Ikigai is a Japanese concept around the "meaning of life" that you've probably 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. I have found it a helpful way to think about how one spends their time. Here's a diagram, I've added some of my own annotations:
Adapted from Eugenio Hansen, OFS and shared under a CC BY-SA 4.0 license.
The Four Circles on Their Own:
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Love ONLY: Guilty pleasures.
The things that bring a bit of joy into life, even if they achieve nothing in particular. -
Good at ONLY: Well-practiced chores.
The small, Sisyphean tasks, like tidying a room your child will destroy before the end of the day. -
Can be paid for ONLY: "Will work for food."
Doing what keeps you afloat. We've all been there. -
What the world needs ONLY: Stuff you think you "should" do.
A sense of obligation or duty but without the personal satisfaction. -
None of the above: In hell.
Not a good place to be.
In practice, I 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.
The overlap between love, need, and good at but not paid is what I've labelled emotional labour. That's where the unpaid work of maintaining human relationships usually lives: care, patience, listening, demonstrating practical love. I believe in keeping emotional labour out of one's paid work, which is why I've placed it here.
Then there's the charmed life - the person who gets paid to do something they love, that's also meaningful, but they're not actually good at it. A rare form of privilege, and possibly frustrating for everyone around them. You wonder how they got the job. Or why the job exists, being paid to play. I've only lived small versions of this during staff socials or Christmas parties. I'm not good at socialising, but I do enjoy it at times, it's positive for morale, and if it happens during work hours - all the better.
Good at, paid for, and needed, but don't enjoy - I have called reluctant expertise. Doing presentations fits here for me. I don't love it, I definitely say "umm" too much, and I don't dazzle people with showmanship. Years of practice have made me competent at presenting, if not especially passionate. But considering public speaking is often cited as people's number one fear, the fact that it doesn't bother me too much probably puts me on the "enjoy" end of the scale if we're grading on a curve. People frequently tell me my presentations are clear, calm, and easy to follow.
Calmness itself seems to be one of my accidental offerings to the world. I just have a low-energy aura. A natural stoicism. Combined with my friendly, easygoing nature, I'm just a generally chill lady. People tend to appreciate that, and I think it helps most situations go smoother for me.
"What the world needs" is the hardest quadrant if you want your ikigai to be a full-time job.
I love library work and genuinely believe it contributes to the common good. In my specific job, supporting students who go on to become teachers, nurses, and social workers feels meaningful. And I'm proud to be part of an institution engaged in socially conscious research, even in a supporting role.
If your work hits the sweet spot of being enjoyable, skilled, and paid, but you don't feel like you're making the world a better place, you might feel like a capitalist cog - functioning well within a system you didn't design. All our circles overlap with compromise.
Because let's be honest: librarianship also sustains the business models of exploitative publishing and tech monopolies that profit off publicly funded research and the tuition fees of hard working students. 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 untainted by any form of greed, corruption or exploitation?" It's about identifying where your 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?
The pressure to find one perfect job at the centre of the diagram can be unrealistic. Our lives are multifaceted, and we move around the diagram daily. Sometimes a job is just a job, and a deeper sense of fulfillment lies elsewhere. Others want that strong sense of purpose in their 9-5.
I'm also pretty skeptical of work cultures where employees are expected to be driven by passion. That language usually hides a power imbalance — a way of asking too much while paying too little. Note that the ikigai diagram above places "passion" and "mission" outside of the paid circle - and that's correct in my mind. But we spend the majority of our lives working, and for me it is important to be able to some derive some sense of moral reward from my work to really feel a sense of satisfaction. The diagram distingusihes this as "profession" vs "vocation". I want a vocation (with the occassional vacation).
The neatness of the diagram is a lie, of course. Real life bleeds outside the lines. But it's helpful to notice the small points of alignment to find satisfaction in how we spend our time.
This post is licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0 in compliance with materials used. My posts are generally CC BY unless otherwise noted.