Tracing the Edges of My Ikigai: What the World Needs, and What We Miss
An Ikigai reflection on people, systems, and wasted potential
Tracing the Edges of My Ikigai: Where I Feel Needed
I’ve been circling four Ikigai questions lately: what you love, what you’re good at, what the world needs, and what you can be paid for. The framework has four overlapping parts, and I’m writing through them one at a time, in the order they’re actually showing up for me.
If I’m being honest, I was most tempted to skip—or at least rush through the next one. What the world needs sounds a bit abstract to me, lofty, or even uncomfortably self-important. I can see how easy it could be to drift into platitudes and not stay grounded in actual lived experience.
As I mentioned in my previous post, before wrapping up work for the year I cleared my calendar and made myself available—to listen, without an agenda. Those conversations stayed with me. Not because they were dramatic, but because of how consistent they were. And the more conversations I had over the past few weeks with coworkers and friends, the harder it became to ignore this question.
I spoke to different people with different roles and at different stages of their lives. Yet most of them showed the same pattern—similar themes and undertones, all quietly questioning paths they once felt certain about.
People felt tired. People were searching for and craving work that feels meaningful—work that doesn’t just fill time or meet targets, but connects to who they are and what they care about.
And in many of those conversations, I found myself circling back to the same idea—sometimes explicitly, sometimes implicitly:
There’s a gap between what people are capable of and the environments they’re operating in.
If you’re honest, how often have you felt that gap yourself? That realization became the lens through which I approached the third quadrant of Ikigai: exploring how my strengths and passions align with the needs around me.
The questions
These were the five questions I sat with this time:
What problems in the world—or in my industry—do I feel most motivated to help solve?
What change would I most like to see in my team, my company, or my broader community?
If I could improve one thing about the systems I work in, what would it be?
What breaks my heart, but also makes me want to act rather than look away?
Who do I feel most called to help?
Once again, I took my time to reflect and think through them.
What surfaced
What emerged from my reflections and self-introspection wasn’t a desire to “fix the world” in any grandiose sense, but something more specific—and more familiar to me.
You see, from a very young age, I’ve been drawn to the idea of improving people’s lives. As a teenager thinking about college, I imagined becoming a scientist working on genetic therapies—ways to correct inherited diseases early enough that children wouldn’t have to carry them into adulthood.
This desire led me to enroll in a Biochemistry undergraduate program at Pace University and fueled the next four years of my life. It carried me through long days packed with lab work and advanced physics and chemistry courses—especially on the days when exhaustion and frustration made me want to give up. That instinct hasn’t disappeared. It’s simply changed shape.
Today, it shows up in my work through technology, automation, and leadership.
I’m motivated by problems that reduce human suffering—or at least human friction. Problems where complexity, bureaucracy, or poorly designed systems make people’s lives harder than they need to be. Problems where talented, curious people are stuck doing work that drains them instead of developing them.
In my own teams, the change I most want to see is deceptively simple: environments where creativity and persistence are rewarded, not crowded out. Where we automate the tedious so people can focus on the meaningful. Where releasing software isn’t an ordeal, but a reliable outcome of good systems and trust in the process. Where people are free to bring their best selves to work and collaborate and innovate without fear of ridicule or discouragement as they pursue their aspirations.
At an organizational level, I find myself increasingly uneasy with cultures that optimize for metrics at the expense of meaning.
When measurement becomes the goal, it stops being useful.
I’ve seen how easily output can replace outcome—and how quickly creativity erodes when people feel like interchangeable resources instead of humans with judgment and potential.
What breaks my heart most is wasted potential—because I’ve seen how quickly capable people begin to shrink when the system around them stops believing in them. One of my pet peeves is hearing engineers referred to as “resources.”
Talented engineers treated as cogs.
People stuck doing “grunt work” because no one invested in their growth.
Creativity stifled by rigid processes that value predictability over possibility.
Managers who never learned how to truly see or develop the people they lead.
And maybe hardest of all: people who internalize those environments and begin to believe that the ceiling they’re hitting is their own fault.
Who I feel called to help
When I stripped everything else away, this question became clearer than I expected.
I feel most called to help people who feel unseen or underestimated.
People who know there’s more they could do—but can’t quite access it where they are.
Engineers navigating career uncertainty.
Leaders who want to build better cultures but don’t know where to start.
People facing hard conversations, crossroads, or quiet self-doubt.
Not because I have all the answers—I don’t. But because I’ve spent much of my career sitting in those spaces with others, helping them untangle what’s happening and regain a sense of agency.
A short exercise, if you want to try this yourself
If you’re curious what this quadrant might surface for you, here’s a simple exercise you can do in a few quiet minutes.
Think back over the last few weeks and ask yourself:
What kinds of problems do people keep bringing to me?
When someone asks for my help, what are they usually stuck on?
What situations make me feel protective, frustrated, or quietly motivated to step in?
Who do I instinctively want to help—even when no one asks?
Don’t overthink the answers. Just write down whatever comes up. Don’t try to define your purpose yet. Just notice what keeps showing up—and write it down.
Sometimes that’s where “what the world needs” quietly begins.
Some early reflection
This quadrant made something else clear: much of what I find meaningful about my work has less to do with what I’m building and more to do with what kind of environments I’m helping create.
I strongly believe that the world doesn’t need more pressure, more dashboards, or more performative busyness. What it does need are spaces where people can think clearly, take risks, learn, and grow—without fear.
It needs leaders who care enough to slow down.
Systems that assume competence rather than mistrust.
And work that allows people to bring more of themselves, not less.
I don’t know yet what this means for the next year—or the next chapter. But naming it matters, because once something is named, it becomes possible to choose differently. Because it gives shape to the kind of work I want to say yes to—and the kind I want to walk away from.
What gives me hope is that these patterns are learnable—and changeable—once we’re willing to see them clearly.
There’s one quadrant left.
And it’s the one that forces everything else to reconcile with reality.
I’ll write about that next.