evans has also launched a successful management consulting practice to help organizations build creative environments where people can do great work they enjoy. He has worked with start-up teams, corporate executives, non-profit leaders, and countless young adults. They were all asking the question, “What should I do with my life?” Guiding people on that question took Evans to Stanford where it continues to be his life’s work.
Evans holds a BS and MS in Mechanical Engineering from Stanford and a graduate diploma in Contemplative Spirituality from San Francisco Theological Seminary.
Raves and Reviews
Praise for How to Live a Meaningful Life
Burnett and Evans have taken the messy, existential question of meaning and made it practical, human, and profoundly hopeful.”
—Daniel H. Pink, #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Power of Regret and Drive
This book isn’t self-help—it’s self-discovery. It will help you stop chasing meaning and start making meaning, one choice, one experiment, and one particularity at a time.”
—Guy Kawasaki, host of the Remarkable People podcast and chief evangelist of Canva
Burnett and Evans make the quest for meaning fun, actionable and approachable. An uplifting guide for seekers, How to Live a Meaningful Life draws on foundational concepts in the field of psychology, bringing you into greater alignment with your true nature and purpose. Clear and step-wise, the reader is invited to take stock and perhaps make a course correction when it comes to our most valuable resource, the direction of our lives. In a time of renewal and redirection, setting your own inner compass has never been more essential.”
—Lisa Miller, Ph.D., Columbia University Professor and Author, The Awakened Brain; The New Science of Spirituality and Our Quest for an Inspired Life
This book wrestles with an important question: is the quest for meaning a design problem people can actually work on? It’s an invitation to everyone to use a design mindset to build more connection and more meaning in our everyday lives.”
—Professor David Kelley, Stanford
Praise for Designing Your Life
Life has questions. They have answers…Learn how to find a fulfilling career…learn how to better navigate life’s big moment decisions and kill your ‘wicked problems dead.”
—The New York Times
The prototype for a happy life…Burnett and Evans show how to apply Stanford’s famous design principles to finding your place in the world, as a recent graduate or mid-career.”
—NPR’s Brian Lehrer
Designing Your Life walks readers through the process of building a satisfying, meaningful life by approaching the challenge the way a designer would. Experimentation. Wayfinding. Prototyping. Constant iteration. You should read the book. Everyone else will.”
—Daniel Pink, #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Power of Regret and Drive
This [is] the career book of the next decade and . . . the go-to book that is read as a rite of passage whenever someone is ready to create a life they love.”
—Professor David Kelley, Stanford
An empowering book based on their popular class of the same name at Stanford University . . . Perhaps the book’s most important lesson is that the only failure is settling for a life that makes one unhappy. With useful fact-finding exercises, an empathetic tone, and sensible advice, this book will easily earn a place among career-finding classics.”
—Publishers Weekly
