Ikigai

A short, breezy read that makes you kinda feel good about living. Or at least, that you could do better. I like this book because it pulls from other great sources, like Blue Zones of Happiness, and Flow State from Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (yeah, I don't think I pronounced it right).

Ikigai is a Japanese word that roughly translates to “the reason you get up in the morning” and the researchers (I assume they're researchers anyway) follow the advice and lives of Okinawans. Supposedly, there are more 100+ year olds living there than anywhere else in the world.

I give it four stars. Plus, it makes for a lot of deep discussion about living, culture, and society.

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

The beginning of this book seemed unrealistic and generic as other self help books are. One sentence in the book was rather eye opening.
Being a practising artist it's difficult not to think about selling work. In the midst of it all you lose sense of achievement and progressing in your profession. To do it better quickly, you do it worse. However, when the author talked about how artists have no retirement age. That stayed with me. My profession actually allows freedom from the rat race. My life doesn't end at 60.
I am free to be me until the end of me.

A great look into Eastern “self-help” and finding your purpose. This was my introduction into Eastern views on these topics and Ikigai was a good introduction.

Great takeaways about staying active, including examples (with photos) of the exercises. My favorite part was all the interviews conducted by the author's and the digests of those.

Okay-ish. I liked the first half, mostly because it mentioned a lot about local Japanese culture. Also why I picked the book for my year end trip to Japan, I want to know local things.

Second half was more of advice and tips without a story, which I don't enjoy reading. Too much advice and info anyway in the world, I'd rather read stories.

Some (non-fiction) books are written by people who have devoted themselves to a field of study & immersed their lives in it; these people are “domain specialists” who write. Other books are written by people who who will write about anything; these people are “writers”. If you are looking for entertainment then “writers” are good, but if you want to develop your understanding then you want a book written by a domain specialist. This is obviously a spectrum so different books are written by people who lie along this spectrum. I read fiction for entertainment but for non-fiction I want a book written by a domain specialist who has something original to say. Unfortunately this book is not one of those. Its light & puffy but has no nourishment.

Muy poca información sobre el Ikigai y repite las mismas cosas una y otra vez. Define el Ikigai y se centra en consejos y tips que ha ido recopilando de entrevistas a gente de Okinawa.

Habla más de otros temas que pueden relacionarse con el Ikigai que el propio Ikigai. Algunos capítulos son relleno.

No me parece correcto que hable de estudios y no los ponga en la bibliografía o dé más datos para que los lectores puedan indagar en los temas, resta credibilidad.

This little book has some great tips on living a happier life, but some of them are not backed by evidence. It didn't leave an impact on me because of this reason.

The Venn diagram in the introduction led me to believe that the book is about finding purpose and meaning in life. I feel deceived since it covered very little on that topic.

I'm giving it a 3 star because I think the book promised something and delivered something else.

In the US TV series ‘The Office', there is an episode where they try parkour. They run around in the office, randomly jumping onto furniture or rolling on the floor, occasionally yelling “Parkour!”

This book is that scene, in book form. It's a mishmash of life advice, grandma's wisdom and random musings, with no seeming central theme, with the word “Ikigai!” thrown around every once in a while.