Designing Your Life: An Immersive Weekend of Purpose & Possibility

This Designing Your Life workshop is a weekend retreat at 1440 Multiversity in Scotts Valley, California, built around the New York Times bestselling book by Bill Burnett and Dave Evans. It applies design thinking to personal life direction and purpose, and it is led by Katie Denbo, a Designing Your Life certified facilitator and coach. It suits anyone at a crossroads, or simply curious, who wants practical tools for shaping what comes next. You do not need to know your passion to begin.

What to Expect

The weekend moves from arrival, through deep work, to planning. Friday begins with check-in, a welcome dinner, and an opening session introducing the design thinking framework.

Saturday is the core of the learning. The day opens with yoga and meditation, followed by a session on workview and lifeview, which looks at how your narratives, beliefs, and experiences shape you and why coherence across your life matters. Group collaboration and reflection follow. The afternoon offers a movement class or a hike, then a balance and energy workshop where you take stock of where you are today and what you want more of. The evening is left free for personal reflection.

Sunday starts with meditation and gentle movement. Odyssey planning invites you to explore several possible paths forward and to build confidence in handling constraints and change. A prototyping and action planning workshop then helps you shape clear next steps. The weekend closes with group sharing, a closing circle, and lunch before departure.

The learning mixes facilitated discussion, individual reflection, and group work, in a setting the organizers describe as inclusive, fun, and like-hearted.

About Katie Denbo

Katie Denbo is a Designing Your Life certified facilitator and coach at 1440 Multiversity. She creates purposeful learning environments for individuals and groups, grounded in a curiosity about how each person can live one integrated and authentic life. She draws on her own life design journey, which led her to her current role. As an engagement and communications leader, she co-creates customized experiences that honor diverse learning styles, and she offers guidance and resources before, during, and after each workshop. Before the weekend, she holds a coaching call with each participant to talk through their goals.

The Setting

1440 Multiversity is a nonprofit learning campus set among ancient redwoods in Scotts Valley. Overnight guests stay in a private room on campus. Meals are sustainable and locally sourced, inspired by the campus Food as Medicine philosophy, and run from Friday dinner through Sunday lunch. Vegetarian and vegan options are available. The grounds include four miles of walking trails. A commuter option without overnight accommodation also exists, and a limited number of needs-based scholarships may be available.

Before You Go

The program is open to all levels. No background in design thinking is needed, and you do not need clarity about your direction. Past participants have included college students, people in career transitions, those facing major life changes, and people who seem to have it all figured out yet still feel stuck. The workshop is taught in English.

Included are the workshops and materials, the private room, the pre-program coaching call with Katie Denbo, all meals from Friday dinner to Sunday lunch, and daily classes such as yoga, meditation, art, hiking, tai chi, and qigong. Transportation to and from 1440 Multiversity is not included.