As for career planning, I don't think it's very relevant. The sorta-equivalent sayings like "do what you love and you'll never work a day in your life!" tend to be used in a way that puts existing preferences and interests first, and everything else as a consequence of it. The way I'd think of "ikigai" in a career context, the work being meaningful (as in the opposite of a "bullshit job") is what comes first. Since it's meaningful, it's something the world needs, so you can get paid for it. Since it's the opposite of a bullshit job, you're motivated to devote the time and effort and attention to be(come) good at it. A job well-done is satisfying. So I'd envision it as something you settle into, rather than plan ahead with your guidance counselor equivalent.

It's also not necessarily a word specific to jobs/careers in the first place, and in a literal sense only means "I live for this" / "it's worth living for". The rest is a recent fixation by writers.

Source: live in Japan, have asked Japanese people around me if they know about this concept (that is popular in USA). Usually hear: へ〜、全然知らない。

The Japanese Wikipedia article seems to heavily cite Western sources as the origin for this usage.

https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E7%94%9F%E3%81%8D%E7%94%B2%E6...

Back in reality, the word is more commonly used in the expression 生き甲斐がある (ikigai ga aru) which means roughly "Life is good", "I'm glad to be alive", which you might use after sipping a really good beer for example.

It begins, "The pre-print is not new data, research, or a study. It is a theory – an opinion paper that the author has been unable to get published in any scientific journal or peer-reviewed publication. The original version of the paper was released as a pre-print in 2019 and still has not been properly published, meaning the theories have never passed any scientific peer review."

And it continues with a point-by-point rebuttal.

Worth taking a look at.

“Most Age Records are Pension Fraud, Scientist Says” => https://youtu.be/VpwXswyt-zg?si=EyT1KpxA0JY7kk17