Map the arc of your career so far. The goal is not a summary of your CV. It is to identify the moments, roles, and tasks that gave you energy versus the ones that drained it. Be specific about what actually happened and how it felt.
Your career, event by event
| Year | Role or event | High / Low | What it meant |
|---|
Looking at the whole picture
When you look at the highs and lows together — what patterns do you see? What conditions seem to bring out your best work? What makes work feel draining or wrong?
Share this with your mentor before session 1. Walk them through it verbally — the conversation matters more than the document.
Your answers stay in your browser — nothing is sent anywhere.
Bryan Dyson's glass ball exercise: imagine life is a game of juggling. Some balls are glass; if you drop them, they shatter. Others are rubber; they bounce back. This is a life exercise, not just a career one. Career development can only solve career problems. Some of what feels like a career issue is something else entirely. Tap each area to mark it as glass or rubber for you right now.
Your life areas
Which glass ball are you most at risk of dropping right now?
Which rubber ball have you been treating as glass — and worrying about more than necessary?
What does this picture tell you about how you're currently spending your time and energy?
Your answers stay in your browser — nothing is sent anywhere.
Ikigai is a Japanese concept meaning "reason for being." It maps four questions: what you love, what you are good at, what the world needs, and what you can be paid for. Use it as a visioning exercise. Once you have found your overlap, the two questions at the bottom ask you to go further: what do you want to be known for, and what are you building toward?
Work, activities, topics, or problems that pull you in — even when no one asks you to engage with them.
Skills, capabilities, or ways of working that others regularly rely on you for — including things that feel easy to you but hard for others.
Problems, gaps, or areas where you can see a genuine need — in your industry, your community, or the world.
Work someone would pay you for — currently or in the near future. Be practical, not wishful.
Where does it overlap?
Look across your four quadrants. What themes, words, or ideas appear in more than one? What does that tell you about where the overlap might be for you?
A caution: ikigai is a starting point, not an answer. Most people find several possible overlaps. The point isn't to identify one perfect calling — it's to notice what keeps coming up, and to use that as input for the conversations ahead.
Reputation and legacy
Use your ikigai answers to go one level further. These two questions feed directly into your Personal Development Plan.
Take your answers to these two questions into your Personal Development Plan. They are the foundation for your focus area and actions.
Your answers stay in your browser — nothing is sent anywhere.