The Ikigai Lift
AI didn’t break the four-circle ikigai diagram. It just added a dimension nobody had drawn in yet.
If you’ve taken our free Ikigai Test, you already know the four circles: what you love, what you’re good at, what the world needs, and what you can be paid for. Where all four overlap is your ikigai — the sweet spot the test is built to help you find.
That diagram has a blind spot in 2026, though, and it’s not a small one. It can tell you where your sweet spot sits. It can’t tell you whether AI is quietly making that spot more valuable, or quietly hollowing it out from underneath you while every circle still lines up perfectly on paper.
The Ikigai Lift is the model we built to answer that second question.
The floor stays exactly where it was
We’re not replacing the four circles — they’re still the most useful starting point for working out where you fit, and the free Ikigai Test still measures them directly. Think of them as the floor, the grey plinth in the illustration above.
What’s new is the column rising straight up from the centre of that floor. How tall it stands depends on something the original diagram was never built to capture: how exposed your particular combination of skills is to what AI can now do.
Two people can land on the exact same spot on the floor — same answers to all four questions — and still be standing on columns of very different heights. That’s the part a flat diagram can’t show you, and it’s the part that matters most right now.
Why this needed its own model
A quick, honest aside, because we think a site built on this framework owes you the real story: the four-circle diagram itself isn’t an ancient Japanese concept. It was put together by a Spanish designer in 2011, renamed “ikigai” by a British blogger in 2014 (by his own account, in about 45 minutes), and popularised globally from there. It’s still a genuinely useful way to organise the question — which is why our own test is built on it — we just don’t think it deserves a mystical origin story it doesn’t have.
Knowing that origin matters here, because it means there was never a rule that said this framework had to stay flat. Once you know the floor was invented, not handed down, adding a dimension to it is a reasonable next step rather than a departure from tradition.
And the dimension AI adds is real, measurable, and — this is the part that surprises almost everyone — not where you’d expect it.
The surprising part: “safe” careers aren’t the ones you’d guess
The common assumption is that more schooling and more technical skill means more protection from AI. The actual 2026 data on task-level AI exposure says the opposite in several important cases.
A major 2026 automation-exposure study covering 923 occupations (Coface) found engineering and computational roles carry the highest AI task-exposure of any category measured. In-person trades and manual services — the roles most often written off as the “fallback” option — sit far lower. The report’s own line is worth repeating: “Expertise and formal knowledge alone no longer shield an occupation.”
Source: Coface 2026 AI task-exposure study, 923 occupations.
That’s reflected in real hiring data too. Roughly half of all $100k+ roles now list AI literacy as a requirement, up from about a fifth just five years ago (Ladders, 2026), and workers who can demonstrably direct AI tools command a wage premium of up to 62% over those who can’t (PwC’s 2026 Global AI Jobs Barometer). At the same time, growth in the skilled trades keeps outpacing expectations — U.S. electricians are projected to grow 9% through 2035, solar installers 36.5%, wind turbine technicians nearly 30% (Bureau of Labor Statistics).
None of this means trades are “safe and done” or technical work is “doomed.” It means the safety ranking most people carry around in their heads is out of date, and the column on your own Ikigai Lift should be plotted from the real numbers for your track, not from the old assumption.
Watch: The Ikigai Lift in two minutes
Scroll down and you’ll find two things: your own Ikigai Lift reading in under a minute, and the interactive 3D model to see exactly where your column sits.
Get your Ikigai Lift reading
Already took the real Ikigai Test? This is the short add-on that turns it into a number. Answer three quick questions about your field and where you stand with AI, and we’ll plot your Resilience and Leverage score below — then point you to exactly where to start with the Six Ducks.
Already found your sweet spot on the Ikigai Test? Good — this adds the AI dimension on top of it. Haven’t taken it yet? You can start there first, or just answer below — either way takes about a minute.
Question 1 of 3
Which best describes the kind of work you do, or want to do?
Question 2 of 3
Right now, are you actively directing AI tools in that work — reviewing, prompting, correcting its output — or mostly not yet?
Question 3 of 3
And which is closest to where you are right now?
Nothing here is sent anywhere or saved — your answers live only in this browser tab.
Try the model yourself
Drag to orbit, scroll to zoom. Switch tracks to see how differently the column sits for a technical role versus a trade versus admin work — and switch between “Resilience” (how hard AI finds it to automate the role) and “Leverage” (how much reward there is in mastering AI within it). They’re related, but they’re not the same question, and the gap between them is often where the real opportunity sits.
Where this comes from
The Ikigai Lift started life as the central idea of a full-length book for Skillset Centre’s free library — The Ikigai Lift: Finding Your Place in the Age of AI. It walks through the model in full, track by track, with a 14-day process for mapping your own column and turning it into a concrete next step. It’s currently in production — keep an eye on our free library for it.
Haven’t taken the Ikigai Test yet?
The Ikigai Lift builds directly on top of your Ikigai Test result — same four circles, same sweet spot, with the AI dimension added on top. If you haven’t taken the free test yet, that’s the natural place to start.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is the Ikigai Lift?
A model that adds a third dimension to the classic four-circle ikigai diagram: a column rising from your ikigai sweet spot, representing how much AI is amplifying or eroding the specific combination of skills that sweet spot represents.
Is AI going to replace my ikigai?
AI doesn’t replace the four circles — what you love, what you’re good at, what the world needs, and what you can be paid for are still yours to answer. What AI changes is how much reward and security sits at the place those four circles overlap, which is exactly what the Lift’s column is built to show.
Which careers are safest from AI?
Counterintuitively, in-person trades and manual services currently carry the lowest measured AI task-exposure of any category (under 10% in the 2026 Coface study), while engineering and computational roles carry the highest (29%) — the opposite of the common assumption. See the full breakdown above.
How is this different from the Ikigai Test?
The Ikigai Test measures your four circles and shows you your sweet spot. The Ikigai Lift takes that same sweet spot and adds the AI dimension on top — it’s the next question after the test, not a replacement for it.
Is this based on real research?
Yes, with the sourcing shown throughout: Coface’s 2026 AI task-exposure study, PwC’s 2026 Global AI Jobs Barometer, Ladders’ 2026 hiring data, and U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics growth projections. Where a figure is illustrative rather than measured (like the “Leverage” reading in the interactive model), we say so directly.