Looking for your perfect job in product is a difficult balancing act – you want something that’s a challenge, a job that you can actually get with your experience (or by filling a few gaps in it), something that’s aligned with your personal vision and that pays the bills. Add to that the fact that no two product roles are ever the same, and the cultural differences between companies, and there’s a lot to consider when evaluating what you want your next step to be.

Helping people really understand what they want from their perfect product role is something our coaches find themselves doing a lot, and among the frameworks they use when working through this challenge is the concept of ikigai. In this article, we’ll explore what ikigai is, how it can be useful to product folks, and how you can use it to get clear on what factors contribute to your perfect product role.

What is ikigai?

Simply put, ikigai is the feeling of accomplishment and fulfillment you get when you pursue your passion and are rewarded for it.

It’s a tricky concept to explain fully but roughly speaking, in the context of work, it means striking a balance of doing something:

• you love
• that the world needs
• that you can be paid for
• that you are good at.

People often visualize it in a Venn diagram as below.

Why is it useful?

Aside from the claimed health benefits (the area of Japan it originates from has people who are typically long-lived and with low instances of heart disease), ikigai simply provides an effective method for thinking about what it is that makes a job a great fit for you. It encourages you to use four fundamental questions to help you find your calling in life;

• What do I love?
• What am I good at?
• What can I be paid for?
• What does the word need?

These questions are a pretty effective checklist for evaluating jobs, whether you believe in the other benefits of ikigai or not.

How do I do it?

Strictly speaking, the pursuit of ikigai is a lifelong process, but that doesn’t mean that it takes a lifetime to start delivering value. In fact, you can get started quickly and, given that we’re all product managers here, we’ve come up with a canvas you can use to guide your thinking.

So, here’s how to start using the principles of ikigai to find your product passion.

Before you start

If you’ve not done so, yet, it’s useful to understand more about what you value personally going into the process. If you’ve not done it yet, you can write a personal vision statement using the instructions in this article.

Step 1: Analyze the jobs you are interested in

Go online and find some jobs that interest you – they don’t need to be perfect, just have something in them that makes them attractive to you. Download the job descriptions or copy-paste them into a document so you can refer back to them.

See if you can do some informational interviews with people who do the kinds of jobs you are interested or who work in similar roles in the companies you are interested in. People tend to be pretty open to this if you make it clear you’re not trying to sell them anything or get them to give you a job.

Step 2: Make an affinity map

Once you’ve got all your job descriptions and interview notes in one place, get some sticky notes (or a virtual whiteboard like Miro or Mural) and make a note of  each of the key pieces of information from the job descriptions and interview notes (one piece of info per note).

Group these into themes so you can start understanding what the common threads are across all the jobs. For more tips on affinity mapping check out our article on using affinity maps.

Step 3: Start defining your ikigai

Now that you have the key elements of the roles picked out, you can start applying them to the areas of the ikigai Venn diagram. Use the ikigai canvas below to help if you want a little more structure.

Think deeply about the following questions and refer back to your sticky notes to help you answer.

• What do I love?
• What am I good at?
• What can I be paid for?
• What does the word need?

Then annotate the diagram with your answers. If you need a little extra help understanding what you are good at, use the skills and experience box on the canvas to map out what your dream jobs need vs. what you know you can do already. This is one of the areas of the process where you’ll benefit from an outside opinion from a peer or coach.

In summary

Whether or not you choose to use the ikigai canvas, the simple act of considering the four areas of ikigai often brings people a perspective they hadn’t thought of before when looking for what suits them in a product role.

It’s also a useful activity to do if you’re not feeling fulfilled in your current role and might help you find some inspiration for ways to make your job more rewarding.

If you feel like you would like more help making the next step in your product career, we are currently offering free coaching consultations to people who are a good fit for our career coaching program. You can find more information and apply for your free consultation here.