WHAT? The Self-Hack Career Playbook provides you with tools, space and time for thinking about your life, career and the future. It guides you through the self-discovery process and helps you to organise your thoughts through different exercises. You can go through the Self-Hack design process individually or with a dedicated course group. The process will also encourage you to discuss and look for new perspectives with others. We advise you to follow the structure of this Playbook, but you can also choose your exercises and flow. You can come back to selected exercises at any point in your life.

HOW? The organisation behind Self-Hack is Creativity Squads ry, a non-profit organisation that has developed the Self-Hack Career Playbook together with coaches from employment and growth services. The inspiration for the exercises comes from our coaching and facilitation experiences, design thinking, positive psychology and the “Creative Confidence” and Life Design models that were developed at Stanford University. The Self-Hack process will be carried out using simple exercises that we have compiled in this workbook. During the process, you can work on the exercises independently and by discussing the exercises with others when possible. The more time you use on the exercises, the more rewarding they will be. The goal of group discussions is to relate to other people’s perspectives and share experiences. The views of other course members can help you discover new ideas! NOTE: The course sometimes involves using a web-based platform (e.g. Moodle) in addition to the book. This means that you can follow the course and find the course materials online. If you work online, you might need to mostly work on your own and wait to share your thoughts with others at the end of the course. All ways of working are equally valid, so don’t worry if the book mentions working in pairs or groups, but you can’t form a pair or a group. You can also complete the exercises on your own. If possible, you can pair up with a friend to go through the process together and agree on discussion topics and time independently.

WHY? Every now and then, we feel the need to change something in life. Sometimes small adjustments are enough to make us happy, sometimes we need to look very deep inside to find answers. What’s my purpose? Am I happy? What might be my next calling? Often, life events such as starting a family, moving to another place or losing a job force us to revise our plans and expectations, and look for alternative ways. Being uncertain is a normal thing and we created Self-Hack to support you in finding the right answers and making the next step! Career is an integral part of our lives, and that’s why in this book we will help you to get a holistic insight into your life situation, your experience, talents and desires. We hope that Self-Hack will give you a broader perspective on your life and your relationship to working life and that the course will help you when you are making decisions about your future.