#22 Ikigai

Ikigai: The reason you wake up in the morning. 

Stumbled upon the audiobook of Ikigai The Japanese Secret to a Long and Happy Life. 

Went on to find out more about what other people have to say about it.

In an article by Thomas Oppong, he mentioned, 

According to author Dan Buettner, the concept of ikigai is not exclusive to Okinawans: "there might not be a word for it but in all four blue zones such as Sardinia and Nicoya Peninsula, the same concept exists among people living long lives."

Buettner suggests making three lists: your values, things you like to do, and things you are good at. The cross section of the three lists is your ikigai.

Ikigai is seen as the convergence of four primary elements: 

• What you love (your passion)
• What the world needs (your mission)
• What you are good at (your vocation)
• What you can get paid for (your profession)

Want to find your ikigai? 

Thoman Oppong also indicated four guiding questions. 

1. What do I love? 

2. What am I good at?

3. What can I be paid for now - or something that could transform into my future hustle? 

4. What does the world need? 

To find out the ten rules that can help you find your ikigai, go check out the full article. 

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Also stumbled upon a random article I love while drafting up this post. 

Haikal Kushahrin talked about Ikigai, Why you should read hard books, and When starting, focus on quantity, not quality. 

I especially love the part about focusing on quantity, not quality. 

He referred to Ali Abdaal too! 

The pottery story goes like this...

One day, a pottery teacher decides to split his class into two groups. Group A had to make a pot every day for 30 days (so 30 pots in total) whereas Group B had to work on a single pot for the whole 30 days. At the end of the month, the pottery teacher had to grade the quality of the pots. The top 10 pots came from Group A, the students that had to make one pot a day. None came form the group that focused on perfecting their single pot. 

Ali added: 

"My advice is to always focus on quantity over quality, at least for the first few years. Want to get better at photography? Take 10,000 photos. Learning how to cook? Try 100 recipes. Video editing? Make 100 videos. At the end of that (and with a few YouTube tutorials sprinkled in for good measure), it's hard to not be significantly better. 

Aiming for quantity has another benefit - it stops the fear of "what if this isn't good enough?" from paralysing us. We accept that as beginners, we're going to suck and that's okay...

So if you're starting a new hobby over summer, or trying to improve your skills at pretty much anything, this is something I hope you'll find useful. I certainly have :) " 

Definitely good advice to go back to whenever I find myself stuck with my writing. 

Thank you Haikal and Ali! 

That's all for today, see you tomorrow!