Balancing Passion And Pragmatism: An Ikigai Approach To College And Career Choices

We are tempted to both give and receive bad advice when we wish something were true. I wish, for example, that college and career advice could be as simple as “follow your passions.” But it’s not.

“Follow your passions” may be part of great college and career advice, but it falls woefully short on its own. In their Westernized adaptation of the deeply nuanced Japanese concept of ikigai, Hector Garcia and Francesc Miralles do an excellent job of showing us how and where our passions fit into these weighty decisions—and what additional factors need to be present.