Imagine you just received a job offer. It’s from a reputed corporation and comes with a fantastic compensation package, but the job itself is boring and requires you to be on the road most of the time. What would you do? For some, this would be a dream come true – “What? All that money AND I get to travel AND I don’t have to be learning all the time. Of course, I’ll take it.” For others, this would an absolute nightmare – “No thanks. I like a bit of a challenge and I definitely want to sleep on my own bed.” 

If you can’t imagine yourself in the context of a job offer think about opting for a mildly interesting undergrad program at a reputed university versus your perfect match at a less reputed university or moving to a larger home that adds an hour to your daily commute time. There are no right answers to these questions, of course, but there is one that’s right for you. And if you don’t know what it is, it’s probably because you haven’t thought about, at least deeply enough, about what you value in life.  

Ok, so now you know why values are useful – they help you make the tough decisions in life. But how do you craft a set of values to serve you? There are three factors to consider when defining your values.

Values are tradeoffs

If you’ve ever been part of an organization, you’re familiar at some level about corporate values. On the surface, these values seem sensible but dig deeper and you’ll find them to be vacuous terms that refer to some lofty ideal and neglect the realities of life. When you find yourself needing to make a tough decision, they don’t help. Who would disagree with values like insist on the highest standards, deliver results, performance, integrity ^[1]. The excerpt below from ‘What do executives do anyway?’ describes this best:

[U]seful organizational values come in the form of tradeoffs: giving up one nice thing in order to get some other nice thing. Wishy-washy values like “respect your co-workers” aren’t really values, because nobody would ever pick a value like “don’t respect your co-workers.” Respecting your co-workers is just basic civility. By the time you have to write it down, you’ve already lost. Put it in your HR policy somewhere, not the top line. A real value is something like “tell the truth, even when it hurts.” Or “deliver the software on schedule, even if there are bugs.” In both cases, one can legitimately imagine valuing the opposite.

What do executives do anyway?

Personal values are no different. If you’ve thought about what you value in life, when the time comes to make a decision, you can do so without feeling rushed or pressured.

Values are context-specific

Perhaps you are one of those productive, generally well-organized types who value order, timeliness, and attention to detail. These are great qualities to have at work but make you intolerable in your personal and family life. The competitiveness needed to excel when training at the gym if taken to the friendly neighborhood basketball game will take away the fun for everybody. Craft your values with the context in mind, and more importantly, remember to make the mental shift for the appropriate situation.

Values change with time

This isn’t so much about values per se, but it’s worth keeping in mind that values change over time. And the experiences you gather through life will shape how they shift. What you value in your 60’s will differ drastically from what you value in your 40’s which in turn will differ from what you value in your 20’s. Review your values periodically to ensure they represent where you are in life. 

A final note on the importance of defining your values. The world is full of possibilities: a few opportunities and limitless distractions. It’s fairly straightforward to filter out the obvious distractions. The real test lies in your ability to choose the opportunities, the few from the many, that you need to pursue to make the best out of life. Without a guide, this is hard, if not impossible. The values you define will guide you through these hard decisions, and the decisions you make will define who you are.

Hungry for more? Check out Ruth Chang’s TED talk on ‘How to make Hard Choices’