Ikigai Ruined My Life

A frustrating needless reduction of life purpose for Octopus generalists

If you’ve done any kind of work on yourself, you have likely come across Ikigai. It’s a Venn diagram with concentric circles that supposedly help you figure out your “Ikigai”, which can be translated a few different ways depending who you ask, but it roughly translates to “life meaning”, “life purpose”, or “reason for being”.

Nothing wrong with that, nearly everyone comes to a point in their life where they wrestle with these existential questions, myself included. When I first encountered this diagram I thought it was quite interesting. I tried to fill it out, but could not find something in my life that landed in the center. I could not find my “Ikigai”.

As an Octopus Generalist, this diagram frankly had the opposite effect, it was paralyzing. It made me miserable, and I wasted a lot of time trying to figure it out. Why don’t I have an Ikigai? What is my “one thing” at the center of my universe that meets all these criteria? I thought about it a few different ways, but ended up giving up in frustration.

The concept of Ikigai is quite admirable. Doesn’t everyone want a "reason to exist”? It’s a central question of humanity, so any attempts to answer it are welcome by nearly everyone.

As I looked deeper into the origins of Ikigai, what I found was quite surprising, and frankly upsetting. The popular Venn diagram in use today was actually never even part of Ikigai. It was created by a Spanish astrologist named Andres Zuzunaga. Marc Winn, an innovation consultant, then married the Venn diagram with the Japanese concept of Ikigai, and it just took off from there.

But where did Ikigai itself come from? The earliest attribution I could find was a book written by Mieko Kamiya called On the Meaning of Life. It turns out this book contains no such diagram. In fact it doesn’t even contain the concepts in the diagram.

Instead she talks about 7-8 general principles for finding meaning in life, that do not necessarily intersect, and they absolutely do not require you to find a central “Ikigai” in the middle of it all.

Here I re-envision Kamiya’s Ikigai principles onto the Octopus framework:

When viewed this way, don’t you feel a sense of freedom vs. the Venn diagram version? There’s no need to wreck your mind trying to find some central reason to exist at the intersection of these ideas. They can all be part of your life.

I even mapped the Venn version concepts onto the Octopus Framework, and renamed it “Octogai”. Which I translate (loosely just for fun) into “multiple purposes”. Now how does it feel?

Isn’t it nice to separate the ideas out this way? You might volunteer doing something the world needs, but there’s no pressure to get paid. You might do a day job that does pay you, that you consider your profession. You might love dogs, and it’s your mission to rescue them. When viewed this way, you are free to utilize 1 or more of these noble principles and apply them flexibly in whatever way you see fit.

You can even make your own version of Octogai, and populate it with things that are important to you. Here’s mine:

I made a PDF of this that you can download and fill out.

Isn’t this more fun and freeing than the Venn diagram? Stop trying to find your “one thing”, especially if you consider yourself a generalist. Like an Octopus forced to live with 7 tentacles tied behind its back, you are artificially constraining your life.

Free your mind. Think like an Octopus, and you will enjoy your “reason for being” much more.

Sayonara,

Dave