Live by Design

FREE SELF-ASSESSMENT - LIVE BY DESIGN ACADEMY

How Designed

Is Your Life,

Really?

Most high-achieving women are exhausted - not because they're doing too much, but because they're living someone else's design.

Youโ€™ve built the career. Youโ€™ve checked the boxes. And you still feel like Sunday night is a countdown to something that doesnโ€™t quite fit. Thatโ€™s not failure. Thatโ€™s a design problem.

  • 15-question behavioral diagnostic across your 5 Keys

  • Your personal design baseline โ€” where you are now, exactly

  • Your lowest Key โ€” where to focus first

  • Your Identity Anchor โ€” the one sentence that starts everything

Live by Design Academy ยท Free Download

LIVE by DESIGN

Self-Assessment Scorecard

Get your free Scorecard

Takes 10 minutes. Delivers immediate clarity. No fluff, no pressure - just your honest baseline.

THE PROBLEM

You're not living your life. You're managing it.

High-performing women donโ€™t burn out from doing too much. They burn out from doing the wrong things โ€” commitments inherited from other peopleโ€™s expectations, schedules designed around everyone elseโ€™s priorities, a calendar that reflects urgency instead of intention.

The exhaustion isnโ€™t a personal failing. Itโ€™s a structural problem. You donโ€™t need more motivation. You need a better design.

You are not broken.

You are undesigned.

Living by Default

  • Reactive calendar, driven by others

  • Sunday night dread, Monday fog

  • Saying yes when you mean no

  • Insight without action

  • Success that doesnโ€™t feel like success

Living by Design

  • Intentional architecture, weekly review

  • Sunday clarity, purposeful week

  • Fewer, better yeses โ€” no apology

  • Insight becomes structural change

  • A life that actually feels like yours

THE SCORECARD

Five areas. Fifteen questions

One honest baseline.

The Scorecard doesnโ€™t measure goals or intentions. It measures behavior โ€”

what you consistently do. Thatโ€™s where your design gaps live.

A

Life Architecture

Design Before Optimize

Are you intentionally designing your schedule โ€” or just filling it as requests arrive?

B

Decision Quality

Fewer, Better Yeses

Are your decisions narrowing your focus โ€” or scattering it across too many commitments?

C

Experimentation

Test โ†’ Learn โ†’ Refine

Are you running small experiments and adjusting โ€” or waiting for perfect before you move?

D

Energy Protection

Energy Is Strategic

Are you designing your life around your energy โ€” or treating recovery as an afterthought?

E

Structural Follow-Through

Insight โ†’ Change

Do your insights lead to structural change โ€” or do they stay in your journal?

Life will always be designed โ€”
either by you, or by default.

Live by Design Academy ยท Core Doctrine

Clarity Before You Begin

Know what you're

walking into.

This methodology is specific. It works because it's honest about

what it is โ€” and what it isn't.

This is not

  • A motivation program

    Motivation fades. This is about building structure that works even on the days you don't feel like it.

  • A mindset course

    Shifting your thinking without changing your structure changes nothing. This starts with behavior, not belief.

  • A quick fix

    There is no shortcut to a life you actually designed. There is, however, a clear sequence โ€” and it's shorter than you think.

  • Someone else's blueprint

    No framework here tells you who to be. It helps you figure out who you already are โ€” and build from there.

This is

  • A behavioral methodology

    Five non-negotiable behaviors that create structural change โ€” practiced consistently, refined over time.

  • A designed sequence

    Every tool has a role. Every step earns the next. You are never dumped with content โ€” you are guided through a progression.

  • Architecture, not advice

    You won't be told what to do. You'll be given the tools to decide for yourself โ€” with clarity you didn't have before.

  • A return to authorship

    You were always the author of your life. This work is about remembering that โ€” and designing accordingly.

Your Guide

Dennis Estes

Founder, Live by Design Academy

I know what it feels like to be successful on paper and hollow underneath it. I spent years serving, achieving, and checking boxes โ€” and doing it well. But there was a persistent gap between the life I was living and the one I knew was possible. I didn't need more ambition. I needed a better design.

My path through the United States Air Force taught me something that most personal development programs miss entirely: structure creates freedom. Discipline without design is just control. But when your structure reflects your values โ€” when it's built around what actually matters โ€” it becomes the thing that sets you free, not the thing that confines you.

I began training in Japanese martial arts at age six. More than five decades later, I hold an 8th-degree black belt and serve as a Professor with the American Judo and Jujitsu Federation โ€” and I still teach. What martial arts gave me wasn't just discipline. It was a lived understanding that mastery is never about force โ€” it's about alignment. The right technique, applied with precision and patience, accomplishes what brute effort never could. That principle sits at the foundation of everything I teach.

After more than four decades studying Eastern philosophy, behavioral science, and the intersection of Ikigai with Western life design, I built the methodology I wished I'd had. Not a motivational framework. Not a mindset reset. A genuine architecture for professional women who have earned their success and are ready to feel it.

I don't work with people who are broken. I work with people who are capable, clear-eyed, and quietly exhausted from living a life they never consciously chose. If that's you, you're not starting over. You're starting โ€” for the first time โ€” from a design that's actually yours.

  • United States Air Force Veteran

  • 8th-Degree Black Belt ยท Professor, American Judo and Jujitsu Federation ยท 50+ years active practice

  • 40+ years of study in Eastern philosophy, behavioral science, and intentional life design

  • Creator of the Personal Lifestyle Blueprintโ„ข methodology

  • Founder, Live by Design Academy ยท JAZE 11 LLC

The Path Forward

The Scorecard is Step One.

Here's what follows.

This isn't a one-time quiz. It's the entry point into a designed sequence that

takes you from awareness to a life you actually built.

1

Scorecard

Your honest behavioral baseline. Where you are right now, across five life areas. Diagnosis before direction.

Day 1

2

The Foundation

Six tools built to work in sequence โ€” the methodology, your Blueprint work, daily practice, the vocabulary of design, and a visual map of your five life areas. Everything you need to build the life you're designing.

Day 2-14

3

Coaching

Where the Blueprint becomes a lived reality. Implementation, refinement, and structural support โ€” for when you're ready to go deeper.

week 3+

Ready to find your baseline?

Stop managing.

Start designing.

Ten minutes. Fifteen questions. One honest picture of where your life is โ€”

and where to begin.

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LIVE by DESIGN

Living by Design, not by Default

ยฉ 2026 JAZE 11 LLC ยท Live by Design Academy