by Lia Fetterhoff

As a designer, I am used to designing websites and mobile apps for people. When you think of products like the iPhone or Amazon, or even Google, there's a ton of information but it's still easy to get what you want. 

For my passion project, I started to make connections about what it means to intentionally design for our own lives. What would your life look like if you were active about all the decisions you were faced with and clear about why it did or didn't belong in your life?

So, how do you make your life filled with the things you want, and kindly reject the things you don't? Here are four steps to moving towards a well-designed life:

1. Define your Gap

What's your goal? If you drew a timeline of your life, how large is the gap between where you are now and where you want to be headed? What can you do to make that gap smaller: Do you need to learn a new skill? Practice more? Get a different job? Explore a new place? 

By defining your gap, you'll be clearer on what you need to prioritize.

2. Discover your strengths

What unique experiences have you had in life? How will your uniqueness help you in your next goal? For example, I've been in Toastmasters for five years to learn public speaking, and now it has helped me to build client relationships and run meetings in my job. I highlight this as a bullet point in my resume because it's a skill I'm very confident in, and makes me stand out from other designers who would rather just design.

When you know your strengths, you can play to them.

3. Design your next step

What decisions can you start making today to move closer to your goals? When you know what you want and how to get there, and can leverage what you're already good at, successful in, or already have experience in doing, you can come up with what your next step is.

What does that look like?

4. Deliver your next step out to the world

Prioritize your life so you are doing one thing every day that brings you closer to your goal. One way of keeping track is Give It 100, where you can record a ten-second clip and demo your new skill or talk about what you did for the day.

Now, go out there and take action!

What decisions can you start making today to move closer to your goals?

What are some approaches you take in designing the life you want? Share with us in the comments.

Originally published July 2014.