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:
- Are you doing something that you love?
- Are you doing something that you are good at?
- Are you doing something that you can get paid for?
- 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:
- What data scientists love doing?
- What are DS good at? Critical thinking, driving product vision with influencing skills, being curious and asking tough questions
- What does the world need? Those who can bring value to data, suicide prevention, child trafficking, covid trends
- Yes you can be paid as a DS
To let you know that yes, through this path you can find Ikigai!