The Lie of Ikigai (Part 1)

How a beloved career planning tool is leading us astray

If you’ve given any serious thought to what you want to do with your life, you’ve no doubt come across ikigai: a Japanese concept meaning ‘a reason for being’.

Sounds great right? It’s no wonder some version of ikigai has become the foundation of pretty much every career transition and exploration program out there, for both kids and adults.

I know because I’ve worked for, invested in, and advised dozens of them (in other words: I’m deep in this space!).

Think: American Dream meets Ikigai. Career planning where even if you don’t figure out what you want to do with your life, at least we make some money off your confusion.

Kids today intuitively know this.

They know because they’re already trying to become as successful as Kylie Jenner and Mr. Beast, and they’re already learning that it doesn’t matter how many TikToks or YouTubes they create, how easy it is to spin up a website or store, how cute they look or smart they sound, or how many hours or years they invest, there can only be so many winners.

It’s just not squared with reality.

In this post (Part 1) I’m going to explore why it’s woefully misguided to expect ikigai to solve our career woes.

In my follow-up post (Part 2), I’ll be exploring why we were so drawn to this venn diagram in the first place, what purpose it served, and whether there’s a more suitable framework to replace it (spoiler: I think there is!).

In the Land of Ikigai

I’ve only been in Japan for a month now, but I was immediately struck by the different orientation to work here.

One Saturday I showed up at 4:30 and she turned me away. So I tried to go earlier on a Thursday, only to find a sign on the door saying she’s “taking a break” (!!) this Thursday and Saturday.

Forget trying to get great coffee before 10:00am. Or really any time on a Monday or Tuesday.

Meanwhile, you can buy the best donuts in the world, but only on Thursday or Saturday after 11am (and you’ll need to line up early because they sell out!).

In fact, all around Japan you’ll find restaurants closed when they were supposed to be open. Why? They sold out.

These aren’t new restaurants that underestimated their inventory. These are storied institutions, run by masters of their craft.

They don’t make more ramen just because the demand is there, nor do they charge more because the willingness to pay is there. They simply call it a day.

1. they don’t need to work more: if everything else is reasonably priced, why price gouge or open your doors 7 days a week?
2. they don’t want to work more: unlike what I’m used to seeing in North America, the Japanese are not willing to compromise their craft for profit. Their goal is mastery, not wealth.

“Ahhh, so this is what it is like to be in the land of ikigai!” I thought.

Which is to say, it’s a lot simpler to figure out “what the world will pay for”, when you don’t believe you need to be paid a lot.

I thought of how Japan gave us Mari Kondo, while America gave us Bezos.

You just have to compare the garbage piles in Tokyo with those in NYC, and you’ll see what I mean.

Sometimes it’s easy to forget in our interconnected world, but North America is not Japan!

Using ikigai as a career planning framework in North America is akin to us sending a 6 year old to school alone, on the subway, in NYC.

After some of these initial observations, I resolved to get to the bottom of how ikigai works in Japan so I could figure out how to make it work better in North America.

*when I say “we” or “us” in this post I’m referring to the cultures I know best: Canadian and American (and where most of my network is based/from). Please forgive my generalisations, I’m hoping they help to make a point, not to erase the fact that millions upon millions of people who live in North America bring cultures of their own to the mix (including, Japanese Americans & Canadians!).

Finding Your Ikigai = Success

I didn’t consider cultural differences at all when I bought heavily into the ikigai promise while searching for a more meaningful and satisfying career three years ago.

I just wanted to satisfy my creative itch,help others, and connect with awesome people. All goals I achieved. Sometimes I even made some money!

The optimism I felt from finding my ikigai led me to encourage others to find theirs.

From 2019–2022, both as a friend, and as the Program Director for a career transition accelerator, I guided hundreds of mid-career professionals through their mid-career breakdowns.

Whether they were burnt-out or bored, laid off or chronically unemployed, disillusioned or directionless, ikigai felt like a solid foundation to walk on in the search for some professional hope and clarity.

Finding Your Ikigai = Success…Maybe?

By the end of 2022 though, cracks in this foundation started to emerge, even for the most privileged people in my network.

Exhibit 1: Journalists

My good friend Dave found his ikigai as a journalist.

Dave has reported on topics like labour shortages and criminal justice reform for media conglomerates like ABC, CNN, and PBS. Unfortunately, he has been out of work for over two years.

He is willing to work for very little pay. He is willing to move. He knows the world needs this work, but it’s taking everything he has not to give up.

What should he do now?

Exhibit 2: Social Workers

My dad found his ikigai as an anti-poverty advocate.

By his estimate, he has helped ~3,500 people avoid eviction, get access to their entitled benefits, or secure visitation rights with their children. He is the city’s last line of defense before homelessness. He is where food banks and churches send people they can’t help.

What should he do now?

Exhibit 3: Artists*

My good friend Ciara found her ikigai as a film producer.

As with Dave, there were promising early signs that the world valued her art. Several years later though, the emotional and financial strain of continuing to try to break into this competitive field is starting to take its toll. She’s debating investing in a bootcamp so she can find a job in tech.

What should she do now?

Exhibit 4: Teachers

My friend Ashley found her ikigai as a teacher.

Ohhh, don’t get me started on teachers. I know a lot of people like Ashley (dedicated, hard-working, caring, tenacious..) who are so burnt out it scares me.

They come to me for help breaking into ed-tech, not because they’re tired of being underpaid and overworked, but because they’re tired of being disrespected and used as proxies for political battles.

It’s no wonder that even with a quarter of a million students disappearing from public schools, the teacher shortage is so bad districts now have to subsidize their housing, strip away the qualifications required, rely more heavily on substitutes and online tutors, and increase class sizes. So yea, Ashley wants a new job.

What should she do now?

*Exhibit 5: Me → I’ve been following my ikigai for the better part of the last four years, but I can’t work with this low income indefinitely! Not to mention, my interests have changed, especially now that I’m a mom and the climate crisis is worsening. What should I do now?

Work Hard Enough + Long Enough = Success

To suggest Dave, Ciara, Ashley, and my dad find their ikigai now, in 2023, is an insult.

We’re in a period of rapid change. Covid. Climate Change. ChatGPT. Quantum computing…I think you already know this though.

As a result, people like Dave, Ciara, Ashley, and my dad are left with a couple options:

Option #1: Try harder*

We’re told if we just try hard enough for long enough, it will work out. I guess mental health be damned?

And I guess if it didn’t work out, you were either not talented enough, patient enough, smart enough, or hard working enough? Shame on you.

Option #2: Pivot**

We’re told these times call for soft skills like adaptability, creativity, and flexibility. So we re-skill and up-skill, becoming more and more over-skilled; anything to avoid being under-skilled.

Never mind that you might pivot to yet another field that will soon fall out of fashion or favour and have to start the whole process over again.

Never mind that I want to live in a world with journalists and artists and teachers and social workers.

*Don’t get me wrong, I believe this formula could work for most people if they had sufficient financial and social capital. I just don’t think it’s realistic to expect these to appear out of nowhere.
**Don’t forget to go back to Option #1 after you choose Option #2!

Working Hard Enough + Long Enough = Success…Maybe?

They don’t tell you this in school, but whichever option you choose, you’ll need a good amount of privilege, delusion, or ideally both, if you are going to succeed.

Privilege

It takes a lot (like a lot, a lot) of privilege to pull ikigai off in North America.

I know, I know, it’s tiresome to hear about privilege rearing its head once again, but hear me out.

If I’m going to sell more plastic junk to the world, someone has to pick it up when it’s thrown out.

If I’m going to write novels, someone else is going to have to care for my aging father and young son.

If I’m going to build AI-powered tools, someone else is going to have to pave our roads and stock our shelves.

Does their career, and life, satisfaction not matter too?*

It’s much easier to believe a rising tide raises all ships (aka white collar-or even better, no collar-jobs for all!), and call it a day.

We can’t forget (c) my nationality, (d) my clean criminal record, (e) my native tongue, or (f) my age, all of which gave me pretty comforting back-up options.

There are so many reasons why it might not be feasible (or prudent) for someone to “find their ikigai”. Maybe they’re a single parent who can’t afford to take any risks. Maybe they’re on a work visa and unable to change jobs. Maybe (this is often the case in America) they truly need the benefits.

Delusion

As I’ve shown above, we’re delusional if we think the entire world can apply a concept like ikigai.

Beyond that though, there is the fact that it was conceived in a completely different time and place.

Imagine life one thousand years ago in Japan. It’s the year 1023.

Wikipedia tells me that it was quite a vibrant and peaceful time in Japan’s capital, Kyoto (where I am currently based).

There was no currency. Rice was the primary unit of exchange!

This is the world from which ikigai emanated.

!!!

First, given that there were no trains to transport, machines to fabricate, or phones to coordinate, if you needed or wanted anything-be it art or food or a table-it pretty much had to be produced by hand, locally. If you wanted to buy something from China, you’d better be damn patient and have a lot of rice.

Second, even the aristocrats had but a few options: craftsman, clergy, artist, or join the court. Today, the options are dizzying. You hardly have time to commit to a path for long enough to get good at it before the rug is pulled out from under you and you find the world is no longer willing to pay for it.

Meanwhile, we desperately need caregivers but what we get is more content creators pushing plastic crap.

*To be clear, I’m not suggesting everyone should be able to escape jobs like stocking shelves or paving roads. Rather, I want to explore how we can raise the level of respect and satisfaction in all jobs.

Jen Dreams of Donuts

But even if ikigai did a good job helping us figure out what the world needs and will pay for in real time, it tells us nothing about what it means to develop a skill or interest.

In case you thought sushi was as simple as combining raw fish and rice, Jiro, an 85-year-old sushi master, will help you see there is so much more to it. This man is still refining his craft! Boiling rice and cutting raw fish. 🤯 Even his 50 year old son is still just an “apprentice” mastering rice.

At the world’s best donut shop, you will get the world’s slowest service, as they meticulously wrap and label each donut with handwritten instructions for optimal consumption. The cream cheese one: eat in 8 minutes; advice I am happy to follow. The Earl Grey one: wait 3 hours; advice I am not happy to follow. Who do they think I am, some Zen monk?!

Or my favourite: the baristas wearing lab coats (!!!!) and taking careful notes in binders. Like they are doing actual science experiments. Be still my over-caffeinated heart!!

All these observations led me to a preliminary theory. For ikigai to work well you need*:

1. a super strong social safety net (so we don’t need to be paid as much)
2. a culture that doesn’t idolize extreme wealth or material possessions (so we can focus on doing work the world actually needs)
3. a culture that values the patience required to develop mastery (so we actually have time to figure out what we’re good at and interested in)
4. a deep respect for all fields of work (so we don’t need to worry about status or respect once we do) (and maybe so we won’t snap at a cashier who just took 10 minutes to wrap our donuts and then had the audacity to suggest we wait 3 hours to eat them).

Last I checked, America meets none of these conditions (and neither does Canada, sorry!).

But I wasn’t ready to give up. There’s still gotta be a better career framework lurking under this right?

*at a minimum, if we’re going to import concepts from another culture, we should at least aim for the whole package: a little forest bathing, Moai (an Okinawan tradition of forming social support groups that I just learned about), and minimalism never hurt anyone!

I brought my theory to Asaki, an English-speaking coffee shop owner who I’d gotten to know fairly well over my first couple of weeks in Kyoto.

“Is this how ikigai works here?”

She laughed at me.

“Japanese only know hard work. Work, then home, then work.”

I thought to the throngs of literal white-collared workers on the Tokyo subways commuting to their office jobs, unlike anything I’d seen in New York. She had a point.

“Hmm no I don’t think so, they just did what they had to do.”

“Well, what about you?” I figured if anyone would have embraced ikigai, it would be this former kindergarten teacher turned cafe owner.

“I am different than most Japanese. That is why I want to move to Canada with my husband, so we can have kids that aren’t,” she paused to use Google Translate, “in a box.”

When I got home, I couldn’t shake the question of why we’re embracing ikigai when they’re not, so I posted my question on r/japan.

Here are some responses I got:

• 生きがい is just a word that means motivation/reason for living. the original Japanese meaning is open to your own interpretation and choice. You get to come up with your own reasons for living
• If you ask a Japanese person about it they’re not going to whip this Venn diagram out and have this whole explanation. They probably have never even seen this before.
• the real meaning of “ikigai” has nothing specifically to do with one’s job, anymore than the idea of “reason for being” does. “Ikigai” is not some special Japanese concept — it’s just the Japanese word for something found in all human cultures. The people who made this chart just twisted the idea for “reason for being” to mean “working to live,” then slapped a Japanese word on it to make it seem more legitimate by borrowing the cultural capital and “exoticness” of Japan.
• Friendly reminder that “karōshi” is a common occurrence in societies that pursue”ikigai”.

Karōshi: translated into “overwork death,” is a Japanese term relating to occupation-related sudden death.

Well don’t I feel dumb.

Jen Dreams of a Third Option

Back to my initial question: what are Dave, Ciara, Ashley, and my dad supposed to do now?

Ikigai didn’t really work out for them (and now we have a better understanding of why).

They could try harder, for longer, or they could pivot, but their privilege and delusion are in short supply after years of this approach.

I don’t know about you, but I want to believe there is a third option.

Heck, even a framework that recognizes that our interests and strengths evolve, sometimes even spring out of nowhere.

Subscribe here for Part 2 of this essay, my attempt to find that.