LifeArts · the philosophy · the manuscript

The Book

The working home of the LifeArts manuscript — notes, decisions and chapters as the book takes shape.

Part of LifeArts — the philosophy.

Book cover: LIFE Arts — The Art and Practice of Designing Your Life, by Linda Stanley Sewell
LIFE Arts — The Art and Practice of Designing Your Life

The Manuscript

0 chapters

Chapters will appear here as they're finished.

    So what kind of book is it?

    Working note · first

    I would place it in the territory where personal development, creativity, life design, and practical philosophy overlap.

    • Not productivity, although it helps people get things done.
    • Not time management, although it changes how they use time.
    • Not traditional self-help, although it is certainly intended to help the reader.
    • Not merely journaling or planning, because those are tools.
    • And not quite philosophy in the academic sense, because you're asking the reader to do something with the ideas.

    I think Life Design may be the most immediately understandable contemporary category for what you're developing. But LifeArts gives life design a distinctive philosophical proposition:

    Your life isn't something you manage. It's something you make.

    That distinction matters enormously.

    The bookstore-shelf test

    Imagine someone asks at a dinner party:

    “What's your book about?”

    Instead of:

    “It's a self-help book about my planning system.”

    I'd say something more like:

    “It's about approaching your life as a creative practice—deciding what you want your life to become, choosing what deserves your time, and then actually creating it.”

    Now someone can ask, “Oh! How?”

    Then you get to tell them about LifeArts.

    Or, even shorter:

    “I'm writing about how to become the artist of your own life.”

    That has intrigue. And importantly, it doesn't require someone to understand what you mean by Practice before they're interested.