Discovering My Ikigai as a Business Analyst

Recently after reading the book "Awakening Your Ikigai: How the Japanese Wake Up to Joy and Purpose Every Day" by Ken Mogi which narrates about finding the purpose of life, I did a self-reflection on my journey. To briefly explain the book, Ikigai is a Japanese concept that highlights the importance of identifying even a minor habit that we can cherish and be passionate about, which can lead us to visible or invisible success. The book further explains the importance of being self-satisfied even if we are not being recognized by 3rd person/party.

As a person, I am passionate about many things in life. This article is not to discuss life as a whole but to focus on how I found passion in my career.

First, let's identify why is it important to find passion in your career.

It is a norm that a job is not your life, it is to facilitate financial stability to do things we love. But we cannot reject the fact our career plays a major role as well. The working culture, our colleagues and the job roles and responsibilities directly impact our mental wellbeing. Most importantly if we do not love what we do we will always be exhausted, and unsatisfied and will always be on the complaining end. I believe finding passion in your career is an important factor for a happy life.

How did I find Ikigai in my career?

When I enrolled for the undergraduate degree (BSc Hons in IT) I wanted to be a Software Engineer because I was passionate about development and mostly famously students only know about SEs. But this changed when I got selected as a Project Management intern at LSEG Technology formerly known as MIT. I loved working with people, learning new tools, learning to manage projects, and even how to practically execute agile methodologies and frameworks such as scrum. However, I decided to make a career shift and was confused about the career path I had to choose. At that time I had figured out a few things, I love to work with people and engage with them more, but if I keep going on as PM I might not learn the depth of providing solutions. This made me want to shift my career as a Business Analyst because I believed it would give me the right balance between management and technical.

After moving on and being a Business Analyst for 9 years, today when I self-reflect, I understand the reason that drove me this far despite the ups and downs. I would like to share this with you to see if you have similar thoughts ;

• I enjoy talking to different ethnicities of people across the world to identify their problems and resolve such using technology.
• I love to be the front face of a team and even to dig into minor statements or a comment made by my clients to ensure the solution covers all aspects.
• I feel satisfied when someone is happy due to a resolution I provided.
• I love to learn new domains, tools, and technologies.
• Serving back to society is something I love the most.
• Not forgetting mentoring, when I get the opportunity to resolve the minor problems that seem to be major issues for the juniors.

In my journey, I have made choices that were not financially beneficial but provided me self satisfaction. I do not stand on the point you must make similar choices.

But if you wanna pursue a career in BA but are struggling to decide whether to step in or not then just ask yourself the below questions;

Do I

1. love working with people with different cultures and learning about them?
2. like to listen to problems and complaints on how things are not working for people?
3. want to lead a team that has diverse thoughts but works to align them for a common goal?
4. like to provide financial benefits to organisations by resolving their matters?
5. want to deep dive into a simple statement made by a client to understand the actual root cause?
6. want to be an expert in an industry/domain and contribute to the success of the same?
7. want to challenge myself to research and learn new tools over a short period?
8. love to produce fancy but yet detailed and value addition artifacts?

If the answer is YES at least to 5 of the questions, I suggest you try it out.

Keep me posted on how it helped you and also I would love to know how you found your passion as a Business Analyst.