Purpose = talent + profit + passion + service
Ikigai, a Japanese concept meaning “reason for being”, is a self-development framework for seeing how to bring satisfaction, happiness, and meaning to life. The new year is a great time to think about where you are on your journey of purpose and what needs to happen to achieve your reason for being in the coming decade.
What is purpose?
pur·pose
/ˈpərpəs/
noun: the reason for which something is done or created or for which something exists.
verb: have as one's intention or objective.
Your life purpose consists of the central motivating aims of your life—the reasons you get up in the morning. Purpose can guide life decisions, influence behavior, shape goals, offer a sense of direction, and create meaning. For some people, purpose is connected to vocation—meaningful, satisfying work. For others it’s loved ones.
No one was put on this Earth just to pay bills, but that’s what it can feel like sometimes. And while you may prefer to think of your work as separate from your purpose—just something you do so you can do the other —I’m here to tell you that excluding work from your purpose will lead to discontent because we spend so much of our time doing it. Aligning work and purpose is exactly what Ikigai aims to address.
“Ikigai defines purpose as the intersection of what you love, what you’re good at, what the world needs, and what you can be paid for.”
Visualizing Ikigai
A slightly inaccurate graphic that went viral a few years back:
A non-viral, but more accurate depiction of Ikigai designed by Information is Beautiful:
My personal path to Ikigai
The concept of Ikigai takes some time to grock, and hearing other people’s journeys helped me translate mine. I’m hoping that sharing my personal path to Ikigai helps you with yours.
2010 — PROFESSION
I grew up with a single mom putting herself through school while raising two kids 💪🏼— sometimes with the help of food stamps and subsidized housing. As you can imagine, when it came time for applying to colleges, studying dance or english lit wasn’t practical. So three schools and 5 years later I graduated with a Bachelor of Science in Finance with an Economics minor just as the recession was in full swing.
When I started my career as a fund accountant at State Street in Boston, I was in Profession at the intersection of “what you are good at” and “what earns you money”. “What you are good at it” was a bit of a stretch since I wasn’t particularly skilled beyond the fact that I studied for it in college. While many of my peers had read the entire Wall Street Journal before they got to work, it was a major slog for me to do the work since the natural talent and passion just wasn’t there. Spoiler alert: I now understand that I’m right-brained with 8 years of training in being left-brained.
2012 — PROFESSION / GOOD JOB
When I moved to San Francisco to break into tech and landed a job as a finance and operations manager at a startup, I was still in Profession but a bit more towards Good Job or even Opportunity for Service since I enjoyed working in tech much more than financial services. I found my creativity in problem solving and my tenacity to tackle things I’d never done before served me well in the startup world and I made major income gains in just a few years.
Contribution (what the world needs + what you are good at)
In small ways I was able to contribute a little in the “what the world needs” category since my knowledge in finance enabled me to help others—especially women—understand their worth, how equity compensation works, and coach them to negotiate for it.
Despite ultimately leaving finance behind in 2014, I’m so so thankful I studied and worked in finance because it helps me every single day to advocate for my worth (and the worth of others), run my business, and think strategically. It also taught me how to work hard and persevere. Now, there isn’t anything I feel like I can’t figure out if I need to because I already proved to myself that I can.
2014 — GOOD JOB
Once I transitioned to marketing I moved squarely into “good job”. I found that despite not having studied marketing, I was a natural at it because I got to use my creative side. Storytelling, compelling visuals, complex project management, and leadership skills are crucial to working as a product marketer (my specific area of marketing). I also discovered that great product marketers need to be comfortable with data and numbers to develop product pricing strategy, discover behavioral insights, and optimize revenue growth.
Now that I’m an experienced marketer running a product marketing agency with two partners I adore, I can say I truly enjoy the work. I get to work on dynamic projects with diverse clients who are building great products. On top of that, I work from anywhere I want, travel often, and say no to clients and projects I don’t feel aligned with. For most people it would be a dream come true, and I am very thankful that our business is successful enough to support me without having to work full time.
But marketing for tech companies isn’t quite my passion or what the world needs—which is why it’s only my interim plan to support myself, not my Ikigai.
2018 TO 2020 — STRUGGLING
Here’s where it gets interesting! In 2018 I launched this blog—I absolutely love doing it and frequently find myself getting up early or staying up late to work on it. I also believe it is, to some degree, “what the world needs”. Now I have to be a bit gracious with myself here since I believe addressing climate change, equality for all humans, and access to clean water, nourishing food, health care (including abortions!), and education are what the world really needs. My blog doesn’t solve those things and I’m under no delusions that it does. But it does help people live greener, healthier, more financially free lives—and I think that’s some of what the world needs.
The trouble is, my blog doesn’t make much money yet ($167 at the time of writing this) so I’m Struggling. Luckily, I earn enough money from the marketing agency to contribute to our household income and have money to invest in the blog while it grows. It’s a constant balancing act to make sure I’m earning enough money while still having time for the blog. I aim to earn $150K per year while working 4 days per week. Some years, months and weeks are more balanced than others and I tend to over work/earn on the marketing business which I’m slowly trying to fix.
When I had a “real job” what kept me up at night were things like if my boss liked me and when I was going to get a promotion. Now that’s shifted to worrying about if I’m using my privilege of freedom and flexibility wisely and if I was productive enough on any given day. Turns out I’m way harder on myself than any boss ever was 😑
COMING SOON — IKIGAI
With my two parallel tracks of marketing business and blog, I’m slowly converging on Ikigai. Luckily my current Good Job brings me enough money to work less than full time while I grow my blog and eventually monetize it, which will move me from Struggling to Ikigai.
My blog monetization plan is four fold:
(Current) Earn money through affiliate marketing when it makes sense, but to never let it drive my content strategy while I grow my audience.
Affiliate marketing is the process of earning income every time you promote someone else’s products or services. If you generate a sale for the company, you get paid. If you don't generate a sale, you do not get paid. When I promote brands I use and love (such as Everlane) and a reader makes a purchase, I make a small commission at no cost to the reader.
Offer small space design consulting services—perhaps working with small businesses or partnering with local architects.
Develop my own physical product line for small spaces or partner with an existing brand such as CB2.
Invest in small unit real estate, renovate to my standards, document the project on this blog, and then either sell the unit, or better yet, furnish to rent as a way for people to experience small space living.
How to define your purpose
There really is no handbook to defining your purpose and it takes time to cultivate. It took me many years of introspection and quite honestly, happenstance to discover mine and it only feels like it’s come into focus recently. Looking back, there are some behaviors that helped me discover my purpose.
I can thank John Dunham, the CEO of the first startup I ever worked at for introducing me to the four rules of life:
“Show up.
Pay attention.
Tell the truth.
Don’t be attached to the results.”
SHOW UP
Show up for yourself and others by saying “yes”, getting there on time, and putting in the work. In other words, choose action. Life is like a game of Plinko—one action can open a door to another opportunity you never thought of. And then another, and then another—it won’t be a predictable straight line so there’s really no point in trying to align the ladder perfectly to what you think you want several decades from now.
Once you get started, before you know it you’ve worked in finance, moved to San Francisco site unseen, broke into in tech, transitioned to marketing, moved to New York City, and launched a blog all in the span of one decade. But if you spend all your time waiting to start on the exact right thing, new paths to choose will never present themselves.
PAY ATTENTION
It’s amazing and very sad that this is a dying skill but simply paying attention has proven to set me up for success time and time again. Active listening, being curious, and thinking deeply about the person or problem I’m interacting with always proves useful. I’m by no means perfect at it, but paying attentions looks like putting the phone away, asking questions, and listening to the answers.
TELL THE TRUTH
It sounds obvious, but be honest with yourself and others. By telling the truth, you will act with integrity and build trust in your relationships (which are key in business, not just in our personal lives). By being truthful about what you’re good at and what you want, opportunities to get on the right path will turn up. People will share ideas with you and introduce you to the right people. By being honest about my lack of interest and talent in finance, a mentor and friend Mark DeVisser helped me transition into a marketing position which set off a chain of events that lead to here.
DON’T BE ATTACHED TO THE OUTCOME
My early days were driven by protecting my ego and trying so hard to finish what I’d started because I felt like changing my mind was some form of weakness. If I had been more honest with myself and less attached to the outcome, I would have taken a year off from college and just built up my savings instead of transferring and attending three different colleges all in the name of finishing “on time”. I would have admitted sooner that finance wasn’t for me and started to look for alternatives.
Now I’m more more dialed into reality and comfortable with change. If something isn’t working, I call a spade a spade and pivot to something else, even if it isn’t “perfect”. Whether it’s a job or client I don’t love, an idea that seemed great at first, or a habit that isn’t serving me, I let go of what I expected it to be. Similarly with this blog, I’m learning to not fixate on success metrics (follower counts/income/newsletter schedule) but rather on the journey and joy of creating it. If I stay focused on that, success will come—however that looks.
BONUS: REVISIT CHILDHOOD HOBBIES
Not part of the four rules for life, but a few years back I started revisiting childhood dreams and interests. Those dreams and plans were rooted in interest, not responsibility. Now of course, becoming an astronaut at the age of 50 with no science education is unrealistic. But your dreams don’t have to be all or nothing and it’s not too late to make versions of those dreams happen. Not being an astronaut doesn’t mean you can’t get involved with space in some way. Just because you aren’t playing sports on a professional level doesn’t mean you can’t show up to a pick up game each week. Just because you didn’t make it to Broadway doesn’t mean you can’t audition in local productions.
How to pursue your purpose
Pursuing purpose looks different for everyone—maybe you want to build a company, hone a craft, save the planet, or help others. Whatever it is, this blog, although nascent, is dedicated to helping you redesign how you spend, eat, live, and travel so you can make space in your life for what matters most to you.
SPEND
Tighten up your spending to have a bigger savings buffer and more money to invest in your purpose.
Rethink your apartment costs
Stick to your budget
Don’t fall for fast fashion
Stop buying things that make you buy more things
Get in touch with reality and look back on how you spend your money
Plan ahead by defining your financial goals and start making progress now
EAT
Simplify your meal prep to have more time (and money) to invest in your purpose.
Make ahead breakfast: perfect hard boiled eggs, protein muffins, chia pudding
Quick lunch: ricotta toast, arugula salad, spinach sesame salad
Simple dinner: sheet pan butternut squash soup, one-pot pasta, one-pan sausage and brussels sprouts
LIVE
Organize your space and declutter to have more time to invest in your purpose.
Invest in a wall bed to make the most of your space
Become a minimalist with The Rule of Threes
Manage your energy
Love everything—even your sponge
Need more Ikigai inspo?
See how others are making space in their budgets, calendars, and homes to pursue their dreams.
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