The Design Thinking Life Playbook
Careers turn into portfolios, AI agents take over whole tasks, and plans age faster than ever. Find out where you stand, which future skills you need and which career plan to test first.
By Michael Lewrick, Jean-Paul Thommen and Larry Leifer · Wiley
Why now
For most of the last century, a career meant learning a skill and being paid for doing it reliably. That deal is closing. Drafting, summarising and routine analysis are becoming a baseline that AI delivers at any scale. What compounds in value is the human layer above it.
The tasks that once defined professional value now sit on a floor that is being automated. Synthesis, judgment, creative direction, ethical navigation and relationships are the new minimum, not the extra.
A five-year plan rarely survives five years. Life design replaces the one big plan with several variants you can prototype, test and adjust, from the next 24 hours to the next 30 years.
Trust in your own ability to shape change matters more for your career than any title or employer. It is the thread that runs through the whole Life Playbook.
Uses the tools, but the tool leads. Takes the first answer and waits for others to define the next step.
Frames the problem first, checks the claims that matter and keeps the decisions that shape a career.
Orchestrates tools and people toward an outcome, owns the result and builds what lasts.
Free assessment · about 12 minutes
Five steps that combine the career part of The Design Thinking Life Playbook with Lewrick's Future Skills Map. At the end you get a personal career flight plan you can print or save as a PDF.
Eight statements from the self-check in the Life Playbook. They show how far you already act self-effectively, the basis for any career move.
Source: The Design Thinking Life Playbook, self-checkTen competencies from five domains of the Future Skills Map. For each, choose the description that fits how you work today. There are no wrong answers, only a starting point.
Source: Lewrick's Future Skills Competency Map, Co-Create Your Future with AIHow much of your working time goes into each of these tasks? The first five are moving to the AI baseline. The last five are the human premium above it.
Source: The Moving Floor, Co-Create Your Future with AIThink in variants, as in the career templates of the Life Playbook. Name each plan in a few words, then rate it from 1 (not at all) to 5 (fully) on the dashboard.
Source: The Design Thinking Life Playbook, career plans 1 to 3 and desirability, profitability, feasibilityThinking in longer horizons improves your next decision. Write a line for each, or skip to your result.
Source: The Five Horizons Framework, Co-Create Your Future with AIA reflection tool, not a psychometric test. Your answers stay in this browser and are not sent anywhere.
Want to use the Career Compass with your team? See corporate trainings and train-the-trainer.
The method
Part I applies the Design Thinking Life mindset to your life plans. It adds two phases to classic design thinking, accept and reflect, so you can look at your own life from a bird's-eye view.
Determine where you stand today, without judging it.
Notice what gives you energy and where you experience flow.
Compare your self-image with how others perceive you.
Turn insights into a clear statement of what you want.
Generate many options, then choose with the daisy and the 2x2 matrix.
Sketch life plans, gather feedback and reflect on the implementation.
Part II · Professional and career planning
Continue your current career, more or less satisfied, and make it better.
Design a new career as if your current position no longer exists.
Create a life in which money and current status do not matter.
Two journeys through the book
The book follows fictional people who want to change something. Their stories show every tool in action.
Part I · Life plans
Sue is in her mid-thirties and has an international career in marketing in Hong Kong. Her work is exciting, but she realises that something is missing: she wants a partner and misses her family in Switzerland. Her journey takes you through reflection, the energy journal, the view of others and her first life prototypes.
Part II · Career
Steve has just finished his bachelor's degree in business informatics and stands at the start of his career. Should he do a master's or join a start-up? His journey takes you through values, environmental factors, thinking preferences and three career plans he tests before he decides.
Illustrations from the book.
Templates
33 templates follow the chapters of the Life Playbook, from the first warm-up to the vision board. Open a template to see what it is for and where it fits.
The Career Compass above ends with a personal flight plan: your future skills stance, self-efficacy, floor exposure, the plan to test first and your next moves. Save it as a PDF and bring it to your next coaching or workshop.
The Future Skills Map, the moving floor and the five horizons in the Career Compass come from Co-Create Your Future with AI, Michael Lewrick's 2026 future-skills programme: from Passenger to Pilot to Architect, with 41 hands-on exercises and four real-world labs.
The book
Empower Yourself, Embrace Change, and Visualize a Joyful Life
For everyone who wants to take change into their own hands: a new career, healthier relationships or the next stage of life. The book combines the design thinking mindset with practical tools, two personal journeys and a clear process from reflection to tested life and career plans.
“Reading this book is like having the authors take you by the hand and lead you on a journey of self-exploration.”Harvard Business Manager
The authors
Lead author · Founder of Lewrick & Company
Lead author of the international Design Thinking series, from the Playbook and Toolbox to Business Growth, Innovation Metrics and Humanity. He puts people's self-efficacy at the centre of personal and organisational change, and keeps developing the mindset together with new technologies, up to Agentic AI.
LinkedInCo-author · Professor and coach
Has worked for many years on coaching and the development of students and executives. He built a coaching programme at the European Business School in Wiesbaden that thousands of students have gone through. Professor and lecturer in leadership, organisational development and business ethics.
Co-author · Professor Emeritus, Stanford University
Founding director of Stanford's Center for Design Research and a founding member of the d.school. Larry died on August 29, 2026. His conviction that all design is human-centric runs through this book.
A tribute to Larry LeiferFor companies and trainers
Michael Lewrick and Lewrick & Company run Design Thinking Life programmes for leadership teams, talent programmes and organisations in transformation, and train your own trainers to carry them further.
One- or two-day programmes for teams and leaders on life and career design in the age of AI, with the Career Compass, the templates and real cases from your organisation.
Learn to facilitate Design Thinking Life workshops yourself. Your HR, learning or coaching team gets the method, the trainer material and the templates to run the programme in-house.
Michael Lewrick on life design, self-efficacy and the future of work with AI agents: for conferences, leadership summits and all-hands meetings.
Questions
No. It is a structured reflection based on the self-check and career templates of The Design Thinking Life Playbook and on Lewrick's Future Skills Map. It shows you where to start, not who you are. Use the result as a starting point for the templates, a coaching session or a workshop.
Nothing leaves your device. Your answers are stored only in your own browser, so you can continue later. Use "Start again" to delete them.
They are the three levels of the Future Skills Map. A Passenger uses AI tools but lets the tool lead. A Pilot directs AI on purpose, checks the claims that matter and keeps the decisions. An Architect designs work and systems, orchestrates tools and people and owns the result.
The templates work on their own and include a quick guide on each sheet. The book explains every tool step by step and shows it in action through Sue and Steve.
The book is available in English from Wiley and in German as Das Design Your Future Playbook. The premium templates are available in English and German. This page is also available in German.