It's a bit trite but this Venn diagram (perhaps inaccurately) labeled "ikigai" I think does a pretty good job of teasing apart exactly what you're talking about:

https://performanceexcellencenetwork.org/wp-content/uploads/...

Jobs are a combination of:

1. How much you enjoy the work

2. How good you are at it

3. How much it benefits the world

4. How well it pays

The ideal job will tap all four but those are rare. Most jobs are some mixture. Shit jobs tend to only do one or two.

I think what you're talking about is #3 which I think a lot of people undervalue in our culture today.

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ajkjk 6 days ago | parent | next [-]

Oh yeah, that's exactly the same thing. As usual Japan has everything figured out that we're missing in the west. (We've got some things they're missing too, of course.)

	▲	munificent 5 days ago \| parent [-]
		> As usual Japan has everything figured out that we're missing in the west. The reason I said "(perhaps inaccurately)" is because as far as I know, the Venn diagram came from an article from a European country and only later did someone slap the "ikigai" label on it and make it famous.

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qwertygnu 6 days ago | parent | prev [-]

Very unrelated, but when I clicked that link the image immediately appeared on my screen. It actually confused me for a second. Going to any webpage, even tiny images, takes at least a split second to happen these days, or is delayed by a new tab opening animation/load time. What a world.

	▲	ajkjk 6 days ago \| parent [-]
		It's coming directly from cloudflare ('server: cloudflare' in the response header) and it is only 92 kb, takes about 50ms for me which is comparable to realtime video game latency. I don't know how to find out more, but guessing it's coming from essentially down the street!