Notes - Ikigai

Ikigai = your raison d'être - at the intersection between what you love, what you are good at, what the world needs and what you can live from (being paid).
From the five blue zones where people live the longest, it seems that the key to longevity are: diet, exercise your body and brain, finding a purpose or ikigai and forming social ties.
What are known to be bad: stress, sitting too much (in the blue zones the people studied almost never sit around), sleep and "attitude" (positive attitude and not giving up to adversity).
To find your own purpose in life, check more about logotherapy.
"We are what we repeatedly do. Excellent, then, is not an act but a habit" - Aristotle.
"Flow is the state in which people are so involved in an activity that nothing else seems to matter; the experience itself is so enjoyable that people will do it even at great costs, for the sheer sake of doing it." - Csikszentmihalyi author of the book "Flow: the psychology of optimal experience".
According to a study from Boston Consulting Group, a common complaint from employees is that they don't know their objective because the team's mission is not communicated or well defined.
"A happy man is too satisfied with the present to dwell on the future." - Einstein.
Our brain can take millions of bits of information but can only process a few dozen per second. Multitasking is thus actually switching back and forth between two tasks very quickly and it's not efficient.
Focusing on one task at a time is critical to achieve a state of flow.
To focus you need:
- To be in a distraction-free environment - don't hesitate to protect your space from distractions and from others.
- To have control over what you're doing at every moment (not running in autopilot).
Tip: it's really important to have moments (ideally at least a day per week) without any technology - technological fasting.
Tip: read your emails only twice per day, at dedicated time blocks; don't open and respond as soon as they arrive in your inbox.
Tip: use the Pomodoro technique (with different chunks of time if 25/5 is not ideal for you).
Bundle routine tasks together (ex: one time block on the week to pay all invoices or do all the phone calls,...).
Example of Bill Gates still washing the dishes everyday to "relax and clear his mind". On a personal note, I have the exact same effect with gardening and I try to do it everyday from Spring to Autumn.
The books stresses out the importance of meditation.
Focus on enjoying your daily rituals, using them as tools to enter a state of flow. Don't worry about the outcome, it will come naturally. Happiness is in the doing, not in the result. Remind yourself: rituals over goals.
Try: write down activities that put you into a flow state and think of what do they all have in common?
Enjoying the beauty (art, nature,...) is accessible for free to all humans.
It's important to never stop learning new things.
"The grand essentials to happiness in this life are: something to do, something to love and something to hope for" - W Burnap.
Lesson's from Japan:
- Being part of a community is important. They also take part in a lot of events together (birthdays, celebrations, games, dance,...).
- Eat until you are 80% full, not more. In average they eat around 1800kcal, much less than other places. This is common in all the blue zones.
- Eating too much puts stress on your body (insulin spikes, oxidation,...) - it makes you feel more tired and lethargic.
- They all take care of their gardens and eat a lot of own grown vegetables. A large variety of vegetables seems very important for longevity.
- They also eat a lot of fish, sweet potatoes and rice.
- They drink a lot of green tea or jasmine tea (white tea is also good for health because it contains higher polyphenols) - drinking tea everyday helps reduce the free radicals in our bodies.
- They eat a lot of antioxidants, here are some you can easily add to your diet:
  - Tofu.
  - Miso.
  - Tuna.
  - Carrots.
  - Cabbage.
  - Onion.
  - Soy sprouts & soy beans.
  - Sweet potatoes.
  - Peppers.
For westerners, here are some more food you can add to your diet for overhaul health: - Broccoli. - Fruits such as citrus, strawberries, apricots and (all) berries. - Dried fruits for "snacking". - Olive oil.
Avoid food made with cow's milk, sugar, processed food, most grains (except oats and wheat).
They never eat any processed food.
They are all the time busy doing something, even light activity like walking, gardening or gathering with friends (but they almost never just sit doing nothing).
Moving and exercising is key to good health (the book gives a list of movements you could do - I personally prefer to follow a real fitness and cardio program).
You should not ignore life's pleasures, you're not a monk. You can enjoy life's pleasures but should always remain conscious of how easy it is to be enslaved by them. There is nothing wrong as long as these pleasures don't take control of your life and you always have to be prepared for those pleasures to disappear.
The objective of a virtuous person is to reach a state of tranquility: the absence of negative feelings such as fear, shame, vanity, anxiety, anger, and the presence of positive feelings such as happiness, love, serenity and gratitude.
A core idea of Stoicism is knowing what you can control and what you can't - there is no point to worry about the things you can't have influence on.
"It's not what happens to you, but how you react that matters" - Epictetus.
The only moment where you are truly alive is the present.
The book closes on a list of 10 "rules" of Ikigai to summarize it all:
- Stay active, don't retire from what you love doing
- Take it slow
- Don't fill up your stomach
- Surround yourself with good friends
- Exercise and keep the body moving
- Smile and recognize the privilege to be alive
- Reconnect with nature
- Give thanks
- Live in the moment, don't regret the past or worry about the future
- Follow your ikigai