Freelancers’ Guide to Ikigai: Finding your Freelancing Purpose

Sometimes less is more. 

As a freelancer, it’s so easy to feel overwhelmed and unfocussed. With an endless to-do list, how do you know where to start?

Usually this is simply because you’re trying to do too much, or you’re not clear on what you actually should be doing. 

It’s a painful truth that you can’t do everything. So identifying what you should be doing becomes critical.

It’s common for freelancers to try and be all things to all people. But doing this will inevitably leave you spread too thin. It’s best to focus on what you are passionate about, where you can make a real impact and where you can actually earn money, so you can live a comfortable life too.

This is where the Ikigai concept comes in.

Ikigai guide for freelancers

What is Ikigai?

Ikigai is a Japanese philosophy which – similar to the Danish concept of hygge – is not really possible to neatly translate directly into one word. 

The term ikigai was formed from the combination of the words iki, “to live, life”, and kai, which means “an effect, a result”.

So the idea is to have a sense of purpose. A meaningful direction for your life, and a reason for being. 

There are many good explanations of the concept. But our favourite is the following – it’s your reason to jump out of the bed each morning.

It has been widely associated with long life expectancy of residents on the Japanese island Okinawa, where the concept originated.

Learning more about Ikigai, and implementing the concept can be your formula to a happier life in all areas. In the last section of this article we will list some of our favourite resources, which will help you to dive deeper into this concept.

Using Ikigai to give your Freelancing a Purpose

The idea is beautifully simple. To feel happy and fulfilled in your career, it’s important to combine four elements in your work:

  • PASSIONwhat you love
  • VOCATIONwhat you’re good at
  • PROFESSIONwhat people will pay you for
  • MISSIONwhat the world needs

Aim to focus your work by hitting the sweet spot in the middle of all of these areas – like in the diagram:

Ikigai is where the four parts of a fulfilled, meaningful life come together. It’s a combination of what you’re good at, what people are happy to pay you for, and what can benefit the world in general.

How to approach finding your Ikigai

For some, it might take time and effort to find their Ikigai. For others it will it come easily – but it’s important to start thinking about it.

To help you get started with your ikigai search, here are some steps that we recommend you take – once you get your feet wet, it will be easier.

Be patient, give yourself time, and take it one step at a time.

Step 1: Start with Questions

As we explained above, your Ikigai is an intersection of what you love to do, what you’re good at, what people will pay you for and what the world needs. So getting to the core of each of these elements is crucial.

To help you dive deep into discovering each of the elements for you, here are some questions that can guide you, inspired by the questions on this nice guide to Ikigai:

PASSION – what you love to do

  • If you didn’t have to worry about making money, what would you do?
  • What can you enthusiastically talk about for hours?
  • What do you get excited about and what gets your creative juices flowing when you do it?
  • If you had a long free weekend with no commitments, what would you spend it doing?

VOCATION – what you are good at

  • Think about what parts of your current work you are effortlessly good at – what comes easily to you?
  • What are you among the best in your community and/or your workspace at?
  • With some more experience and/or education, could you be among the best at what you do?

PROFESSION – what people will pay you for

  • Are you already making a good living doing something?
  • If not, could you make a good living doing it?
  • Have you ever been paid for what you do? If not, are there other people who are getting paid for it?
  • Is there a demand for what you want to do?
  • Are other people making a successful living doing something similar?

MISSION – what the world needs

  • Are there problems in your society would you like to help solve?
  • What issues in your community and/or in the world upset you the most?
  • Will your work still be relevant a decade from now?
  • Which charities do you donate to? Could you help this cause with your work?
  • What would you take a stand for?

Don’t feel like you have to reply to all of the questions above – they are just a way to help you get the ball rolling, so feel free to skip, or add any questions that would be helpful to you.

And take your time with this step – this is not something you should finish in half an hour.

Rather, dedicate some time over the next few days to think about them.

What we would recommend is to go for a walk in nature and think about one element at the time – it can help you have a clear mind and find your answers more efficiently!

Step 2: Put it down on paper

Once you’ve finished the first step, it’s time to map out all of the elements and find what intersects.

It can really help to present it visually – by using a venn diagram, quadrants, or anything else you prefer visually.

When you put it down like this, you can then start to organise your thoughts and answers, and start connecting them.

A good exercise that can help here is visualising what your “average perfect day” would look like.

Think about what your perfect version of a typical workday could be and describe it in as many details as you can. It doesn’t matter if it feels unrealistic at the moment – when you write it down you can start taking steps, no matter how big or small, that will put you closer to your perfect average day.

As this is something that you should refer to often as you take the next steps, make sure that you save the chart you have created. It’s always a good thing to revisit in the future, to remind yourself of why you’re doing what you’re doing.

Also, remember that we are constantly evolving – so it’s very normal that you might add things to your map, and take away others over time.

Step 3: How does it make you feel?

Now that you have a map and probably more than one direction in which you could go, it’s time to check in with yourself and see how each road makes you feel.

Here’s an exercise that explains what we mean.

Use your map and put down three different versions of your potential Ikigai:

  • Ikigai Version 1: this should be your current road – the work you are doing, your lifestyle, relationships
  • Ikigai Version 2 and 3: these should be roads you would take if money, peer pressure and people’s opinion didn’t matter; they include your visions of an ideal day, and intersections of your four Ikigai elements

Now, go through each of these versions and rank how much it fit to your life, work and world perspective and viewpoints. How much do you like each version of your Ikigai? How confident do you feel about each of them?

Step 4: Try it in a real world

Once you have defined your Ikigai, you have to start acting on it. If your Ikigai is completely different to your current work and life, start making small changes, build new habits, and stick with them.

For example, if you are a virtual assistant who wants to become a food photographer, start taking photography courses after work. If you can’t invest in a course, there are plenty of great YouTube videos that you can watch for free – so you can’t make any excuse.

Start saving money to buy a camera, but until then use any camera you have to snap photos – there are many things you can practice, like composition, that don’t require you to have the best camera. 

Have in mind that your Ikigai is not written in the stone – be flexible, and if something doesn’t feel right, go back to your chart and change it.

Share your Ikigai with like-minded people

Implementing your Ikigai will require a lot of discipline and consistent work, as you might need to learn new skills,  build new habits and, more importantly, stick to them. That’s why accountability is the last step here.

Everything is easier if you are surrounded by like-minded people who understand your situation and struggles. Joining a community and having other people keep you accountable in order to help you implement your Ikigai is important.

That’s why we’d like to invite you to our private Facebook group, where you can surround yourself with fellow freelancers who can hold you accountable and support you in any way they can.

Useful resources:

Ikigai: The Japanese secret to a long and happy life by Hector Garcia and Francesc Miralles

If you want to explore the Ikigai concept in more depth, and apply it to other aspects of your life – not just your career – then this is the book to read

It will help you discover your reason to “jump out of the bed each morning” and find flow in everything you do.

Other

How to find and do what you love by Chris Do is a great video where the design master explains how creative freelancers can use Ikigai to find their freelance calling.

You can follow along with the video to find your Ikigai, and we’ve even provided a free Ikigai template here – which you can download to get started.

How experts figure what to focus is an insightful article by James Clear that gives great advice on ‘cutting the fat’ and deciding what to focus on as a freelancer. 

It also gives tips on how to actually find what comes easily to you –  give it a read, and try to combine it with your Ikigai thoughts.


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