Ignore the Noise: How Ikigai Helped Us Make Sense of Career Advice
This piece was contributed by Victor Tang from Ikigai for Teens app as part of GoZig’s ongoing series on career exploration.
As high schoolers, we know that there are a billion pieces of advice out there for high school students choosing a career and planning their future. No matter where it comes from or what your personal experience with career planning has been, though, one thing remains consistent, at least in my experience: you’re gonna get a ton of info from a lot of different sources, and they’re probably going to contradict each other and mostly be completely irrelevant to you.
Do DECA and MATHCOUNTS; they look extra good on your résumé. Or maybe not. If you want to be a doctor, you should take extra Bio and Chem classes and join your local NORD chapter. A Comp Sci career obviously means you do CyberPatriot or the Congressional App Challenge, but wait! You didn’t get a 5 on the AP exam, so you can’t pursue that field anymore. Trust me, some random guy on YouTube. No, trust me instead, your uncle twice removed who works for NASA or something. Actually, just copy your best friend; that’ll work for sure. Well, you can’t be all about studying, right? Time to join a writing club! No, that interrupts your review for the SAT, which, by the way, if you don’t get a 1600, every college will reject you. But wait! If you haven’t already started three nonprofits by the time you’re 15, it’s already too late, and you can’t do anything to save yourself.
ENOUGH!
Not only is almost all of this career guidance extremely unhelpful, but it also comes off as preachy and self-serving. It guilt-trips you into feeling bad that you didn’t start writing papers at age 12, when your main priority was probably making it through middle school and discovering who you are. A bunch of middle-aged adults, far removed from the actual interests and goals of teens, are trying to shove a never-ending and overwhelming stream of information down our throats. All it does is add more stress to an already hectic high school experience.
But what if there was, instead, a holistic way to approach career planning? What if, instead of looking back and regretting the past or overloading yourself with extracurriculars or AP courses, you had a framework to clearly build yourself up from? One that, instead of just relying on static tests that only focus on your grades or your skills, would also consider what you want to do? A place where you could get personally tailored assistance that, instead of berating you for not doing better, could help you look toward the future and grow with you as you meet the goals you set?
That is why we work with the ikigai framework. In Japanese, iki means “to live,” and gai means “worth.” Together, they mean “a reason to live.” Although the idea of ikigai has existed since ancient times, the modern-day idea of ikigai was developed by a Japanese psychiatrist, Mieko Kamiya, in 1966, and it combines passion, mission, vocation, and profession. In other words, what you want to do, what the world needs, what you are good at, and what you can be paid for. Then, in the early 2010s, a British blogger combined this idea with a Venn diagram, creating what we now use today as ikigai.
For us, this is more about personal development than just something done to win a competition. In working with ikigai, we discovered that we weren’t just learning; we were also learning about ourselves and discovering our own sense of direction toward our very own future. One of the ways I personally applied ikigai during our app development was through introspection. I noted down all of my interests, ranging from academic interests (profession) all the way to hobbies such as music, gaming, technology, and sports. Then, I dedicated the “vocation” section to my academic achievements, like grades, GPA, and any awards I had won. Next, I wrote a list of things I could achieve or knew how to do. These included not just quantifiable metrics but also life skills, like writing and public speaking, instruments I knew how to play, and activities that I had participated in (passion). Finally, I combined all of those things with my deepest desires in life (mission), my personality traits, and my strong beliefs in social justice and reform. I connected them by writing different ways in which those four separate “leaves” could come together to create my own ikigai.
I found that, instead of being someone who excelled in a few specific topics, as I had thought, I was instead good at a wide range of things. I found that people with interests similar to mine often pursued careers ranging from biology to engineering to liberal arts professions. Instead of keeping my vision narrowed to a specific field, it broadened my horizons as to what I was capable of. Did it introduce new confusion? Certainly, since now I knew that, instead of the one specific path I thought I was locked into, I could pursue a wide range of career paths and excel in each and every one of them. But two years later, with continued self-evaluation, I continue to not only reflect upon my achievements and growth but also develop a clearer idea of who I want to be when I grow up.
So, as we embark on our own ever-shortening journeys through high school and toward the horizons beyond, we would like to leave you with our own words of wisdom. I’m not saying these will magically fix 100% of your problems, nor am I going to pretend that “IF YOU DON’T DO THESE THINGS, YOU WILL FAIL!!!!!” This is just a one-on-one between us about the things that we discovered during our app development that carried on beyond those few months and into the rest of our lives.
It is never too late to start or start over.
You might suddenly change your career path or abandon your original one, and that’s totally fine. Instead of giving up or saying it’s too late…
Learn to adapt.
Just like the many difficulties we faced during our app development process, you will certainly face far more adversity in high school, from all directions. There’s more stress, more expectations, and more drama to deal with, which is why you should learn to adapt.
Hold out hope (and be patient).
Nothing fixes itself immediately. You will see seemingly insurmountable challenges, perhaps an impossibly difficult class or a deadline that looms close. But if you weather that storm, as mariners in the 1800s used to say, you only grow more skilled and durable. Don’t give up.
And as for applying ikigai for yourself?
1. What would you do even if you weren’t paid for it?
This is your passion, or what you love. These are the things you care about deeply. This could range from a strongly held belief in activism or community outreach to something as seemingly mundane (but still incredibly cool) as fixing cars.
2. Is there a problem in the world (or a desire within yourself) that galvanizes you to action?
This is your mission, or what you think the world needs. It is the deeply held belief that you carry and that influences the goals you set and the dreams you chase.
3. Is there something that you believe you are skilled at, or that others come to you for help with?
This is what you are good at, or your vocation: something that you both enjoy doing and are skilled in. This can be translated into a future goal or career path.
4. How can what I do be translated into a career?
This is your profession, which intersects with what you are good at and what you can be paid for. This influences what career you may choose or what general field you may want to specialize in.
5. What are some other things you enjoy?
Think about the interests you have, perhaps the nonacademic ones, like music, sports, or gaming. Not everything you work for has to be solely for college or a career, you know. Even admissions officers still want to see who you are beyond the classroom.
Bonus: If you already have a plan, does it reflect your own dreams?
Or does it reflect expectations that others, perhaps your parents, have placed on you? Is there something else you’d rather be doing or pursuing than your current idea? Or a way that those can intersect? Research!