Sebastian Kernbach Dr. Sebastian Kernbach is Visiting Fellow at Stanford University where he was trained by the two founding fathers Bill Burnett and Dave Evans in "Designing your life" and is working with resear-chers and executives at different levels around the world on visual thinking, storytelling, creativity and designing your life. He has set up a "Life Design Team" in Zurich and brought the course from Stanford to the University of St.Gallen. He is project manager, lecturer and visual coach at the Institute for Media and Communication Management at the University of St. Gallen and founded the Life Design Lab .
What's good work for you? A job with a social standing and a high salary? Or, one which allows for self-realisation, to move something, to create meaning, to shape the future and accelerate your per-sonal development? And because happiness and fulfillment isn't only limited to your spare time, there is no need to distinguish between "work" and "life": lifetime is worktime multiplied by joy. This workshop uses design thinking to address demands of "new work". Together with other PhD students and Postdocs, you develop a constructive and effective approach to finding and designing your vocation at the University or elsewhere by developing new thinking patterns and working on your future ideas. During this workshop, you will learn how to work into your life rather than try to fit yourself into a job.
The workshop in a nutshell Join us for the workshop "Designing Your (Academic) Future" in which you will learn a process, methods and especially a mindset of tackling problems with a design and creativity approach. In addition, you will recognize the importance of space, energy and having a design team to discuss your challenges. You will learn ways to support your current research, teaching and other activities and be better in decision making for future job opportunities in Academia or beyond.
Why should you care as participant or even as supervisor sending your student? Eight out of ten participants do not make dramatic job or life changes but rather learn tools and develop a mindset to redesign unpleasant experiences, find ways to understand and use their strengths in a better way and have a more productive and meaningful life with better performance and satisfaction. For example, participants in the past have redesigned unpleasant experiences and make them more enjoyable such as reading papers, writing, or even their morning routine to leave the house with more energy. Participants have redesigned their commute to work, became more competent about their energy resulting into more productivity and using their strengths to find their calling which leads to higher job-commitment, better mental health and more work engagement (Levecque et al. 2017; Duffy & Dik 2013; Pain 2017). This is a week well spent for your academic life and beyond. Participants have reported that they use the tools and techniques throughout their career and life and even continued with their life design teams as resonating boards for future decisions.In this highly practical workshop, participants will be able to work on their current challenges and move forward by discussing it with other participants and the instructor. This course is also a place and space with a playful mindset in which all thoughts are allowed and it is all about what matters and what helps us in designing a meaningful and fulfilling (academic) future.
Here is a video message and a flyer from the instructor about the course.
After the workshop, you will
We start off with analyzing what brought you where you are today through activating and reflective visual methods. This understanding will be the foundation for defining your current challenges and ideate possible solutions using visual thinking and incorporating peer coaching. The next stage, prototyping and testing, will make you turn your thoughts into action and will aggregate your efforts during the workshop. By the end of the workshop, you will be able to apply your learning and ideas into real life. With this approach, you can iteratively design your way forward to a more fulfilling and meaningful life.
This workshop uses design thinking to address the "wicked problem" of creating a career and life within and beyond the PhD or Post-Doc. It offers a framework, tools, and most importantly a place and a community of peers and mentors where we'll work on this issue through assigned readings, reflections, and in-class exercises. We are following a blended learning approach that integrates tasks beforehand and offers optional follow-up sessions.
It will take place in an environment that is open, flexible and allows to think beyond the common paths offering literally different perspectives as the environment is changing our behavior. The group will be fairly small to allow for an intimate atmosphere and the instructors will ensure an open, flexible and appreciative mindset. Impression from a "Designing Your Future"-workshop
Life design enables employees to strengthen their identity as academics or to build up a vo-cational identity outside academia (Nota & Rossier, 2015). By recognizing the wide range of sound career prospects, PhD students and Postdocs expe-rience that asking themselves future career related questions can be fun. Hereby, knowing how to apply life design turns out to be an immense emotional relief. Knowing what you really want in life and how to implement it has positive effects on moti-vation, job and life satisfaction, and wellbeing (Duffy & Dik 2013).
No particular prerequisites are required, especially not in terms of being creative or being good at drawing. All you need is a mindset of curiosity, openness and experimentation. This workshop is designed for participants without previous experience in design thinking (especially those who may have very little idea what "design thinking" even means!).
