Get our latest book recommendations, author news, and competitions right to your inbox.
How to Live a Meaningful Life
Using Design Thinking to Unlock Purpose, Joy, and Flow Every Day
Table of Contents
About The Book
From the #1 New York Times bestselling creators of Designing Your Life comes an actionable guide to finding real meaning in the life you already have.
Many of us have lives that look successful on paper but feel strangely empty. How to Live a Meaningful Life offers research-backed tools to help you build purpose, clarity, and connection without quitting your job, blowing up your life, or starting from scratch.
Bill Burnett and Dave Evans, the visionaries behind Stanford’s renowned Life Design Lab, have helped millions use design thinking to craft lives and careers they love. In this new book, they evolve their framework to focus on one question: What makes a life feel worth living, day to day?
Drawing on the latest science and years of teaching, they show you how to:
-Reduce stress by aligning your time with what actually matters
-Bring more wonder, coherence, and flow into your everyday routines
-Turn ordinary moments into roots of joy and meaning
-Strengthen relationships and build “formative” communities that support you
Instead of cramming more into an already overwhelming routine, Burnett and Evans show you how to get more out of the life you’re already living.
Perfect for readers of Jay Shetty and Brené Brown, How to Live a Meaningful Life offers a clear, hopeful path out of the noise and overload of modern life and into deeper engagement, connection, and purpose, because everyone deserves a meaningful life.
Product Details
- Publisher: S&S/Simon Element (February 4, 2026)
- Length: 240 pages
- ISBN13: 9781668084892
Raves and Reviews
“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 Spiriutality 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
Resources and Downloads
High Resolution Images
-
Book Cover Image (jpg): How to Live a Meaningful Life
Hardcover 9781668084892
-
Author Photo (jpg): Bill Burnett Jimmy Ruggiero(0.1 MB)
Any use of an author photo must include its respective photo credit
-
Author Photo (jpg): Dave Evans N/A(0.1 MB)
Any use of an author photo must include its respective photo credit
