It’s More Than A Job: Step 5. Align Your Passions, Design Your Career

The Japanese concept of ikigai roughly translates to “a reason for being,” or something that gives a person a sense of purpose. Imagine a Venn diagram with four overlapping circles: 1) what you love doing, 2) what you are good at, 3) what the world needs, and 4) what you can get paid for. Ikigai would be at the center where all four things overlap. There are also various points when two or three of the circles overlap. Because there are so many diverse people analytics careers, skills, and applications, I believe there are numerous ways to tailor your path so that you might be able to find your People Analytics career ikigai.

What I also like about this concept is that it gives us a nice framework that we can use in our last set of self-discovery and exploration activities. We will use this concept in our final step, Step 5, to help you bring together the things you enjoy and are good at with the things that are needed and can be part of a paid career so that you can design a personalized career and development plan that will maximize the possibility for ikigai moments in your future.