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Concept

Dysfunctional Beliefs

Dysfunctional beliefs are common assumptions about careers, such as "it's too late to change" or "I should know what I want by now", that keep people stuck, and that Bill Burnett and Dave Evans's life design method replaces with reframed, more useful statements.

Burnett and Evans observed that many of the people who came to their classes and workshops were held back less by their circumstances than by beliefs about how a career is supposed to work. In Designing Your Life (2016), they name these beliefs openly and pair each with a reframe: a restatement that is more accurate and points to something you can do. A person who believes they should already know where they are going is reminded that few people do, and that it is enough to know whether you are heading in a better direction. The belief that you must find your passion first is turned around: passion more often follows a well-designed life than causes it, a view close to Cal Newport's. The belief that there is one right choice, and that missing it means failure, gives way to the designer's view that there are many good options and that the first idea is rarely the best one. Reframing is not positive thinking. It is a design tool: a problem stated as "I'm too old to change careers" has no next step, while "What could I try at this stage that uses what I already know?" does.

A real-life example

Cansu, a 38-year-old bank branch employee in Adana, had told herself for years that it was too late to move into human resources. She wrote the belief down and reframed it: "What could I try in HR that uses fifteen years of dealing with customers and staff?" The new question had an answer. She asked to sit in on the branch's hiring interviews as an observer, and within three months she was helping new tellers settle in across the region.

How to use it

  1. 1Write down the sentence about your career that ends every conversation, such as "It's too late" or "I should know by now".
  2. 2Rewrite it as a question or statement that points to a next step you could take this month.
  3. 3Act on the reframe once, with a small test, and note what you learned rather than whether you were right.