I am Atiya Singh. After I completed my PhD in the Department of History at the University of Chicago, I was at a crossroads trying to figure out my path in life. As I was exploring my options, I stumbled on Bill Burnett’s and Dave Evan’s NYT bestseller, Designing Your Life. I was fascinated by its core philosophy of trying stuff, but didn’t quite know how to implement that idea until I went to Stanford’s Life Design Lab in the summer of 2018 and trained as a DYL facilitator.

I spent a life-changing week with folks from around the world immersed in this curriculum, together we were engaged in a process of self-discovery and acceptance of our present, but simultaneously learning to design a future that was grounded in gravity, and yet shaped by our curiosity and initiative.

I returned to Chicago energized and ready to do stuff. Against all the odds, I was able to offer a number of DYL workshops at the University and learned how useful it had been for people to engage in this curriculum. It also became apparent that DYL is not only a mindset or a theory of self-discovery, but it only becomes a viable tool when practiced consistently. This insight spurred the creation of the virtual Chicago Life Design Studio for life designers to come together for a conversation, a simple prototype, a workshop or a virtual discussion forum. This is a venue for enhancing curiosity and conquering fears.

Since a well-designed life is a collaborative project, all the iterations of my work in DYL have been made possible and successful by the tremendous support of the DYL team at Stanford University’s Life Design Lab and several of my friends and colleagues at UChicago. This website is inspired by Bill Burnett’s and Dave Evans’s publications–Designing Your Life (2017) and Designing Your Work Life (2020). The aim of this project is to advance their insights and build our way forward.