The numbers keep moving: salary, growth, square metres. Somewhere along the way, we started chasing the numbers instead of the life.
The things that make a life good – time, the people around you, a sense of purpose, feeling at home – rarely show up in the numbers we use to judge a life, a business or a city. That gap between what gets counted and how life actually feels is the blind spot. It's why I developed the 17 Living Goals: a framework that uncovers what the usual measures miss. Each colour stands for a group. Each symbol stands for one goal.
The ground you stand on: home, the basics, the place you live.
Whether work gives you a life back.
Body, mind and soul. How it feels to be inside your own life.
Where a good life reaches beyond your own.
The 17 Living Goals are one framework, tailored to whoever uses it, whether that's people, businesses or cities, so it fits how they actually live and work.
the 17 Living Goals in full detail →The Quality of Life Study is an ongoing study across Europe. Using the 17 Living Goals, it asks people what they want from their lives, their work and their places, and how today compares. Hardly anyone asks this, so I'm asking. Take part in person when the Tour comes to your city, or online in ten minutes. Every answer adds to the study.
On the Quality of Life Tour, I visit cities for coffeetalks with the people who live and work there. Open conversation, plenty of listening. It shows what life there is actually like, day to day. I also go to events, from design weeks to expos and salons, for shorter talks with the people there.
Every longer stay becomes a City Signals publication. Five so far.
The Compass asks what good looks like, then where things stand today – for your life, your work or your place. Ten minutes, and every answer joins the study, anonymously.
You get your own canvas back, showing the gap and where to start. It turns a vague feeling into something you can act on.
Everything it finds is published free for everyone.
the study so farBelonging comes first: 80% choose it.The study figures: quality of life in one view.
QOL Atlas · September 2026Europe used to meet by accident. The places where that happened are emptying.A monthly reading of quality of life across Europe.
City Signals · EindhovenThe short read from each Tour city.
latest perspectivesEssays on how we live, work and judge a life.
Run the Compass with them, and you see where to start.
