Prototyping Your Next Career and Designing Your Life with Design Thinking - Fiona Reith

On this episode, I interview Fiona Reith, the UK's first Designing Your Life certified coach and a phenomenal career change coach I know from training together.

After noticing how practical her approach was to life and coaching her career change clients, I asked what her secret was and what Designing Your Life meant. She recommended I read a book for career and life change called Designing Your Life by Dave Evans and Bill Burnett who are both professors at Stanford University that teach Design Thinking. This was and is an absolute game-changer for me and I’m now training with the authors Bill and Dave directly in becoming a certified Designing Your Life coach in April this year. 

This conversation gives you a glimpse of why design thinking is so useful, practical and why we both love it so much!

In this episode, we discuss:

• The importance of prototyping your next career 
• Using design thinking methodology for life and career design
• How to prototype through conversations and experiences
• My experience in prototyping interviews for becoming an employed podcast producer
• Scales of prototyping and your spectrum of possibilities
• Knowing when you have done enough prototyping to make a career decision
• Reframing problems with design thinking
• Networking to access the hidden job market
• What’s the one thing that’s made Fiona Reith burn from within?

Books:

• Designing Your Life: How to Build a Well-Lived, Joyful Life by Bill Burnnett & Dave Evans - this book in my opinion is a total game changer when it comes to career and life design and change. Get it now. I’m serious!
• Designing Your Work Life: How to Thrive and Change and Find Happiness at Work  by Bill Burnnett & Dave Evans - this book is about making improvements in your existing career to become incrementally more fulfilled and happier, without necessarily doing anything drastic like a career change. Full of practical exercises.

Video Course:

• Designing Your Life video workshop online - this is a live class you can follow on-demand taught alongside other students with the authors of the book to help you really understand and go through the exercises of the book in groups. Definitely worth it.

Resources:

• Fiona Reith’s coaching website and Linked profile - Fiona is a phenomenal career coach so go have a conversation with her to discuss if she is right for you (if you enjoyed her awesome insights in this episode, she might be a good fit to help you in your career or out of it into a new fulfilling path
• A directory of certified Designing Your Life coaches from around the world - Fiona is the first DYL coach from the UK and Matt will also be on this list in April!
• Bill Burnett’s 5 steps to designing the life you want Tedx Talk and Dave Evan’s separate Designing Your Life Ted Talk