Charting a Path Forward with a Renewed Focus
In Japan, there’s a concept called Ikigai. It refers to something that gives a person a sense of purpose or reason for living.
If you haven’t heard of the name, you may have seen a graphic that looks something like this:
I love the idea of Ikigai. I believe that we all have an inherent desire to find our calling. But more than the concept itself, I appreciate how this framework is visualized.
A few years ago, I spent a lot of time thinking about this graphic. At the time, I felt lost in life. I was directionless, aimlessly searching for my own purpose. I thought that if I could find my calling — the one perfect thing that met each of those four criteria — I could magically align all of my goals and live a fulfilled life.
This effort was incredibly frustrating. I could never narrow down my interests enough to find the one thing that could sit at the center of the Venn diagram. My list of interests was too long, and nothing stood out as head-and-shoulders above the rest.
It took me a long time to realize that being interested in many things was okay and that nothing was wrong with me. I didn’t need to narrow my life down to a singular purpose.
I’ve moved on from specifically thinking about the Ikigai, but I still occasionally think about the framework depicted by the image above. As a data and strategy professional, I have a soft spot for good visualizations that simply convey complex topics. This graphic does that particularly well.
I’ve had this concept in mind as I’ve done some self-reflective exercises over the past year. However, rather than try to narrow down my interests to a singular topic, I listed the many areas of my life where I wanted to focus my energies. For each of the items on my list, I evaluated each closely to find commonalities and prioritize them effectively.
I found it to be a useful exercise that has helped to organize my thinking more effectively. Other than a few outliers, most of the interests on my list fell into the following three categories: Personal Growth and Self-Development, Business and Technology, and Strategy and Games. I’ll elaborate somewhat on each.
Personal Growth & Self-Development
After I turned 40, I increased my focus on self-development. You can call it a mid-life crisis. But I prefer to look at it as gaining more clarity on life, focusing on what I can control and prioritizing being the best possible version of me. I kept asking myself, “How can I become a better person in all areas of life?” While this has been an ongoing process, it has helped me to grow considerably. I started to worry less about comparing myself to others and more about “running my own race.”
Business & Technology
While many know me through poker, I have a professional career that has spanned 20+ years in a variety of marketing, technology, and data roles. I am currently a Vice President of Analytics for a sales and marketing consulting firm. Through this, I get to work with companies across many industries and learn a lot about the strategic decisions these firms make. I am fascinated with business strategy and, specifically, how data and technology influence how companies go to market and evolve over time. While I’m no Ben Thompson, I have perspective on many related topics that I think about all the time.
Games & Strategy
I love playing games. For as long as I can remember, I have enjoyed competing against others. From a young age, I found that strategy came intuitively to me. I thought about the tactics I could implement to win against others in competition. It didn’t matter if it was baseball or Uno. I wanted to win and I looked for a way to outsmart my opponents to do so. I don’t know if I was destined to play poker or if that was just my entry into game theory, but I fell in love with that game in college and have never lookd back. As I’ve learned more, I constantly find concepts within the game that are applicable in many areas of life. I continue to be fascinated by different phenomena in life that can be described through a poker analogy.
As a part of my own growth, I started implementing the following general approach into my life this year:
Do things that challenge you. Write about your ideas and experiences.
I have a tendency to stay within my comfort zone. By doing so, I don’t stretch myself as often as I should. That limits my ability to grow. Prioritizing trying things that challenge me is a way for me to avoid stagnation.
Going back to the three categories of interest from above, most of my activities fall in one of these buckets. The things that challenge me are the practices I’ve implemented in each area. To name a few, here are some of the regular projects, habits, or topic areas for each:
Personal Growth & Development — workout programs, journaling, Stoicism
Business & Technology — marketing, analytics, AI
Games & Strategy — poker, game theory
Some of these practices have been a part of my life for years. Others are relatively new to my life. Journaling, for example, stems from the second part of my life approach — writing about my ideas and experiences.
While my journaling habit is a private exercise, it has been helpful for me to develop my thoughts. I’ve decided that I’d like to continue to push myself in this space and formalize these thoughts more fully so that I’m able to share them here.
Flipping the Ikigai framework from above and using my areas of interest as the circles, I’ve put the graphic together below:
As you can see, the three areas from above are the various ways that I spend a majority of my time. I’ve put the URL for this website to signify that the focus for this website going forward will be writings at the intersection of these areas.
I plan to write about my own curiosities, explore my interests, and share my thoughts throughout that journey.
So what should you expect? If you sign up for my mailing list, you'll receive new posts directly in your inbox. My 2024 goal is to write something approximately monthly. I think that’s a reasonable cadence, although the specifics may change throughout the year. Some may come more frequently, some less.
Topics may vary, but they will all loosely fit into one or more of the categories above and be tagged as such.
I don’t quite know where this will lead me. While I have a long list of potential topics I have started or plan to write about, I’m not operating off a concrete plan. I’ll experiment with many different things and follow my interests where they take me.
Ultimately, I want to revitalize Lukich.io as a place where I share my own journeys through life.
To follow along, sign up for the mailing list. You can also follow my poker work at Solver School by signing up for the mailing list there. You can also follow me on Twitter for occasional short-form updates.
Thanks for reading.
-Lukich