How to Design Your Life in 1 Hour

Hey, it's friend Mal, and welcome to the Mal Robbins podcast. [MUSIC] How cool would it be if you could just teleport into one of the most popular and interesting college courses that's ever been taught? You know, be a student again, no matter your age, and learn from two of the top professors on the planet. You know, one course that I've always dreamed about taking more than any other courses at Stanford, and it's called "Designing Your Life." In fact, when I started this podcast here in Boston, which is the World Home for Higher Education, that was my vision. To have world-renowned professors and experts come here to Boston and give you and me the exact same lessons, takeaways, and wisdom that are being taught in the most incredible courses and research being done at the top universities on the planet. Well, today, I am so excited that the two Stanford professors who created the "Design Your Life" course 20 years ago are here in our Boston studios to teach you their greatest life lessons. Now, they're going to tell you that the real challenge isn't "Designing A Life." It's "Designing Your Life," so it has more meaning and purpose. And today, you're going to get the same proven frameworks that these professors have used for two decades to help people take charge of their lives. They're going to walk you through a powerful exercise that's going to give you clarity, especially when you feel stuck, uncertain, or overwhelmed. You will leave this conversation with a crystal clear idea of what will bring you more meaning right now. And trust me when I tell you what's going to come up for you when we do this exercise is going to be a total wild card. It's not too late. You can find work that makes you happy. You can experience more meaning and fulfillment in your life and using the process you're about to learn, it will be easier than you think. So grab your seat because class is in session. It's time to design your life. Hey, it's your friend Mel and welcome to the Mel Robbins podcast. I'm thrilled to be here. And I'm excited that you're here too. It's such an honor to be together to spend this time with you, but I'm super excited about what's about to happen. And if you're a new listener or you're here because somebody shared this with you, I just want to take a moment and personally welcome you to the Mel Robbins podcast family. I cannot wait for you to meet two professors from Stanford University who are here in our Boston studios to walk you through how you can design the life you want. The lessons that they've learned from teaching one of the most popular courses in the world for more than two decades are going to change everything. Dave Evans and Bill Burnett are the founders of the Life Design Lab at Stanford University. They're also the creators of the designing your life course at Stanford, which has been taught for almost 20 years and is now being taught at over 600 universities. But long before they were teaching life design for decades, Bill and Dave, they were designing products and leading teams at startups and Fortune 100 companies across Silicon Valley. Bill Burnett earned his bachelor's and master's degrees in product design at Stanford. He worked at Apple in the early days designing their laptops. He also worked on the team that designed the original Star Wars action figures. Today he's a professor in mechanical engineering and design at Stanford. Dave Evans also earned his bachelor's and master's degrees in mechanical engineering at Stanford. He also went on to work for Apple. And while Bill was designing laptops, Dave was leading the team that created their very first computer mouse. Dave was also the co-founder of the video game company Electronic Arts, which is one of the most successful gaming companies in the world. If Madden, FIFA or Sims Ringabell, well, you're about to meet the co-founder who made it happen. Together, Bill and Dave have authored multiple bestsellers, including the number one New York Times bestseller designing your life and their latest blockbuster, How to Live, A Meaningful Life. So without further ado, please help me welcome Professor Bill Burnett and Professor Dave Evans to the Mel Robbins podcast. Thanks for having us. We're thrilled to be here. Yeah, this is fantastic. You too have been at the top of my list since I started this. I have been waiting for this moment. I hope you don't disappoint me. You're going to call sooner. We're going to come sooner. Oh my gosh. Okay. Here's where I want to start. How will my life be different? If I take to heart everything that you're about to share with us today. And I apply it to my life. You're going to get freer. You're going to feel more agency in your life. You're going to realize you actually know how to find your way. And as you go along it, you can make meaning every day. Everybody's so busy and there's so much going on. You're going to learn that it's not about cramming more stuff. It's about getting more out of what you've already got and what you can, you know, what you can design for. And I think that helps people just relax. You know, and understand that they probably have enough. Bill, what do you think it is about the popularity of both of your books and the course? What does all of this interest say to you about what we're searching for? The ticket amongst the students and up to our Stanford and up to all over all over the place. We've got over 600 schools not teaching the classroom. With the students, it's really it's really clear and it's gotten kind of worse lately in the last five or six or seven years. Social meeting and other things. Well, I have a good life. Well, I find a good job in it. I'm not meaning in purpose, but people tell me jobs aren't purposeful. The Gallup Colesas 70% of Americans are disengaged from their jobs. Is that the world I'm going into? It's going to be that bad. And so there for the students, it's that kind of anxiety about how do I get started? And I had been on office hours for students for years and years and years before Dave and I had said put this together. And it seemed clear to me that designing the new thing in the world, because I've been teaching designers to design iPhones and iPads and websites and things for years. Just thinking the new thing in the world was just like designing the you what am I going to be in my future. So everybody had that problem and then we started working with folks in the mid careers 35 45. And they're having the same question. She isn't as much as what's in as cool as I thought it would be or kind of done with this job or needs to pivot now what? Now what and I haven't thought about that a long time and I don't have any framework for thinking about it and I've been doing work with folks who are retiring, you know, in their 50s 60s or folks that are, you know, something empty nesters and they're like, well, gee, I organized my whole life. My wife and I had a team nesters organized my whole life around my kids. And now it's just me and my wife like to even know each other. We have to know each other. We have to know if we like each other anymore. What are we going to do? So this question just keeps coming up and it's about well, my life or my future be meaningful. Can I find something to do that is got some purpose in it and a lot of the structures of that used to be well, you had a community everybody grew up in the same town and so you knew where you fit in or maybe you had a faith community or church or something. And a lot of those communities have gone away. This is huge loneliness. People really feel isolated and lonely and things are changing so fast, right? But they don't know they don't know where to turn for even a way to get started. You say in your number one New York Times best selling book, design your life that the true way to design a life is to design your lives. What does that mean? We say all the time all of us contain more aliveness, more personhood than one lifetime permitted live out. There's more than one of you in there. Which is why by the way, me as well as idea about self actualization through fulfillment is dead wrong because he literally says on the 1943 paper, you achieved that by becoming all that one can be. No, you can't possibly be all that you can be because you're way bigger than your own lifetime. Look, I've buried plenty of people. None of them were done. That's the good news. Oh, whoa. I want to make sure that you did missing. We've buried a lot of good people and none of them were done. Yeah. I mean, I'm going to say so many lives. I had dead people closely and they all left with a long to do list. You're far bigger than your lifetime. So the chance of you being bored or running out of things is zero if you're paying attention. So the best way to design your life is to recognize there is no getting you right. There is no right life. There are lots of good lives. Let's go lean into them. By the way, you don't know the future. You might have a good idea and implement it poorly. You might have an idea you thought was good and did not go out very well. Whoops. Oh, I blew it. No, I learned my way forward. And I'm going to keep going. There's no getting it right. They're just getting it going. I imagine this. We have a this linear accelerator Stanford. It's not the big and size of big as it used to be because we had bigger ones now, but this one's pretty good. Still runs. And I can put you can put you in the tube and fire you to the end of the accelerators two miles long. And by the time you get to the end, you're going 99.99% of speed of light at which point you will experience the multiple. diverse and you can have as many lives as you want. Simultaneously, you could be the astronaut and the ballerina and the stay-at-home mom and whatever you want. And you'll know about all the universes at the same time. And then we asked the count of three, and we said, "Tell me how many lives you want." I go one, two, three, and people go everywhere from one to really bored, burned out guy to infinity. But on average, seven. Seven are ready to do it. Seven are ready. And I go, "Well, that just proves our theory. There's more than one life in you. If you could have all those lives, wouldn't it be cool?" And if you have seven lives worth of interest in you and you get one life, you're going to be 14% of your personhood. Right now. By the time you die. Wait, hold on a second. Hold on. Because I imagine a world where your one lifetime could have seven different lives in it. Sure. Which means where you are right now in this particular chapter is just 14% of what you will experience. That's also true. That's true. Which means you have the opportunity, if you change your mindset, to really design the next 14% section, whether it's from age 71 to 74 day, if you're at an ahold you are bill. But I. A little younger. You want hold that against you. We won't hold that against you. But if you really think about it that way, that means you could create whatever you wanted that was meaningful to you. Well, and particularly now I tell my students, don't you hope 5, 10 years from now you're doing a job that hasn't been even been invented yet? I mean, you really want to constrain yourself too. I'm just going to be your scientist. I'm just going to be this economist. Because first of all, jobs are going to change. We're in the age of AI. Everything's going to be different. And you can look at that and be terrified or you can look at that and go, wow, there's going to be so many new things that show off. All I have to do is pay attention. As these jobs disappear and reappear, like when I got out of the Stanford long years ago when you know, dinosaurs still rumbed white plaza, you had to learn drafting to be a designer, drafting on a drafting table with a pencil. What have you done that in 40 years? And now I can just do something on my phone and print it on a 3D printer. It's amazing. And so if you stay in the growth mindset, if you stay curious, the next 10 or 15 years are going to be amazing for jobs, for careers, for possibilities, vitro boat in the water now. Learn some AI, get some, get, get figure out how to, I think, sexually be a Renaissance in creativity because it'll be possible for everyone to do a video, to do a drawing, to do anything, to write a song. This generation feels a little bit despondent. There's a lot in the food online in the news. And I think this will be the first generation that doesn't have more than their parents. This will be the first generation that can't afford a home. This is the first generation, the kids aren't getting married because they just don't see up, you know, they don't see a future. And I think that design mindset, it's an early optimistic mindset. It's like, yeah, I can't make the queer opting this design, but I can make a better one. I can make a better one than I'm on the other side. Could you speak to somebody in their 20s? Who is feeling that sense of discouragement, which frankly is justified? Yeah. Given some of the factual research about the cost of living and changes that are happening and the headlines, like, first of all, if you're 20. Yes. Be encouraged by the following fact. Your neocortex, which is the part of your brain that allows you to have an executive function and actually allows you to have full empathy for other people, isn't formed until 27 or 28, a little later in men big surprise there. So if you're 2021, 22, you're not even here yet. We remind our graduating seniors, you're not broken, you're 22. Your 22 year old job is not to figure it out because the you that's you're ever maybe even going to have a shot at figuring out is six or eight years away from you. So your 20 year old self's job is to give your 28 year old self some interesting options. Now, no, it means sit on the couch at Mama dad's house and wait for something to land in your lab. Get out there, start living, do things, learn your way forward, all that stuff. We talk about it in all our books. But if you're 20 something, it's going to get more interesting. So don't give up yet. Now, externally, the macro situation we're all living in, I mean, the macro situation I was living in in 1976 when I graduated college. It's pretty radically different from what's going on right now 50 years later. People are feeling powerless for a good reason because people with power hanging onto it and exercising it pretty egregiously right now, personal point of view. That being said, okay, there are systems that are bigger than you. The question then says, do you want to spend your time working on those systems? Bill's got a son named Ben who's currently working in Congress. He's going to go directly after the problem. I'm not going directly after the problem. I'm writing books about meaning making for everybody else in the meantime. I hope that leaves the campground a little bit of an erfounder. So find what you can do within the constraints of reality. Maybe it's different than your parents generation. Who cares? That was then this is now what world are you in? What is available to you? How can we make the most of what is not complete about what isn't? But I get that it's hard. It is hard. It's hard. And lots and lots of our students, people say all the Gen Z's don't want to work hard and they want to be pampered. It's like, not the ones we know. The ones I know, they'll do a startup that will work 100 hours a week if they believe in something. So I'm very optimistic about the generation coming up and the generation that's already out there and say, well, what can I do? You know, a lot of people feel like they don't even know what they want. But there's this other exercise that you are world famous for called the Odyssey Plan. Can you just walk the listener through a little bit? Because it can help you see other lives in yourself and how to live a meaningful life to lean into. So we know you have to have more ideas to get your best ideas. And if you get stuck on the one idea, you're going to get stuck on the corner. So if we're going to plan the future possibilities, we've got to hear from more than one of you. Three is kind of a magic number because it really gives you some freedom. And one of them is probably the life you're already in. The other one is if you can't do that, what else would you do? And the third one, the wild card, if money were no object, you know, and nobody would laugh at you, what would you do? That's the wild card. Well, maybe it would open the beanie baby store or I'd start the button shop. Whatever the crazy thing is, the reason we ask people to have a crazy idea is not because the crazy idea is a good idea. It's because we need to train you to quiet the internal critic. So as soon as you say, well, you know, the 54-year-old woman says, I mean, I'm thinking about going back to medical school. I always wanted to do that. I don't think it's too late. My friends have all crazy. What do you think? So her internal critic is being encouraged by all of her friends internal critic going, well, that's crazy. You can't do that. And that's the part of evolution that keeps you from being eaten by the saber tooth tiger. You know, so there's a negative bias built into your brain evolutionarily, lest you be eaten. So you have to learn how to overcome that critic. So the Odyssey plan helps you imagine there's more than one way you can live. And it helps train you to quiet your internal critic so you get the rest of your ideas back. So I want to make sure that you really got that. So the way that you help yourself imagine different possibilities in your life is through the Odyssey planning. You ask yourself three questions. What happens in my life if I change absolutely nothing? Where am I for five years from now? And the swimming goes well. Yeah. Oh, well, I thank you for that. Like, let's just assume it goes well. Let's just assume it goes. What happens in five years? What is my life for? Who am I? Who am I? Okay. All of this disappears. Yep. Can't do that. Can't do that. But I got to pay my bills. You plan B. Yeah. You got to have a plan B. Five years. What am I doing? What am I doing? And the third is money's no object. Yep. Whatever you want. Whatever you want. Nobody's going to laugh. Yep. It's going to work out. Yeah. What are you going to do? If you do those three things. And we've done this with, I mean, tens of tens of thousands of people, including people like I'm not doing this. You know, and we give them 12 minutes. 12 minutes. 12 minutes. Sometimes 15. Yeah. And absolutely, I mean, 99.7% of the people do it just fine. I'm sitting standing behind this 57 year old chiropractor. Yeah, we were going to add it. We had 600 people in the room. This one guy's sitting back from the room. They're just looking at the paper going, "Mmm." "Mmm." So I come up and say, "Mmm." So how's it going? Fine. I go, "You're just going to sit this one out." And he goes, "No, no, I'm doing it." I go, "Well, you're not doing much." You've got to pick up the pen. Yeah. I'm a little stuck. I go, "Well, what do you do?" I'm a chiropractor. Okay, great. You like it? I like it a lot. How long have you been doing that? 27 years. Okay. You want to die doing that? Is it what? Is it, "By the time you die, do you want to still be doing this?" It kind of goes, "Well, I don't think so." I said, "Oh, then at some point you're going to do something else." He goes, "Well, I guess so. I go." And what might that be? He goes, "Oh." I guess I am going to do something else, aren't I? I said, "Yes, you are." Right that down. He goes, "Oh, okay." I mean, he had it in him. He just had to get over himself. I love this. And I'm going to encourage you as you're listening unless you're driving a car. Do this right now. Think about it. If you, if nothing changes, it goes well. What does life look like five years? If everything disappears and you got to go to Plan B, what does life look like in five years? And what are you doing? What's the something else? And what is the crazy wild thing that you're going to do? You don't need money and nobody's gonna laugh at you. What is that thing? - Classes and lectures is a series of these little workshop things and design exercises. So then people get in threes and they read each other, I read my Odyssey plan to the other two people and we teach them to listen very generously. And in tens and tens of thousands of these, the last question I asked when I'm debriefing a class, I say, you know, those wild card plans that you heard from everybody in the class of the listeners, how many of you think that person could actually do the wild card? - It's not nearly as crazy as the 100%. - 100%. - It's not as crazy as you think. And again, we're not trying to get people to put their jobs and you know, and-- - Do endocercus. - Do endocercus. It's just that it's proof there's more life in you than you think. There's more possibilities than you think when you're thinking threes, not binaries or ones. - You know, you light up like the sicko sign in Boston when you talk about this. What is your wild card? The last time you did this. - The artist. - The art like a painter? - I am a painter. I had been a painter. So I went off to Stanford. Well, even back when I did it was kind of expensive and I wanted us to be an art major. Like dad was a pretty practical guy and he said, look, if you want to be an art major, you can come back and go to UMass. I'm not paying for Stanford. But I found this design thing and that was pretty cool 'cause the art design major was a combination of art, engineering and psychology. But I did make a promise to that 18 year old kid that somebody I'd been an artist. So I have a studio, a painting is my thing. And when I'm in the studio painting that is, I don't know if I'm any good, I don't care. Robert Henry is a famous painting school in New York in the 1920s. His phrase was, the goal is to make art. The goal is to be in that marvelous state of mind that makes art inevitable. - Do you know that's the mission of how we do work here? That quote. - I can tell. (laughing) So that's on the door of my studio and to be in that marvelous state of mind, yeah, it's a very special place. And so I promise myself that that will be my, that is my wife currently, that is coming up. - Dave, what's yours? - Well, there are a bunch of them. - One probably came very close to becoming an actor. But there's a particular version of performance art that I've long thought would be really fun to try, which is to be a waiter in an extremely elite restaurant. - Really? - Yeah. - Which I think is absolutely performance art. - First time I've ever heard this. So tell me Mark. - I had to read the room. I mean, so, you know, that people are coming in. Their expectations are incredibly high and this couple's having an argument and that, you know, family is celebrating the kids' graduation. And can you read the room? Can you maximize this incredible experience? 'Cause you go to a fine dining experience for a particular kind of celebration or a particular kind of, you know, outing. And the right weight service catalyzes it beautifully. The wrong weight service wrecks it. And can I deliver the improv performance that has nine different stages at the same time called tables, playing nine different parts, having every one of those people have an amazing experience in real time. Can I pull that off? I mean, running a really, really amazing restaurant is a really, really, really, really hard thing. It's really hard. - That's definitely not on my fantasy. My fantasy. - That don't want to be in the kitchen. It's too scary. - And for sure is I want to write a fantasy trilogy. - Oh, okay. - Yes, all about angels that are among us in the theme of our "You Born." - I'm a very imaginary world. - We're a very imaginary world. - We're a very cruel world. - We're very cruel and bad. - And I have this whole, I've been thinking about it for 10 years. And I'm going to. - Yeah, yeah. - I'm going to, like, but it's always in there. - Okay, really. - And I love that you share that. And for you listening or watching, I want you to share your wild card. Either with us or put it in the review or the comment of the show, or when you share this episode with somebody that you care about, be a little cryptic and say, my wild card is this and you'll know exactly what I mean when you listen to this and then I want you to tell me yours. - You know, Mel, Bill and I have, we talk about the stuff we've been doing for a long time. We often say, at the end of the day, what we're really doing, we're just giving people a permission to live their lives. It's really just giving, yes, you can. You do know how to do this. You have it in you. You may not have it in you to be an Olympian, but you have it in you to be something. - And because right after the Odyssey plans comes prototyping, what on your plan you want to learn about? And then they prototype. - Ooh, that's the next step. - They come back. - That's the next step. - Yeah. - Like the next class, and they go, "Did you know you can actually make a living in the circus?" I had one student who was a gymnast, she's a Stanford, and she wanted to go to medical school. Parents wanted to go to medical school. She cut a deal. Can I do something before I go to medical school? She's now been in Cirque de Soleil in China, and she is a circus clown, which was on her Odyssey plan. - She's having a great time. But people have a hard time even imagining something so wild it's not possible. And when they talk about plan one, it's kinda like, "Yeah, well, "so I'm just gonna keep being an accountant "and I'm gonna do this thing." And, you know, I'm pretty good at it and that and that. But when they talk about their, "Wow, they're like, you know, "I really love diving and underwater photography." And I'm wondering if I could be a diving instructor who does photography, and if you're national and geographic, and they say, "Well, it happens to know a guy "who started a company building underwater cameras "which you like to have a prototype interview." And they're like, "Really?" They go, "Yeah." - When you know that you don't know what you're doing. Right, it's gonna work. The competence, you have to be competent at your incompetence. You have to be good at knowing when you don't know what you're doing called their future, I haven't figured out yet. - Yes. - So you make a move, you make a move, learn something, but go back where you go. Keep making moves until you finally iterate your way forward through prototyping. That's what we teach. Life is a series of incremental prototypes. You find your way by living into your life. You build your way forward, we keep saying. There is no knowing. There is only doing, learning and growing. - Bill and Dave, I am so happy that you're here. I hate to say this, I gotta hit the pause button real quick. I know you're loving Bill and Dave too, but let's give our sponsors a chance to share a few words and I wanna give you a chance to share this episode with somebody who needs to hear it. Because we all deserve the permission and we also need the frameworks to design the life we truly wanna be living. Don't go anywhere because there's so much more to dig into and we've got a really cool exercise that we're gonna do when we return. So stay with us. (upbeat music) (upbeat music) - Welcome back, it's your friend Mel Robbins and today Stanford University professors. Bill Burnett and Dave Evans are here for our first ever double guest episode. We're talking about how to create a meaningful life and I am loving it, I know you are too. So let's jump back in. So I know I'm gonna get a ton of questions about this. Can you guys give a couple examples of what actually a prototype looks like? Clowning, clowning's actually a thing. And is it the Shriners? There's some outfit where they train the members and they do clowning in hospitals to visit kids. Oh, so you can probably call the local hospitals and does anybody do clowning with the children? Oh great, do they have a training for that? So you could go, you know, "Press me, there's somebody who will train you to be a clown, be a little bit of clowning that you could go into the children's ward and try cheering some, maybe just ride along with them, watch them, you know, I mean, there are ways to get at the thing that you think you're thinking about. So you're a 20 something, you see your friends living in Montana, should I live in New York, should I go to Montana, should I go into eye banking, should I be a ski bomb, like I don't know what to do with my, you're 28, what's an example of a prototype? Here's another one, a stay at home mom, the kids are gone, now it's my turn. What am I doing? Am I going back to nursing school? Am I finishing my degree? Are writing that novel, I'm thinking about really. Am I writing that novel that I'm thinking about? Like what does that mean in terms of just a couple specific things that you've seen people do to give the person listening an idea? - Yeah, so I'm sitting with the 57 year old, suddenly empty nested mom, who left a couple of things behind doesn't what to do. Great, so let's quickly come up with your list of things that might be at all interesting. - Okay. - Oh, yeah, I'm thinking about being a ski bomb, I'm thinking about going back to medical school, actually talk to a 54 year old about that, and I'm thinking about being a novelist, okay fine. Now, maybe I should, oh, I'm going to go back and get a master's degree in creative writing and spend three years and $30,000, and then write one blog and I didn't like it that much. Terrible idea, that's jumping way off the cliff. So the prototype I do would say, talk to people, try stuff. So go out and have a bunch of narrative conversations, now with, oh, you're a novelist, and how much do you make, and what, did you, school did you go to? Those are transactional conversations, not narrative conversations. It's like, what's it like to be you? And what do you enjoy, and what do you not enjoy? And tell me all about that. And I have these narrative conversations with people in the world I'm thinking about being in, which is what Dan Gilbert at Harvard, not a bed school, would say is surrogation, not simulation. Quit reading about it, go talk to people about it, because you're a person, and when you encounter a person who tells that story that story becomes real, you'll actually learn more from persons in the world you're thinking about them reading about it. - You'll feel something. - You'll feel something you'll experience something, and then maybe someone can get you a ride along and a visit, you can do some experimentation, try stuff, long before you over commit, and then eventually after enough iterations, you'll make a better decision. - You know what's interesting, 'cause I wanna build on this. 'Cause so many people probably say to you, well, I have no idea. I have no idea what I wanna do. And I never-- - That's almost never true. - I agree with you. And if you're saying that right now, like I don't know what my life's about, I don't know what I like. I love this 14 years old. percent thing and this idea and the invitation you gave us to step into a time machine accelerator of the thingy. And the average person says, "I've imagined eight lives." Yeah. So you're in one of them. Right. You've got another seven. Yeah. What are the other seven lives you would imagine in the fantasy of your mind? Right. And those are the things to then lean into and get curious about, correct? Yeah, absolutely. It's fun to be a dive instructor. I love diving, but I always want to be a photographer. I want to have a podcast. Okay. I did jump into a podcast, try writing a 2,000 word essay every day for five days. See how that feels. Oh, that was really hard. It was really lonely. Dave hates writing because it's lonely. I'm the introvert. He's the extrovert. I love sitting in a room talking to myself all day long. It's wonderful. And he can't stand it. So like, tries, the trying stopped and the talking to be, if you talk to writers, they'll say writing is very lonely. If you can't handle that, you're probably not going to be a good thing for you. And you wouldn't know that unless you talk to somebody who does it. So it's almost like time travel. You can have a little experience of talking to somebody who's the person you think you might want to be. There are already 10 years down the road doing it. And that experience that, but yeah, the conversation is so much more powerful than, oh, I'm going to look up on the Google. How many, how many writing hacks are there? When, when did the five most famous writers write, you know, they wrote in the morning, they wrote in the afternoon, there's no patterns in it. So you can put it to anything. And the lack of the lack of curiosity isn't really true. I have no ideas. You have really have no ideas. Okay. What did you, what's the last show you watched that you said if I was interesting? Pick something simple. I'm not talking about the thing you'll do for the rest of your life. We're talking about what you want to do next week. So as all of this opens up for somebody and they have this sense of what might create more meaning, right? And I want to get curious. I want to prototype the fear failure and the fear of what other people are going to think probably comes in like a sledgehammer. What do you say to people in your classes when they get this moment of clarity? And then it's like, start really small. I mean, get, catch yourself some slack for God's sake. We talk about failure immunity because the purpose of a prototype is to learn something not to succeed. We don't prototype to make sure, oh, will it work? No, just what do I need to know more about? I'm going to go right along and be an auditor of the children's clowns at the hospital. And I might say the wrong thing. I mean, did I blow it? No, no, no, I'm just trying to learn what it's like here. So first of all, have your prototypes not bet the farm? Maybe what I'll do is I'll go to Shea Penies and Berkeley, one of the most expensive restaurants and all of California. Because I know a friend who's really close friends with Alice Waters and she could probably get me in as the waiter. So my first night as a waiter is in front of Alice Waters and Shea Penies. That is not a prototype. That's a performance. So cut your susomely. Like Lisa. And I'm like, let it fail. I probably wouldn't even want to serve the bread there. Yeah. I mean, so make it easy. Make it small. Where almost nothing is at stake. Of which there are plenty of opportunities. Give yourself a break. Make it interesting. Make it fun. Cut it down small. Don't shoot too high. We're really big on set the bar low. You know, set the bar low and clear it. This is the whole psychology behavior change. You're not going to change if you make something so big. This is the new year and people have made their resolutions. I'm going to run a marathon this year. Like, well, probably unless you break that into very, very small steps, it's not going to happen. And so we really go for super simple things. And then that builds up your confidence, too. You could try something and you, you know, dress in prototypes, you learn some stuff, you get a little more confident. Eventually, you know, when you flip into these designers mindset, you realize, oh, I can prototype. Do you think there's really no failure here? You know, failure is just a rule I made up in my head. And once I get rid of that rule, I'm much more free. But yeah, fear drives a lot of people to not try. Yeah. Isn't too late. I think there's a big fear that it's too late. I've blown it too much like I. I'm very, very, very late. I mean, the, I'm coming out of a talk at 54-year-old woman has asked me about, you know, am I crazy to go to medical school? And I said, look, let's run the numbers really quickly. Okay. Based on the DNA of the gene pool you were born into, what's the likelihood of when you're going to die? She kind of goes, I'm probably going to make it to my late 80s, early 90s. It's a good, great. Let's say I make it healthy to 85, 88. How long do you want to work? Well, probably 80. I said, okay. Great. So we got 26 years ago. And, you know, so you applied to it. Probably going to spend a year going to, you know, a medical school application preparatory program, you know, called a post-back program. Spend a year on that. Spend a year trying to get in. That's two, four years to get through medical school. Now you're in residency, by the way, 90% of medicine is done by residents. So you're already a doctor. You're now practicing medicines six years into the program. Eventually, let's, you finish your specialty. You know, we're now eight years into the program that puts you at 64. You got 11, you got 11 to 12 years to go before even backing off, maybe 15. Cut out the crap of all this conventional thinking and just ask yourself the question, what's happening? What might it be? I mean, I'm about to get married for the third time because, you know, my wife died on me, in which it was not the plan. And a lot of my friends say me, it's too hard. It's too much work. I don't, Tony, you really want to go through that again? Sure. This is terrific. It's a tunnel work. It's an absolute mountain work, you know, but I mean, what else am I doing? Dave, thank you so much for saying that. There are so many more things I have to ask you. I've been waiting for this moment since I started this podcast. I need to give our sponsors a chance to share a few words. So it's just to hit the pause button for a moment. And they've given you so much to think about. And I know as you've been imagining, imagining all these possibilities, all these lives that you could be living, somebody's popping in your mind. There's somebody in your life who's stuck, somebody who needs this framework, text them this episode, share this episode because this episode is proof that creating a happy, meaningful life doesn't have to be a guessing game or a pipe dream. You don't have to do this alone. There are proven tools and strategies and frameworks that can help you and the people you care about do it. So share this and don't go anywhere because we'll be right back. Stay with me. Welcome back at your friend Mel Robbins. And today you and I are spending time with professors Bill Burnett and Dave Evans, the brilliant minds behind Stanford universities, incredible course called designing your life. And today they're here to teach you and I how to create more meaning in our lives. Here's another thing I was wondering about. When you go to a funeral, it's very interesting. Oh, yeah. The second you walk out of the funeral, you feel more alive and you have more urgency to do what you came here to do, Dave and Bill. You said we want to give people permission to live their lives. And especially right now when the world feels so overwhelming and people are exhausted and there are very big problems, is easy to go. It doesn't matter. And when you start to do the math, whether you're telling me that you have seven different lives you could do, you're going to die with shit on your to-do list and things you never achieved. You're 50. So what? You're 70 and you've got 20 more years left. What are you doing? Yeah. My next milestone is death. I haven't gotten to come to waste. But Dave and I've been in wonderful communities. I've been in this group. A men's group for 32 years because I started when my son got born and I needed to figure out how to raise his son. And we end up, we've been around long enough that we've had some guys die and we've gone to that our funeral and said wonderful things about them. And then we decided, why do we lay till we die before we say wonderful things about each other. And we had a protocol in our men's group where you can say, I'm going to die next week. I thought everybody to write a eulogy. And then you come in and then lay there quietly and you listen to people say the most wonderful things about you, right? Because eulogies are not about, oh well, Dave had a big to-do list across a lot of things. His power points were very well done and he always got his budget to know. Somebody says that. They say what is a good man? He was a wonderful husband. He was a great father. So do that, have your friends write your eulogy and find out what you really mean to people. It's amazing. You could also do that exercise thinking about what you hope or wish is being said about how you lived your life. Because what you don't want it to be is, well, he got to be 70 and had the love of his life and just turned down the opportunity to get married again and do it. And she wanted to go to medical school but talk to yourself out of it for 30 years. No, I'm going to smuggle the guys for 51 years, formed in 1974, called TD3, Tom and three days. I'm the founding day. And we just went to this exercise of moving into our 70s and so we said, okay, let's all, first of all, announce what age we think we're going to die at. And then write the eulogy. You hope will be true by then and make sure that the eulogy includes things that aren't true yet. So you can live aspirationally in the back. And we really do believe the human being is becoming and that becoming should be a nonstop program. Don't quit early. Now you might have constraints physically, circumcancellular wise, but there's always more you can become into. So which questions do you want to live into? And by the way, preferably, it does really help to have some people around that you're asking these questions with. Yeah. So how old did you say you were going to be when you died? And what was the thing that you haven't done yet that was on my line 85. I'm guessing I'll make it to 85 I'd like you to live a little longer Well, I'm thinking I may work for an extension to the contract and then I said I said at the time I said 85 and the way I put what I'm aspiring to was when I get to heaven I want to be recognized as somebody who's already been there Meaning of already stepped into profound acceptance and universal love and welcome to all persons at all times I want to look like I'm already doing that by the time I get there I think there's a huge power and you know this based on the way the brain works in really Embracing the truth of everything that you just said in terms of giving yourself permission to not just live A meaningful life now and find moments of meaning but to really Think about What you want to accomplish By the end, and I'm thinking about this time. Yeah, who do you want to be kind thinking about my mother-in-law who's 89 I think she's 89 she 88. I don't know, but she's she texted in the family wide group chat I'm gonna be here another 10 years Okay, because I want to see all the grandkids get married if they choose to get married right and I was like wow. She's in the game. She's in the game. Yeah, she knows what she's doing. Yeah And I think that's there's an invitation to all of us and so I love that construct of what age do you think you're dying and what are all the things that you want to accomplish that you haven't done yet And what do you hope? Yeah, the specific tool in the book for that's called the focus question We actually encourage you to come up with the focus question about focuses Your attention on what you're trying to become at this particular moment of season of your life So can you write down the question that but not like well, I have a money to retire by then those are transactional questions, but you know A year from now two years from now three years from now If you live well into the invitation to become more yourself What question do you hope to be able to answer? By the end of the next year two or three of you are thinking about so in my case it was you know How will I learn? To live out of get to not got to Because I think that's a more generous position that might allow me to hit heaven in the right point of view And so that's the focus question. I've got how do I live deeply into get to and I got to That's my focus question for now and to and preferably having some people around you that can help you with that question And by the way, I don't think anybody writing their eulogy or those questions as I wish I had more I think I want to have more money by the time I'm x Because you get to the second half of life assuming that money is Enough and how to get it's not but or whatever, but it's hard You start to realize that those kinds of transactional accomplishments while important and interesting ways of keeping score Aren't the things that are going to make you happy when you when you're dead I can't or when you're when you get to that point So I think I you know, it's really encourage The folks who are you know thinking about the stuff think think a little you know Give yourself a little bit of time turn off the phone and give yourself a little bit of time to think about You know, what what would I hope people say about me? And and how do I become the person that deserves them to say that? And have that stuff comes up in this it could be connected to your wild card It could be just connected to you know where you are in your journey. I bet stuff comes up Where you know a lot of time to and I do this because you know one of the first things I said the day when we said this up is You know, we got to do everything and put in the books otherwise very the biggest syphagre is on the planet So we do all this stuff and if once one I do the stuff I think back on and go oh wow where did that come from? You know, that's a good like that's an that's an idea Where did that come from? I mean, you know, it came from some part of me, you know, just needed a little bit of quiet To you know to find its voice. So I hope people can do that because it's really yeah if you're paying attention life is full of invitation I Think life is full of invitations to your becoming self if you're paying attention Yeah, you said turn off the phone and take the time for the person that says well, I just can't I'm overwhelmed I have no time. What do you want to say directly to them Bill? I'll bet if I looked at your phone and tell me I'm just time you spend an Instagram on it's time you spend it on Kick talk. I'm just time you spend scrolling mindlessly, you know through Reels or short videos on YouTube I do it too and every once in a while I look at that go I can't believe I spent an hour on this crap so give yourself a power a pause And you know go look at the phone. It'll tell you how much time you spend just Doom scrolling through stuff and I always ask people to make the last video watch they go I don't know Tell me the last really what I don't know Tell me the last you know text you read or the last thing you read on on X I don't know as it so if you're doing it and you can't even remember what it was Would you like to reallocate that time to something more interesting? I'm only talking about 20 minutes here. Can you give me 20 minutes that you would have spent and just Depresent with yourself and see what comes up You know standing in front of a big blind canvas and I'm going oh with the world really needs an older white guy painter Because we need more painters in the world and I'm gonna paint something and no one's gonna care So I go through all that stuff in my head and then if I quiet down for a little while and I you know Just stare at this thing. I get an idea Then I get another idea and I get another idea and pretty soon The painting is painting itself and everything is is wonderful The boy everybody's got that moment where I go like um This isn't gonna work or this is stupid or this is used is I have that all the time. Well That's the moment. Yeah. That's what it all comes down to because you can stay there Or you can lean into the other world you've taught us about pick up a brush and put something on the canvas And again set the bar along like oh, I really need to start meditating so I should do 20 minutes every morning between 6-20 I got to get up at 5-30 you know and eat some really pure yogurt first now like whoa dude liken up um We've got to think all the seven-stay savoring once a week sit down and pick a moment during the week when you felt deeply alive Go back and save her it because you didn't have time to fully experience it in real time You know you could just go back there and like linger over it I mean put put that let it sit on your tongue and really get the most out of it. Okay. It's five minutes a week And your product is I'll do that twice Okay, so two five minutes on a Sunday afternoon and then ask the question was I worth it? Did I enjoy it? I'll do a bit more. It's okay. You don't have to jump over your head If you're moving your you know bass moving toward a meaning-making practice. So you're designing your way or forward I want to read to you okay from your blockbuster bestseller how to live a meaningful life And this is page eight All of us this longing for more meaning. Yeah, maybe one of the most universal things that all humans want Lives that are generative and joyful fulfilling and connected Lives that are about more than just getting through each day paying the bills maybe taking a vacation now and then And too many people are finding too few an answer for how to get what their hearts Keep telling them they were made for The meaning and purpose that they need the quest for meaning can seem too big and too overwhelming But here's the thing There is something you can do really actually do to experience a more meaningful life two-day Right now in this exact moment So Dave yes, what is that one thing? Well the first thing is you get a reframe You know in design we do a problem finding before we do problem solving one of the reasons people fail is they're working on the wrong thing Problem finding precedes problem solving okay So the question oh how do I live a more meaningful life usually frames itself Is what is the meaning of my life? I have not yet found my purpose. What is the one true thing that really is what I'm here to do And we think those are all their own question because they all Treat you as a transaction as a problem to be solved for which there is a correct answer Okay, so instead of working on the what is the meaning of life? We're here to give you tools to design more meaning in life Okay, I want to make sure the person listening got this yeah one of the reasons why I get stuck and you get stuck and the people that you love get stuck is number one We're asking the wrong question which is how do I find the answer to life the ultimate is this really it? Have I found it no you haven't found it because you're gonna keep growing and it's gonna change So stop worrying about it and let's work on this well what I love about it is and you know look this way you guys are brilliant Okay, just gonna say is because as I've been sitting here going you know, I got to find it That that statement in and of itself says it's out there right how do I create more meaning right now? Yes So don't wait for the ultimate answer no by the way we have both in different ways have worked on the big Questions for a long time and we think the big questions really matter I'm not saying never think about that what I'm saying is don't defer life is good and worthwhile Until you find those answers what you can do is start living into the moment that you're in so the first reframe is How do I find more meaning now? And then the second thing is and where might I find it? Well, I'm glad you said there was a second question So here's the thing as somebody who's really screwed up her life for large stretches of it There are times if you had asked you would Yeah. Mel, the answer is to find more meaning where you are right now. You know what I would have said, probably, F you because I don't like where I am right now. And there is nothing meaningful about this, which is why I want something else. Do you know what I mean? What do you say to the person that's feeling that right? Like there is no way to find meaning where I am right now. That's probably because the thing that's not working, there's something about the job is not working, the marriage isn't working, there's something I'm really unhappy about. Yes. I'm not getting what I wanted from this particular aspect of my life. And so then you say, well, find more meaning. You're trying to tell me how to make a bad thing good. This is the old, well, when life gives you a lemon's make a lemonade, I'll get the problem of the lemonade idea is let's take a bad thing and make a good thing of it. No, no, no, no. So I think, okay, there's something that's not working on. I get that, but that doesn't mean there are other parts of your life where more meaning and more aliveness are lurking, latex and lee waiting for you to discover them. Don't let those go. Now, meanwhile, we might want to have some projects to maybe your job is a bad situation when we've got asked over and over again, why isn't it more fulfilling? I thought I did everything you guys said and it still isn't working for me. We're hearing that skyrocket as a question in the last two years. I'm just not having the impact I want to. Well, impact is important, but it's only one form of meaning making and it's got a very short half life. Like right after you finish doing something successful, three, two, one, what have you done for us lately? So there are other ways to experience meaning which happen in this place we call the flow world, not in this busy world we're all in most of the time we call the transactional world. So our big invitation for where that more meaning is is spending more time in the flow world, which is right here, by the way, but there's a lot more in front of you than you think. This is easier than they told you. Okay, that's the part I want to hang on to. This is easier than they told you and this is also easier than what you're currently doing. So flow is that state where time stands still, you're in the moment by definition because that's where you are fully engaged. And it's a moment where actually you're making energy. So college will say it's an energy generating moment because it just feels so good. You know, dopamine and other good chemicals going in your brain. And some of this comes from the work of Dr. Lisa Miller. You're getting, you know, her from Columbia. She kind of updated the left brain right brain model. You said the right brain was the creative brain and what brings the analytical brain. It's more nuanced than that. And her model is there's the achieving brain, the transactional brain. And the awakened brain is where we experience flow, where we experience spirituality, where we experience the connection to something bigger than ourselves. And so all we're arguing for is recognize those true things, the transactional, the flow world, the achieving brain, the awakened brain. And yet a little more into, you know, building your whole brain, which is having a balance between the two and being in the flow world and experiencing this awakened sense of yourself connected to the world. That's when we're more human, right? So we need both sides of the brain. We need both awakened and achieving. We need to be in the transaction world and the flow world. And we're under practiced, right? It getting into the flow world. And you give me some examples in day to day life that really help illustrate for the person listening who has never even considered that there's a second world to live in other than the one in your head. Right. What does it feel like to be in flow or what's an example that you might find in somebody's everyday life that you could hold on to? You go, oh, I've experienced this. I, okay, I understand this difference. If you're an athlete, you felt it, you're in the zone, you're in that place where you just know where the ball's going to be. If you're a runner, it's the runner's high where your brain goes quiet and you're just on the run. I like to cook for me. It can be as simple as, you know, I'm chopping onions, I'm doing my knees on blossom, preparing everything before I cook and put on some good music and just be in that state. And then I'm not thinking about school. I'm not thinking about, you know, the budget. I'm not thinking about other things. I have a lot of voices in this head that are talking to me all the time. And so learning to just kind of quiet them down and do some, do, do an activity running cooking, something that you enjoy doing, but really being all in, totally present and being available to what the experience can be. I keep coming back to this 14% thing. I think your next book should be the 14% mindset because I just feel this sense of the invitation of the unlived life that there's these two lives that we have. You've got the unfinished business. Yeah, the one you're living and the one you have yet to create. Sure. And one of the things that you to write about is that you can boil a designer life process into a post-it note. Right. Bill, what's on the post-it note? This is hard. Professors don't like to boil their things down to something so simple that anybody can do it. Everybody says anybody, anybody, you can make it complicated. It takes a genius to make it simple. Exactly. Those Mark Twain's, if I had more time, I had to written a shorter letter. Yeah. It happened on Canadian live TV. We were running out of time. The producer goes, we're just about out of time. Can you do the book on a sentence? I said, dude, we're staying up for it. Professors, we don't give short answers to hard questions. It goes over in your off the air. So give me a minute. I was a marketing guy. Get curious. Talk to people. Try stuff. Tell your story. So it's 10 words. It's really not one sentence. Lean in. Lean into the availability. Talk to people. Go and engage with the world because the narrative story is where it's at. Try stuff. Prototype your way forward. Then tell the story of what you're learning. You're a bit coming. Pay attention. Reflect on what you're learning. Hey, how's it going? Oh, yeah, I binge watched Game of Thrones all night last night. Again, what'd you do? That's not that interesting. It's like, well, I was talking about Robinson. She's talking about there's 14% of the lives I'm living as well as the ones I'm not. I'm really thinking about that. They kind of go, oh, say more. What's going on with that? So if you're leaning into and living your life and paying attention to it, get curious. Talk to people. Try stuff. Tell your story. The bit of circular pattern. I'm telling my story. People say that's very interesting. Every time I talk to someone, so I'm just trying this or this. And it just keeps going. You know, your curiosity leads to more engagement, which leads to more protestions, which leads to more stories. Once you get that flywheel running, you know, it runs by itself. And it feels like, hey, I'm making progress. I'm going somewhere. I'm not exactly sure it is, but I'm pretty sure I'm going the right direction. Well, I think it's really cool to just allow yourself to imagine that there are all of these things that you can do. Yeah. And you're going to die with the to-do list and the experiences and all of the things that you could have become regardless of whether you mope on the couch or you use these principles to from FOMO to JUMMO from the fear of missing out to the joy of missing out. So people said, the reason I have FOMO, right, fear of missing out, some cool thing goes by like, you know, oh, oh, wow, oh, we should have done that instead. Shoot, I missed it. Says the person who has FOMO. The phrase, I missed it acts as though the world is a scarce place and there's barely enough to make an it of your life. And if you missed a little bit of an it, you are now diminished. Seeing something cool go by, you haven't got time to do. Just remind you the world is a target rich place and you're a highly capacious creature who could be interested in so many more things than you have time for. Isn't that great? So get used to get a comfortable attitude toward wonderful things passing you by. Just remind you the world is a cool place to live and enjoy that which is in front of you. And you're writing a book again, I just wrote this third book and I said, oh my God, if I do that, the next four years of my life are completely spoken for. Do I really want to do that from 71 to 75? Get your to write a book and I got a year or two to talk to Mal about it. You know, I got like, do I really want to do that at this point in my life? Well, sure. And it comes in packages of yes or no. And the yes to this book is got about 75 knows in it for things I'm not doing right now. And I'm perfectly happy living into the life I've chosen. Choose your life. Bill Burnett and Dave Evans, what are your parting words? You can do this and I really hope you do. You deserve it. My wish for folks is just try something. Try something really small and see if you can find that little piece of joy or that just like a pointer towards something that wakes you up. And we know you can do it. My wish for you is that I'm at the table at the night that you do your read oring and that when you have your opening exhibit for the paintings, you don't think the world cares about that we're all there to clap for you. I will absolutely invite you. Okay. I'm going to make you. I'm going to be there whether I'm invited tonight. Now I know Dave will text me and tell me even if you don't know seriously. I love you too. I love the work you do. Thank you for the difference that you make in all of our lives. Thank you for coming today. Thank you for writing this blockbuster of a book now more than ever. I know we are all searching for more meaning. Yeah. And we really, I really am grateful that you're giving us the blueprint to find it where we are. Thank you. Thank you. You're a dear woman. This was really great. I really appreciate the opportunity. It was a great conversation. It really was. And thank you. I want to thank you for spending time with us and for making the time to invest in yourself, to listen to something that's going to open up possibilities for your life and your future, because you deserve, as Bill and Dave said, to live a meaningful life. And this conversation has given you not just tools, but the permission and the encouragement to do so. And in case no one else tells you today is your friend, I want to tell you that I love you, and I believe in you, and I believe in your ability to create a better life. And as Bill and Dave said, do it for crying out loud. All right, I'm going to welcome you into the next episode, the moment you hit play. I'll see you there. You want motorcycle, right? No, I had one motorcycle I crashed in and then I decided I don't have the reflexes for this then to stop. I chant a little Stephen Stills every time I walk into a room, and I know I'm going to find, love the one you're with. Love the one you're with. Yeah. That's your next book. That's how to find meaning in your marriage. It's a tunnel work. You know, come on people. Sorry. No, I'm your life. I mean, come on. Guys, I'm so good. Oh, man, you can do this for a living. You're actually a good, I mean, I think you ought to seriously consider doing this. Yeah. Yeah. This is great. Oh, and one more thing. And no, this is not a blooper. This is the legal language. You know what the lawyer's right and what I need to read to you. This podcast is presented solely for educational and entertainment purposes. I'm just your friend. I am not a licensed therapist and this podcast is not intended as a substitute for the advice of a physician, professional coach, psychotherapist or other qualified professional. Got it? Good. I'll see you in the next episode. Sirius XM podcasts. This segment is sponsored by Microsoft Co-Pilot. So I've been away from home on a work trip for almost a week. And while I was gone, I'm trying to juggle work and meetings and exercising and eating right and keeping tabs on everybody in the family all while living out of my suitcase. It's been a lot. And you wanted to the first thing I did when I walked through my front door. First I kissed my husband, Chris. Then I said hi to our dogs. I picked up the cat and petted him for a minute. And then I plunked down in my favorite chair. And immediately I started to think about all the stuff I needed to get done. What is wrong with me? My inbox was full of messages that I'd been meaning to answer for weeks. I still had to book flights to go out to Los Angeles to see our daughter. Our fridge looked like a wasteland. Next thing I know, I'm out of that chair feeling overwhelmed, wondering where to begin. I needed help. I grabbed my phone and I opened up Microsoft Co-Pilot. I think of Co-Pilot as my little AI companion because it helps me take care of the million things that are on my mind so that I can be more present. And it helps me do it in so much less time. But I also love Co-Pilot because it's so simple to use. All you do is open it up and ask you a question. You give it a problem to solve. And within seconds it's working with you to come up with answers that work for you and your life. For example, that flight to Los Angeles that I have to book. Do you know how long I'd been thinking about the, okay, I should have gone. Here's what I did. I just gave Co-Pilot the non-negotiables. Okay, here's the dates. Here's the airports. And I asked it to find the best deals. Then I said, okay, now that you have the best deals, could you explain all the trade-offs of picking one over the other? This was all done in a couple minutes. Flight booked. Then I had Co-Pilot help me reply to a work email. I knew the gist of what I wanted my response to be. And here's what I love about it. I was unloading the dishwasher as I was telling it how I wanted to come across to be professional and firm, but in a kind tone. A few seconds later, I had a draft. I read it. I made a few adjustments. And before I knew it, inbox cleared. And how about that sad empty fridge? I opened up the door. I snapped a photo. And Co-Pilot built a simple meal plan and grocery list for the week. It gave me new recipes. It told me exactly what ingredients I needed to buy at the store and gave me cooking instructions. I didn't have to carry all this stuff around with me anymore in my head, drain my energy because Co-Pilot had my back. I felt the tension live from my shoulders. And I realized why. The overwhelm that you and I feel it doesn't come from doing all the things that we need to do. It comes from carrying those things around in our heads. The planning, the coordinating, the remembering, the checking back, the thinking about it, the strategizing, the mental to-do list that never shuts off. There's a term for that in science. It's called cognitive load. There's a lot of research around this. But I'm going to tell you what researchers in China found not too long ago. And this research was published in the Journal of Humanities, Arts, and Social Science. When you're trying to keep too many things in your head, your thinking gets slower, your emotions get louder. Everything starts to feel heavier than it really is. Your brain has a limited amount of mental bandwidth. It can only hold so much at one time. So when you've got a million open tabs in your head, your brain isn't just stressed. It's over-capacity. That's why even the tiniest things start to feel huge. Because it's not the fridge. It's not even the work email. It's the fact that you and I carry all the planning and decision-making for these things around in your head all day long. You're getting up every day. You're taking care of yourself. You're taking care of your family. You're caring for people. You're doing the best to take care of your health. You're trying to be all these things. You're doing so much. But it's time to stop doing it all alone. You have to get this out of your head. That could mean doing what I call a "brain dumb." Just jot all these mental drains on a sheet of paper so you don't have to hold onto them. Or talking them out was a close friend. Or what it's meant for me more and more is I open up Copilot. And what I've found is Copilot is just like the perfect partner. It helps you stop all those little mental drains and leaves you feeling empowered. See, when I sit down with Chris for dinner tonight, I'm not going to be replaying everything I need to get done. Because Copilot helped me figure it all out. I can be present in a moment that really matters to me. And there's nothing better than that. Thanks, Copilot. If you want to try it for yourself, visit Microsoft.com/MellRobbins to download the Copilot app. Get started with Copilot today for free and see how handing off all the small stuff gives you more energy and more time to be present for the moments that matter. That's Microsoft.com/MellRobbins.