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Accidental Ikigai
or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love My Work

Mike Bechtel Follow
Jan 2 · 6 min read

(as originally published in inc. magazine)

Credit: Dreamstime via Toronto Star

I recently received an invitation to deliver a speech to a conference full

of young adults. The topic: ‘Preparing for Professional Life’.

This struck me as patently vague, but interesting and in my

wheelhouse, considering some of my recent work on career
management.

I hopped on the horn with the event planner to see if she might help me
tighten up my slippery grip on the topic.

“Happily.” She said. “Speci cally, we’re looking for someone to give
them a point of view as to what matters most… as they prepare for
professional life.”

Me (now awash in twice the ambiguity): “…”

Her: “It is of course a paid speaking engagement.”

I said what any self-respecting entrepreneur would: “Happy to help.”

1. Follow the Money
“If there’s a steady paycheck in it, I’ll believe anything you say.”
~Winston Zeddemore

1994: As the rst person in my family to attend college, I was light on

rich uncles to help me ‘prepare for professional life’. Working class kids
like me were relegated to the freshman guidance counselor, a public
defender of sorts.

“I’m good at math and science, but I really love the humanities. I’m
con icted.” I confessed.

The counselor nodded appreciatively. “Well, our engineering

undergrads typically start at $45k. Our humanities majors typically go
to grad school, which itself costs about $45k.”

This sounded less than awesome.

Seeing my scowl, she o ered: “I’d also add that it’s easier to drop out of
engineering than into it.”

And so began my rst semester as an electrical engineer.

Exercise: Figure out what the world wants. What the market demands.
Google up a list of today’s most lucrative professions, or better still,
some research on tomorrow’s emerging global needs. Here’s a quick,
o -the-cu list I threw together:

2. Follow Your Interests

“Pleasure in the job puts perfection in the work” ~Aristotle

Clearly, good old Ari must’ve gotten a look at my lousy engineering

grades.
Looking back, my freshman year ame-out should have been obvious: I
simply couldn’t get excited enough about the material to really give a
rip. Worse, the 200 other students in my freshman physics class who
did appear engaged left me feeling alone to boot.

My calculus professor, looking to put re in our jets, said: “Look to the

student on your left and your right. Odds are, neither of them will be
here next semester.” Not one to question a mathematician’s mastery of
probabilities, I promptly dropped into the College of Arts & Letters and
never looked back.

Interests Exercise: What are you pumped about? What res you up?
Make a quick list of activities, hobbies, or topics that you tend to seek
out in your free time. Things that you’d spend time on even if you
weren’t paid to. Here are some of mine:

3. Follow Your Skills

“Whatever you are, be a good one.” ~William Thackeray

1997: My liberal arts education was everything I’d hoped for, but it
wasn’t exactly raining anthropology jobs. Most of the decent-paying
gigs were strictly limited to Finance, Accounting, and (of course)
Engineering majors. I felt stuck. And guilty.

Then there was something called Consulting. They’d interview

anybody. What’s their deal?

“Consultants help other companies.” said my friend Mark, himself a

biology and theology major who’d had an IT consulting interview that
morning.

“I like to be helpful.” I o ered. “Do they need anthropologists?

Economists? Philosophers?”
“Uh maybe… They say they’re looking for a certain kind of thinker as
opposed to any one major.”

“I’m a certain kind of thinker!” I said, as I raced out the door to the
campus barbershop to begin the process of aggressively selling out.

Those interviews with BigTime Consulting were amazing. As far as I

could tell, they were looking for two totally unrelated bags of skills:

1. Smooth Talkers
2. Geeks

I explained to several bemused interviewers that I was, in fact, the

smoothest geek on campus. I told vivid tales of co-founding a popular
campus rock band (smooth!) that played songs about the Commodore
64 personal home computer (geek!). Of having proactively mastered
the accordion (geek!) the impress my Polish-American girlfriend and
her family (smooth!). Of my forays into self-taught web development in
the campus computer cluster between hosting Doom II LAN parties.

I was convinced the executives were passing me through the process on

a dare. (e.g., “Jane: I put accordion guy in your queue for grins and
giggles. Cheers, Brad”)

To my surprise and delight, I was not only hired, but ultimately found
“my people” in a technology innovation group that proved an unlikely
home for both my STEM skills and my creative/liberal arts mojo.

Skills Exercise: Momentarily suspend your humility: What sets you

apart? What are you complimented on? What comes most naturally?
These are your superpowers. List them out. Here are some of mine:

4. Follow Your Values

“If everyone acted the way you do, would the world be a better place?”
~Chuck Templeton

I’d been a consultant for 12 years when a former client gave me a call
out of the blue.

Client: “Mike. Remember that technology strategy your team created

for us 2 years ago?”

Me (Cautiously): “Oh… Yes?”

Client: “Well great news: We’re on step 7 of 10 and it’s all working out
wonderfully!”

Me (Con dently): “Oh… Yes!”

Client: “If you recall, step 8 was to hire a Chief Technology O cer! Can
we discuss?”

Me (Curiously): “Oh… Yes?”

And so began my unlikely 2 years with a mission-driven nonpro t

focused on early childhood education. My mission: Drag their dated
tech kicking and screaming out of 1995 and into the present. A stark
contrast from my days helping leading Fortune 50 rms pull even
further ahead.

The tech itself might not have been terribly interesting, but the
applications proved riveting; Seeing the engaged eyes of 4 year old
inner city students using webcams for the rst time to connect to a
bigger world of teachers and classmates across the country: That was
profoundly ful lling in a way that corporate consulting could never be.

I’d never really spent much time thinking about my personal core
values up to that point. Too often, we default to what our culture,
media, school, or friends value. My time at a not-for-pro t helped me
realize how deeply I care about young children, neuroscience, and
access to quality education, to name just a few.

Values Exercise: List out some activities, disciplines, or pursuits that

you believe make the world a better place. Here are some of mine:
Putting it All Together
By now you’ve probably gotten the idea. Any of this “Follow This,
Follow That” advice, (whether from rich uncles, guidance counselors,
spouses, or the voice in your head) are less-than-useful when followed
a la carte. In my experience, the magic happens when you work at
something that lls all four buckets at once.

So in telling those students ‘What Matters Most… in Preparing for

Professional Life’, I closed my speech as simply as I could:

“Work at the intersection of your skills, your interests, your personal

values, and the world’s values ($). If you’re missing any one of these
four, you’re going to have a bad time.”

Final Exercise: Look for commonalities across all four of your lists.
Does anything show up everywhere?

If so: Congratulations! You’re well on your way to nding your

professional purpose.

Not quite? No worries. Part of the satisfaction comes in the striving.

The commitment to broadening your interests by exposing yourself to
new experiences. The commitment to developing and improving your
skills. The discovery of a new market niche. The maturation of your
personal values. Heck: I’ve been thinking about this stu for nearly 40
years, and I’ve only recently completed my rst draft: