Michelle: The worst career advice you've ever received is probably 'Follow your passion.' The second worst? 'If you don't love your job, quit.' Mark: Right, that’s the entire binary we’re given. You’re either blissfully happy at work, or you need to burn it all down and start over. There’s no in-between. Michelle: Exactly. But today, we're exploring a radical third option: how to design a job you love without ever leaving the one you have. Mark: Okay, I'm intrigued. That feels like a promise of magic. Where is this coming from? Michelle: This all comes from the brilliant minds of Bill Burnett and Dave Evans in their book, Making It Work at Work. And these aren't just career coaches; they're the guys who run the Stanford Design Program. Mark: The Stanford Design Program? The one in Silicon Valley? Michelle: The very same. To give you some context, Dave Evans was on the original Apple team that designed the first computer mouse. Bill Burnett led the design for the first Apple PowerBooks. They took the same principles used to design iconic, world-changing technology and decided to apply them to the messiest problem of all: our lives. Mark: So they're literally designing a life. That's a powerful premise. It's no wonder their first book, Designing Your Life, became this massive global phenomenon that grew out of a wildly popular Stanford course. Michelle: It did. And this book, Making It Work at Work, is the targeted sequel. It tackles a huge problem they uncovered: the staggering number of people who are unhappy at work. The data is just bleak. One Gallup poll found that nearly 70% of American workers are disengaged from their jobs. Globally, it’s 85%. Mark: Eighty-five percent! That’s a silent epidemic of misery. So if quitting isn't the only answer for all these people, what is? It feels like the only other option is just being stuck.

Michelle: Well, this is where they introduce their first, and maybe most powerful, reframe. It’s the idea of "Good Enough for Now." And before you say it, this is not about settling or giving up. It's a strategic design choice. Mark: Hold on, 'Good enough for now' sounds a lot like giving up. It sounds like what you tell yourself when you've accepted defeat. How is that a 'design choice'? Michelle: It’s about reclaiming your agency. Let me tell you the story of Garth from the book. Garth is a new dad, just bought a house, and he takes a new job as a marketing manager at a big company. The interviews were great, the offer was solid. He’s optimistic. Mark: The classic honeymoon phase. I know it well. Michelle: On his second day, he gets a call. It’s the woman he replaced. She’d been blocked from talking to him during the hiring process, and she calls to warn him. She says, "Garth, I'm so sorry. This job is a nightmare. The politics are toxic, your boss is impossible, get out now." Mark: Oh, that’s a gut punch. And with a new baby and a mortgage, he’s completely trapped. Michelle: Completely. He can’t quit. His resume would look terrible, and he needs the money. He feels utterly stuck. This is where most people would either disengage completely—become one of those statistics—or just suffer in silence. Mark: So what does he do? How does 'good enough for now' help him here? Michelle: He doesn't just grit his teeth. He makes a conscious, active decision. He says, "Okay, this situation is terrible. But I am choosing to stay here for 18 months. This job is now a tool to provide security for my family. That is its purpose." He reframes it. It’s not his forever job; it’s his for now job. Mark: Okay, I’m starting to see the distinction. It’s a change in perspective. But did he actually do anything differently? Michelle: Yes, and this is the key. It wasn't just a mental trick. He started designing his experience. He scheduled "positive energy breaks" every three hours, where he’d walk away from his desk and do something he enjoyed. He knew his boss was a black hole for feedback, so he stopped trying to get it from him. Instead, he started building relationships with the sales team, learning from them, and getting his validation there. He was prototyping a better work experience within the confines of a bad job. Mark: Ah, so he was actively problem-solving. He identified the pain points—no feedback, toxic environment—and built workarounds. The book quotes a Stanford professor, Ron Howard, saying, "Never confuse the quality of a decision with the quality of the outcome." Garth's decision to take the job had a bad outcome, but his decision to stay and redesign his experience was a high-quality one. Michelle: Precisely. And after 18 months, with his reputation intact and new skills learned, he found a much better job and left on his own terms. He wasn't a victim of his circumstances; he was the designer of his solution. That’s the power of 'good enough for now.' It’s a strategic pause, not a permanent surrender. Mark: That’s a huge mental shift. It's not 'I'm trapped,' it's 'I am choosing to be here for a specific reason and a specific time.' That’s incredibly empowering.

Mark: That makes sense for a temporary fix, for surviving a bad situation. But what about the long term? How do you figure out what you're even redesigning towards? It feels like this constant battle between making money and doing something meaningful. Michelle: You’ve just hit on the next major dysfunctional belief the book dismantles: the false dichotomy of Money versus Meaning. We’re told we have to choose one or the other. You can be a rich, soulless banker or a poor, happy artist. Mark: Right. And most of us land somewhere in a dissatisfying middle, feeling guilty about both. Michelle: The authors argue that this is the wrong way to frame it. The goal isn't to choose, but to build a "coherent life." A life where who you are, what you believe, and what you do are all aligned. And they tell the very personal story of one of the authors, Dave Evans, to illustrate this. Mark: The guy who designed the Apple mouse? Michelle: That's him. Growing up, Dave's biggest goal was to be a great, present father. That was his "Lifeview." But his career took off in Silicon Valley. He was working insane hours, traveling constantly. His "Workview" was all about achievement and innovation. He was succeeding by every external metric, but he was missing family dinners, he was emotionally absent. His life was completely incoherent. Mark: I think a lot of people can relate to that feeling. Your life looks great on paper, but it feels hollow. Michelle: Exactly. And to solve this, they created a brilliant tool called the "Maker Mix Board." They say we don't just "make" money. We make at least three things in our lives: Money, which is obvious. Impact, which is making a difference. And Expression, which is our creativity and self-expression. Mark: Okay, I love that. So it's like an audio mixing board for your career. You can turn up the 'Impact' fader and maybe turn down the 'Money' fader a bit, or vice versa, until the sound feels right for you. Michelle: That’s the perfect analogy! And it’s not about maxing out all the sliders. It’s about finding your unique, balanced mix. Dave realized his 'Money' fader was cranked to 11, while his 'Impact' fader—being a present father—was at zero. The incoherence was causing him immense stress. Mark: So how did he rebalance his mix? Michelle: He eventually quit his high-tech job and became a consultant. He took a significant pay cut, turning down the 'Money' slider. But in exchange, he gained control over his time. He could be home for dinner. He turned up the 'Impact' slider in the way that mattered most to him. His life became coherent, and he became happier. The book is full of these examples—like James the musician, who plays in cover bands at weddings to pay the bills (Money), which allows him to write his own original music (Expression). Mark: It’s about building a portfolio of activities, not expecting one single job to be everything. That musician knows the wedding gig isn't for 'expression,' it's for 'money,' and he's okay with that because it enables his real passion. That clarity is everything. Michelle: It is. And once you know what your ideal mix is, you can start making small, intentional changes to your life to move the sliders.

Mark: Okay, so we have the mindset—'good enough for now'—and we have the diagnostic tool—the Maker Mix. Now, what do we actually do on Monday morning? How do we start turning the dials on that mixing board? Michelle: This is where the book gets incredibly practical. They say before you write that resignation letter, you should try to redesign. And they offer four specific strategies, on a spectrum from small tweaks to a total overhaul. Mark: Lay them on me. Michelle: The first is Reframe and Reenlist, which is what Garth did. You change your perspective on your current job. The second is Remodel, where you make small, cosmetic or structural changes to your role. The third is Relocate, which means finding a new job inside your current company. And the fourth, the most dramatic, is Reinvent, where you retrain for a completely new career, but still within your existing organization. Mark: The idea of finding a better job at the company you want to leave is so counter-intuitive, but it makes sense. You have a network, you have credibility. You're a known quantity. Michelle: Exactly. You have a huge advantage over any external candidate. To make this concrete, they tell the story of two accountants, Cassandra and Oliver. Both are in their early thirties, both are bored out of their minds with accounting, and both think marketing sounds more exciting. Mark: A classic career crossroads. Michelle: Cassandra starts by prototyping. She uses her internal network to have coffee with people in the marketing department, just asking about their stories. Through these conversations, she hears about a project doing competitive analysis. It's analytical, so it uses her accounting skills, but it's for the marketing team. She volunteers, does a great job, and when a junior marketing analyst role opens up, she's the obvious choice. She successfully Relocated. Mark: That's a smart, low-risk move. She built a bridge from her old job to her new one. What about Oliver? Michelle: Oliver tries the same thing, but he gets different feedback. People tell him, "You're a numbers guy. You don't have the creative skills for marketing." He hits a wall. Mark: So he's stuck. Michelle: He could have been. But instead of giving up, he chooses the Reinvent strategy. He realizes he needs to build a whole new skill set. He enrolls in an MBA program at night, paid for by his company's tuition reimbursement program. For a class project, he creates a brilliant social media marketing plan for one of his company's products. He shows it to the VP of marketing, who is so impressed that he creates a new role for him. Oliver had to completely reinvent himself, but he did it without leaving the company. Mark: Wow, that's a perfect illustration of the difference. Cassandra's move was a small step, a lateral shift. Oliver's was a complete overhaul. It shows there's a whole spectrum of change available, and you don't always have to choose the most dramatic, all-or-nothing option. You can start with a small remodel and see where it leads. Michelle: And that's the essence of design thinking. You don't have to have the perfect solution from the start. You just have to have a willingness to try something.

Michelle: It all comes back to that core design principle that Burnett and Evans champion: you are the creative agent in your life. You start with a mindset shift, you diagnose what's misaligned with a tool like the Maker Mix, and then you prototype small, actionable changes. Mark: What's really profound here is that it reframes work from a 'destiny' you have to find, to a 'project' you get to build. The cultural pressure to find 'the one' perfect job is paralyzing for so many people. It leads to the kind of disappointment we see in stories like Bonnie's at the start of the book, hopping from job to job because nothing feels quite right. Michelle: That's so true. She was looking for a perfect fit externally, instead of realizing she had the tools to create a good fit internally. Mark: But the idea that you can just start tinkering with the job you have right now... that's incredibly freeing. It lowers the stakes and encourages action. You don't need a grand plan to escape; you just need a small experiment for next week. Michelle: And the book gives you a tiny first step for that experiment: the Good Work Journal. It’s so simple. Just for one week, at the end of each day, take two minutes and write down what engaged you, what energized you, and what put you in a state of 'flow.' That's it. That's your first prototype. You're gathering data on what's already working. Mark: I love that. It’s not about what’s wrong; it’s about finding what’s right and doing more of it. We'd love to hear what you discover. Share one thing that surprised you from your Good Work Journal with us on our social channels. It's fascinating to see what actually energizes people when they start paying attention. Michelle: It truly is. In the end, the authors give us all permission to be happy, right now. As they say, life's too short to be disengaged at work. And life's too precious to be disengaged at life. Mark: This is Aibrary, signing off.