Last month, at a bookstore in New Delhi airport, I was browsing thru a few books and this one caught my attention. I had no idea what Ikigai meant. (I now know it roughly means the “reason for your being”) I wanted the electronic version. Apple does not carry it but Amazon does. Downloaded it and started reading it.

The book is divided into essentially three parts – The Future, The Past and The Present. While reading the first two chapters, it seemed to be ho hum mostly. But the third section had a lot of good tips. That made me go back and read the first two sections again.

The good news is that I found I already practice a few things in alignment with Ikigai – notably, writing, fewer clothes, read news at fixed time and one source only, go analog (use printouts and pen, listen to LP records) etc etc.

However, the book also gave a lot of new ideas to try for Ikigai – like (haiku – but different style, koan, add randomness in a day etc)

I will give some of them a try. Maybe even archery!!

If you are into this kind of books, you might like it. But I do not want to set your expectations too high.