Do you know about Ikigai?

I like to use Hive as a diary - to some extent. However, i don't read a lot about personal anecdotes around here. Something that I like reading a lot is about people's ambitions and purpose in life. That got me thinking that there is a term I like to follow and always keep in mind. The term is Ikigai.

For those who are not familiar with the term, Ikigai is a Japanese concept that refers to something that gives a person a sense of purpose or reason for living. It's quite a beautiful term if you think about it.

In order to understand whether you have Ikigai or not, you can simply answer yourself these four questions:

1. Are you doing something that you love?
2. Are you doing something that you are good at?
3. Are you doing something that you can get paid for?
4. Are you doing something that the world needs?

I always try to think about whether people actually have Ikigai or not. And I am always trying to answer those questions to myself. I do believe in this term to actually feel happy. I think happiness is highly related with self-actualization, which is related to sense of purpose.

This is also very much related to what you do on a daily basis, and majority of us we obviously just work most part of the day. This is why I always try to mentor about Ikigai to my Data Science mentees. So I always translate the questions to:

1. What data scientists love doing?
2. What are DS good at? Critical thinking, driving product vision with influencing skills, being curious and asking tough questions
3. What does the world need? Those who can bring value to data, suicide prevention, child trafficking, covid trends
4. Yes you can be paid as a DS

To let you know that yes, through this path you can find Ikigai!