Following the success of their New York Times best-selling book, Designing Your Life, Bill Burnett, Executive Director of the Life Design Lab at Stanford University and an adjunct professor in mechanical engineering and design at Stanford, and Dave Evans, cofounder of the Life Design Lab at Stanford University, adjunct lecturer, former Apple exec, Electronic Arts co-founder, and Ex Officio member of the Santa Cruz Works Board of Directors, have teamed up once again to co-author a new book, "How to Live a Meaningful Life", set to release on February 3rd, 2026. For decades, Burnett and Evans have taught design thinking and life design to countless students at Stanford and beyond, helping people build a life they love. But they noticed a common pattern: many people, even after improving their lives, felt something was missing. The elusive goal of "fulfillment" often left people feeling stuck.

“Fulfillment is a dead end,” says Dave Evans via a Linkedin post. “You can’t become all that you could be because you’re bigger than a lifetime. The idea that one job or one version of yourself can express it all is a dead end, so don’t get stuck on it.”

Instead, the authors propose a more achievable and liberating goal: to be fully alive.

Their new book, "How to Live a Meaningful Life", provides a practical, evidence-based roadmap to help readers shift their focus from the pursuit of fulfillment to a life of meaning. The book outlines four key areas where meaning can be reliably found: wonder, coherency, flow, and community. It also introduces five essential design mindsets to guide readers, including radical acceptance and creating your world, along with simple exercises and tools that can be used immediately.

"This is a book for everyone," Burnett and Evans state. "Whether you’re a student, a parent, a professional, or someone in the second half of life, meaning is both timeless and timely. Now is the moment to design your way into it."

"How to Live a Meaningful Life" will be available on February 3rd. Pre-orders are available now on the authors' website.