Tracing the Edges of My Ikigai
Photo by Acy Ian Malimban on Unsplash
The end of the year is quickly approaching, and this is the season when people managers get busy completing performance reviews for the engineers who report to them. Some organizations do this once a year; here, we do it every quarter. As I’ve been having these conversations—talking with my team about what excites them about the year ahead, what their goals might be, and what their aspirations look like—the word Ikigai has surfaced more than once.
Not everyone is familiar with the term, and until recently, neither was I. I read a couple of books about it earlier this year, but it had never really taken hold as something I actively used for self-reflection. Ikigai is a Japanese concept that roughly translates to “a reason for being.” At its core, it represents the intersection of four essential elements:
What you love
What you are good at
What the world needs
What you can be paid for
If you imagine four overlapping circles—one for each of these elements—your Ikigai sits at the center where they all meet. The idea is that this intersection can point toward a fulfilling and meaningful life and career.
As these conversations with my associates unfolded, I decided, for the first time, to turn this framework inward and use it to prepare for my own end-of-year review. I wanted to be ready—truly ready—to engage in those deeper, more philosophical, career-defining conversations. So I created an exercise for myself: twenty questions, designed to help me explore these four dimensions of Ikigai. I didn’t want quick, one-line answers. I wanted to sit with each question and really think through what was true for me.
That process took time—but it paid off in ways I didn’t expect. Writing forced me to slow down. As I captured my thoughts on paper, ideas began to solidify. Patterns emerged. And in the middle of that reflection, something unexpected happened: I found myself drafting the first version of a personal manifesto—something I’ve wanted to do for years but never quite made time for.
What I want to share today is just the first quadrant of that exercise: what I love —the things that bring me joy, the activities that energize me, and the moments when I feel most alive.
These were the five questions I asked myself:
What activities make you lose track of time because you enjoy them so much?
What topics or skills do you naturally gravitate toward in your free time?
What did you love doing as a child or teenager that you might have forgotten?
What kinds of conversations excite or energize you the most?
When do you feel most like your authentic self?
And here are my unfiltered answers—captured as honestly as I could.
From a work perspective, I light up when I can learn new technologies with my hands on the keyboard—building tools, libraries, and systems that automate or simplify otherwise tedious tasks. I love taking those tools and shaping them into something that others can use, then writing documentation and guides that lower the barrier to entry. I can lose hours doing this without noticing the time.
The same is true when I get to translate something complex into something understandable. Predicting where someone might get stuck, removing friction, guiding them toward success—this is deeply energizing for me.
The topics I naturally gravitate toward include history, literature, science, leadership, writing, automation, and programming—especially Go, Rust and Python.
As a kid, I watched a lot of sci-fi. These days, that time has mostly shifted to reading—which doesn’t feel like a loss to me. In the same way, my social life didn’t disappear when I became a husband and a father of three; it simply reshaped itself around a different set of priorities. I still deeply value connection, especially the kind that comes from talking shop with people who are on fire about what they do—astronomy, science, engineering, even sports.
What’s changed is access. At the senior-manager level, many people have naturally moved away from daily hands-on technical work, while the deepest pool of raw curiosity and unbridled enthusiasm often lives with individual contributors. At the same time, the title I carry can unintentionally create distance. A senior manager showing up to “talk shop” can feel intimidating, even when the intent is genuine curiosity. So the circle of people I can freely explore ideas with—the way I once did as a peer—has grown smaller. And I feel that absence more as a shift in terrain than as a loss of desire.
The conversations that energize me most today are rooted in curiosity—discussions with people who care deeply about what they do, who have growth mindsets, and who are willing to explore ideas beyond the surface.
And when do I feel most like my authentic self? In small, informal spaces with shared values. Coffee shops. Bookstores. Quiet corners for honest conversation. Large conferences often feel overwhelming by comparison—more performance than presence.
After capturing all of this, I decided to run my responses through an AI tool to help summarize the underlying themes. The results honestly surprised me. What came back felt uncannily accurate:
I am energized by hands-on creation and deep learning
I thrive on experimentation, iteration, and problem-solving
I’m driven by craftsmanship and discovery
I find meaning in teaching and removing obstacles for others
My curiosity stretches beyond engineering into broader intellectual territory
I value depth over breadth, authenticity over performance, connection over networking
Five core motifs stood out:
I love building things and explaining them
I see technology as part of a wider intellectual universe
I take pride in turning confusion into understanding
I thrive around people who share curiosity and passion
My ideal environments are warm, conversational, and creative
Seeing all of this laid out was both affirming and clarifying. It validated what I already sensed about myself—and also forced me to reflect on some of the choices I’ve made this year, especially around the teams I build and the environments I place myself in. Much of it aligns. Some of it invites adjustment.
There are still three more quadrants to explore—fifteen more questions in total. But even this first section made a difference. When I sat down to write my self-assessment for the quarter and outline my aspirations for what comes next, the answers flowed more easily. I could see, much more clearly, the environments where I thrive—the places where my own Ikigai begins to take shape.
If this kind of reflection resonates with you, I’d be happy to share the remaining questions and insights as I work through them. And if you’re curious to see the early draft of my personal manifesto that emerged from this process, check my About page.