When asked by fellow physicians if they should be on Twitter, or LinkedIn, or some other form of social media I don’t immediately say yes.
Instead, I ask them ‘What is your ikigai?’
Most don’t know what Ikigai is, so I go on to explain that it is an older Japanese word for purpose, or for what gets one excited to get up and out of bed in the morning.
(For reference: ikigai is pronounced like “icky-guy” )
In modern career terms? Ikigai is the confluence of ones passion & ability with what the world needs and what the world will pay you for.
Now, most doctors will reflect back to medical school days and quickly recall their own ikigai journey.
As medical students most of us had a deep interest or passion for medicine. We were excited to learn the skills needed to be a doctor, and there certainly was (and still is) a need for physicians in the community. There also was the expectation of a relatively well paying career at the end of residency.
Bottom line: as medical students, we were all on a well defined path of #ikigai.
However, five, ten, or twenty years later it’s likely our ikigai has changed.
(Don’t worry. Ikigais change even for the most successful people-
just think of Bill Gates!)
We may have developed a new passion, such as writing.
Or we may have found ourselves diving into one aspect of medicine to the exclusion of all else.
Or we may be strongly considering a radical career change – such a a run for a state senate seat, or a pure healthcare management position.
Regardless, as a physician, if you deeply understand your current ikigai path, then both the choice of social media platform and the best use of it becomes trivially easy.
So before deciding on what -if any – social media platform to dive into deeply (and yes, that even includes my very favorite platform for most physicians, Twitter), first invest your valuable time in clarifying your current ikigai journey.