Ikigai
Stacking Skills
When I walked into the Marine Recruiter’s office and told him I wanted to join, he pulled out numerous brochures outlining all the hundreds of military occupational specialties (jobs) available. Fortunately, I knew exactly what I wanted to do—infantry.
We don’t all have the same opportunity when deciding how to make a living. Often, we choose out of necessity—the need to pay the bills—and eventually, we can get stuck in a profession that we aren’t all that into.
You may be familiar with the Japanese concept of Ikigai.
I’ve talked about it here before. It’s a great way to find a niche for yourself. In a nutshell, it is a four-circle Venn diagram that asks you to focus on things that:
A: You are good at
B: The world needs
C: You love to do
D: People will pay you for
You have found your perfect career when you find something that rests at the center of these four circles.
There are a few problems with this methodology.
It can be hard to find something that fits all four criteria.
While you might find something that fits and that people will pay for, they might not pay enough for your hand-crafted cheese boards for you to live the life you have envisioned for yourself.
To become good enough to charge what you are worth, you must devote a lot of practice, which can be challenging when you have real-world bills to pay.
This is not a reason to avoid going through the Ikigai exercise and finding your perfect niche. If you work to improve your skills, with time, you can make a living you are satisfied with.
Another way to look at the problem is in Scott Adams' book How to Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big.
Adams talks about the concept of skill stacking. In his case, in the “I’m good at and love to do circles,” he didn’t have any one thing that overlapped with the other two circles, but he felt that he was funnier than the average person and could draw better than the average. He had also worked at numerous failed jobs in corporate America, which left him with a giant repository of things to make fun of.
By stacking these skills, he went on to create the comic strip Dilbert.
So, instead of focusing on the one thing you are best at, consider all the things you are pretty good at. Look for the intersections that can help you create a niche of one.
Until next week,
Keep Walking Point
John
If you have any questions or feedback about today's newsletter or if you'd just like to reach out, email me at john@walkingpoint.org. I’ll do my best to respond as quickly as possible.
