Ikigai and Meaningful Work

The American author Mark Twain once said, "Find a job you enjoy doing, and you will never have to work a day in your life."  While I understand the sentiment, I am not sure that I fully agree.  Some of us our lucky enough in life to have a job, career, or profession (and I do think that the three of these are all different - more on that shortly) that we enjoy - maybe even love.  Even those of us who are lucky to be in that situation will have days (or weeks) that we really just don't want to go to work.  We will likely even have days where we will come home at the end of the day and say, "I had a miserable day at work."  We may even occasionally say, "I hate my job."  What's important in the end is that the good days outnumber the bad days.

As I wrote in my post, "Are you happy?", which I based on the wonderful book by the Harvard Business School professor Arthur C. Brooks and Oprah Winfrey, Build the Life You Want, happiness is not a destination.  It's a direction.  People can even be happy and unhappy at the same time.  Happiness is not the opposite of unhappiness.  They are two distinct emotions.  I think the same is true when it comes to work - you can be happy with work and unhappy at the same time.  Our happiness at work will depend upon having (1) a sense of purpose, (2) a sense of community (i.e. the personal connections that we have with our co-workers), and (3) a sense that we are valued.  Similarly, as I wrote in my post, "The Five Pillars of Happiness", whether we our work is meaningful is also important.  Again, Arthur Brooks defines meaningful work as work that yields both earned success, which he defines as a sense of accomplishing something valuable and work that involves service to others.

As I mentioned above, I agree with many others that having a job, career, or profession means three different things.  Simply stated, a job is a specific position of employment or task that someone is paid to perform, a career is the progression of jobs and roles throughout one's working life, and a profession is a career that requires specialized knowledge and training, often with ethical standards and societal respect.  Importantly, we can be happy at our job, career, or profession, as long as we have the three senses of purpose, community, and value discussed above!

Lastly, you've probably read articles or posts on the Japanese concept of ikigai.  The Japanese word ikigai has no direct English translation, but it roughly means "the thing that you live for" or "the reason for which you get up in the morning."  Ikigai is the intersection, overlap, or common ground between (a) what you love, (b) what you are good at, (c) what the world needs, and (d) what you can get paid for:

I think we all strive to find ikigai.  However, I think ikigai is an ideal that is close to perfection.  The legendary NFL football coach Vince Lombardi once said, "Perfection is not attainable, but if we chase perfection we can catch excellence."  To that, I would say, ikigai may not be attainable for all of us, but if we strive for ikigai, we may find meaningful work, as defined by Arthur Brooks.  And that is probably more than enough!