Ikigai is a Japanese concept around the "meaning of life" that you've possibly seen represented in popular culture as a diagram of four overlapping circles. What you love, what you're good at, what you can be paid for, and what the world needs. The ideal is all of these align into a sense of purpose.
My snarky additions to this diagram by Eugenio Hansen, OFS. This image is shared under a CC BY-SA 4.0 license.
My dad once told me to "just do what you enjoy and what you find easy." I doubt he was thinking of Ikigai, he was just giving some practical anti-advice against the high-pressure rhetoric teenagers get subjected to about choosing careers. But it fits. I actually think the Venn diagram between enjoy and good at is almost a circle. You enjoy things because you excel at them - or you've become good at them because you enjoy doing them. Or both, in a kind of chicken-and-egg loop.
I never had much clear direction towards "what I want to be when I grow up". I found a school workbook from when I was 7 or 8 years old where I had written "when I grow up I want to work with computers". It's possible I wrote that because it's what my dad did. The teacher had written "I'm sure you will be very good at it, Hannah!". Less of a teacher's marking note and more of a prophecy. I also remember wanting to be an author/illustrator because I liked writing stories and drawing pictures. Kids don't dream of impact. They dream of what sounds fun.
In Australia, going to uni when you finish school is the default path if your grades allow it. I remember some external organisation came to our school in year 11 to run a vocational aptitude test, followed by an interview with our teachers to discuss the results. Frustratingly, I scored fairly high in every area, which meant I could do "whatever I wanted". This was framed as excellent news - a blessing - but honestly it felt like being handed a blank map and told, "You could go anywhere!" Thanks, that's really helpful.
So I picked a degree that sounded interesting. A Bachelor of Arts in communication studies, majoring in information and media. It seemed to unite several of my interests: a bit of theory and cultural studies, a bit of web design, a bit of IT through a humanities lens. At open days, when career counsellors asked why it appealed to me, I confidently parroted the word "multidisciplinary" without fully knowing what it meant - only that it sounded like something that wouldn't trap me. Early on in the degree, the course coordinator announced that this degree would "prepare us for jobs that don't exist yet," which I found strangely reassuring. Maybe the reason I didn't have a dream job was because my dream job hadn't been invented. The course also happened to qualify graduates as librarians under ALIA's accreditation standards, though I barely registered that detail.
And so, somewhat accidentally, I became a librarian. I didn't pursue librarianship with purpose - it just turned out to be the next right thing. After graduating, I ended up in a minimum-wage admin job that I hated. Not because it was boring (it was), but because it was emotionally draining. The workload was heavy, the environment was stressful, and I was constantly one small mistake away from disaster. After being an excellent student, for the first time I actually felt like I was bad at what I did. I didn't let this rock my self-esteem, I just knew I was not where I was meant to be. So I started applying for librarian roles because it was the only professional niche I was technically qualified for.
My old boss was very supportive about this, I must give credit. I was given the flexibility to attend interviews, and when I landed a part-time librarian role, I was allowed to go part time so I could maintain a full-time income between the two jobs. It created a gentle exit ramp, and when the library eventually offered me more hours, I was able to transition out without financial panic.
Once I got my foot in the door as a librarian, I discovered I liked it and was good at it, and the sense of meaning developed on its own as I grew into my career and learned more about the wider context of my role. I didn't identify a burning need in the world, then reverse-engineer a career to fill it. Instead, I picked something that sounded interesting enough to not trap me, discovered enjoyment and competence, and the other ikigai elements gradually overlapped on their own.
"What the world needs" is the hardest quadrant if you want your ikigai in your full-time job. I love library work and genuinely believe it contributes to the common good. Supporting those who are studying for their future feels meaningful. And I'm proud to be part of an institution engaged in socially conscious research, even in a supporting role. But to be honest, I'm aware that librarianship also sustains the business models of exploitative publishing and tech monopolies that profit off publicly funded research, even while trying to work against those systems. Much like there's "no ethical consumption under capitalism", there's no ethical work either. In the context of current structures, "what the world needs" cannot realistically mean "Am I doing something that is completely untainted by any form of greed, corruption or exploitation?" It's about identifying where my effort can matter. What can I responsibly offer to the world I actually live in, not the world I wish existed? How can I make positive change in small ways that are within my control and sphere of influence?
Finding too much meaning in your work can be a trap too. If your work is your calling, then struggling is noble. It's a neat ideological trick, and it's particularly insidious in fields like librarianship, social work, teaching, where the work genuinely matters but the people doing it are often exhausted and undervalued. Fobazi Ettarh's seminal article in the field of critical librarianship, Vocational awe and librarianship, goes into this, and some of the particular features of librarianship that foster this belief that the profession is inherently noble and morally good, all while creating burnout and limiting salaries.
I care deeply about librarianship, which is probably obvious from this blog. I avoid the vocational awe trap by taking pride in my job without worshipping it. I am critically engaged, but I can enjoy the positive impacts I am creating, without elevating it to the level of some sacred mission.
My deeper sense of purpose comes from my Christian faith. Any place I interact with people, including my job, is an opportunity to live out my actual "sacred mission" - which is just practicising kindness, care, honesty, patience, integrity. Any job can become part of one's worship in this way, and will therefore always be meaningful. The money earned from work is to sustain yourself, and also to have something to give to those in need. A passage from the bible that touches on all of this is Ephesians 4:25–32, which urges truthfulness, honest labour, generosity, gracious speech, forgiveness, and compassion, all as fulfilment of the Christian's identity, which is found in Jesus.
Solomon also wrote about the meaninglessness of achievement in light of mortality: "For there is a man whose labor is with wisdom, with knowledge, and with skillfulness; yet he shall leave it... to a man who has not labored for it." (Ecclesiastes 2:21). His conclusion is that satisfaction comes from enjoying the fruits of one's labour. There is "nothing better for a man than that he should eat and drink, and make his soul enjoy good in his labor." (v.24)
So I don't worry too much about finding the centre of the Ikigai diagram, or achieving some perfectly balanced sense of destiny. Real life is lopsided. We move between circles depending on the day, the workload, the rent cycle, or whether the printers are working. If there are small points of alignment - enjoyment, ease, usefulness, a salary, that's already a pretty good life.
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New blog post talking about how I became a librarian, vocational awe, and Christianity
— Hannah Shelley, MLIS (Metadata, Lattes & Impostor Syndrome) (@hannahshelley.bsky.social) November 26, 2025 at 5:17 PM
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