How to Find The Perfect Career

We spend almost 25 percent of our adult life in our jobs, which most of us hate. So we basically wake up every morning and do something which we don’t even like to do.

We need to find a career that does not make us miserable all the time, and according to the Japanese concept of IKIGAI, it is the intersection of three things:

1. What we value.
2. What we are good at.
3. What the world values.

What we are passionate about is often superficial, but what we value, we can do no matter how difficult the circumstances, because we derive meaning and value from it. It is different from a compulsion or an addiction.

We need to ask three questions to direct our energy:

1. What big problem exists that people don’t care enough about?
2. What problems do you enjoy tackling just for fun, but others don’t?
3. What do you naturally start to do when left on your own?

To find a perfect career, we need to be good at what we do. It may be a technical skill like writing or coding, or something different, like designing homes, or cooking.

Intangible soft skills, ignored for decades, have now become important. These include emotional intelligence, empathy or making boring topics sound interesting.

• What we like doing is a hobby, but if it is valued by the world, it becomes a career.
• We can figure out our strengths and what we value, and look for commercial opportunities that align with our working styles and quirks.
• We all have our own preferences and working styles, like the desired level of freedom, what we get paid, and how respected we feel.
• We can also be an entrepreneur and create opportunities where the current market or level of interest is under-serving, filling the gap left by others.