Have You Found Your Purpose Yet?
What You're "Good At" Shouldn't Define Your Life's Purpose
Having a purpose, a clear sense of life direction, is correlated with improved happiness, more active self-preventative health care, and even an increased lifespan.
So having a purpose is a good thing! But how do you find it?
The Ikigai Model
Ikigai is an ancient Japanese school of thought describing the personal sense of having a life worth living found through self-reflection and the appreciation of daily joys.
At some point this elegant, somewhat abstract concept became westernized in the form of the Venn diagram below that you may have seen on social media. While not truly representative of Ikigai, this Venn diagram of purpose provides a concrete point of view on how to find your purpose: the intersection of what you love, what you are good at, what the world needs, and what you can be paid for.
It’s nice, but when I see graphics this complicated in my feed, my eyes often glaze over, and I continue my doom scroll.
Removing One Element Simplifies and Focuses
During an interview with Helen Wells, an inspiring artist profiled in the forthcoming Outsmart the Learning Curve book, she mentioned a similar idea to the Igikai model: “when looking for a career, there should be a kind of Venn diagram [that includes] things you love, things that make money, and things that other people find useful.”
Not sure if she saw the original Ikigai model on her doom scroll and accidentally or purposefully omitted the “things you’re good at” attribute, but I found the addition by subtraction genius! Why?
You can change what you’re good at! This is a basic tenet of Outsmart the Learning Curve. Learning new things is what brains do. And if you can change what you’re good at, you can concentrate on the other three elements. You’ll figure out how to get good or better later. As we’ve seen in a previous newsletter, you don’t have to be an expert to make contributions.
Removing the “what you’re good at” element simplifies and clarifies the model, making it both easier to understand and less limiting.
Prioritizing Each Element of Purpose
When finding your purpose, the three elements above need to harmonize, but are some more important than others? Of course, for many “making money” is the priority. If you’re not making enough money to get by, it can matter much less if you love what you do or if you’re contributing to society in a meaningful way.
The “things that other people find valuable” circle seems to confuse people at first. Doesn’t anything that makes you money provide value to somebody else? Perhaps, but I think what Helen meant was more about contributing to society in a truly meaningful way. She understood the gratifying effect of providing value by doing non-profit work and later as a professional artist, bringing people joy with her art. Unsurprisingly, there are a multitude of studies showing that altruism, like purpose, also increases happiness, health and lifespan.
But not all vocations are altruistic, let alone provide significant value to others. For example, many transactional jobs, where lots of money can be made, do not contribute to society in a meaningful way—think stockbroker, crypto investor, or currency trader. Nothing against the people who focus their time on these activities, but it’s worth considering who really benefits from their work and how. Are the people who work those jobs receiving much intrinsic satisfaction of helping others or are they just making more money for themselves and others?
The true fulfillment of one’s purpose will only come when your life’s focus satisfies all three circles—the green intersection of Helen’s Venn diagram. During my career I was fortunate enough to design and build products that provided value to hundreds of millions of people; I loved doing the work; and it paid the bills. I was lucky because I was a member of extremely talented teams that were able to execute well on a few great ideas at the right time.
Would I have considered my career successful if I were paid well to work on products that didn’t affect so many people? Perhaps, but I wouldn’t have felt the intrinsic gratification of knowing how people found value in what I worked on.
Have you found your purpose? If you’re still figuring that out, no worries. You have options and there’s time!
Hey Joe! Informative:)