A brief story
About 3 years ago, I tried therapy for the first time. This was smack in the middle of the ~bottomless pit of despair~ that was "quarantine" during Covid, when there was no light at the end of a long, isolating tunnel. And I was desperate.
I wedged the first therapy session onto my perilously packed Google calendar, and soon found myself face-to-face with a petite older woman. She had a round face and feral curly grey hair that bobbed with jarring levels of excitement as she greeted me on the Zoom call. She was wearing a bright purple sweater with matching horn-rimmed glasses and a chunky beaded necklace with literal leaves woven into it. And she was seated in front of what could only be described as an alarmingly large collection of fantasy porcelain figurines.
There were, perhaps, some red flags.
Questionable figurines aside, I couldn't see how this friendly, but forest-gnome-like woman was going to help me. She hardly looked fit to consult on most things from this century, like the technological mysteries of the modern toaster — let alone provide sound guidance in my particularly fast-paced sphere of Silicon Valley software, and the subject of my present existential angst.
Surely, the most taxing troubles of her days weighed the “clotting” consistency in her recently hand-churned butter? Not pushing urgent bug patches to critical breakages in the infrastructure that powers the GDP of the internet. And surely, she was best fit to remain peacefully perched beside a wood-burning stove in a quant, hobbit-sized cottage in your friendly local enchanted forest? Not hunkered in a hazmat suit, knee-deep in dangerous levels of emoting — the radioactive fallout of my burnout.
She knew not of what she was getting herself into. But, then again, neither did I.
Better judgement aside, I decided to trust the process. You know, therapy, or whatever. And one of the first steps in that process was a homework assignment which resided in a 5-page document filled with about 500 words.
"These are values!" She proclaimed cheerily.
The task was simple: read through the values, and circle the ones that "speak to me." I didn't know what exactly I was expecting from therapy, but it definitely did NOT include homework. I was busy battling massive organizational headwinds, executing an ambitious product roadmap across a surface area of 150 engineers. I hardly had time to exchange 5-words on a weekly phone call with the woman that birthed me. Let alone pour over 500 words in a PDF, that had never lifted a digital pinky on my behalf. I was waging war on my work week with all the violent willpower and brute mental force of my inner viking, named Bjorn. And Bjorn did not appreciate the expansion in his scope.
But more than that, Bjorn didn't like the thought of forfeiting battles — no matter their form.
So, one evening at 10pm, Bjorn and I most begrudgingly mustered the strength to swallow our sour attitude, close our work-laptop "early", and plop on the couch to plot our tactical strike against these words. These "values."
Boldness. Compassion. Community. Creativity. Faith. Humor. Honesty. Justice. Leadership. Loyalty. Security. Service. Wealth. Wisdom... The list went on and on.
But, a mere 15 minutes of focus later, weirdly, we were done.
I had readily circled 5 values, running through the homework assignment with unexpected speed, and even more unexpected enjoyment.
So, when I was finished — Bjorn and I went for bonus points. We circled 5 more.
And then, another 5 more after that.
Because, the more the merrier, right?
The ~beauty~ of values
In my next therapy session, I proudly read-out on my ~15 carefully curated values. And in the days that followed, I started sporadically and obsessively reciting them, muttering them to myself in hushed breathe like some newly self-actualized Gollum. I soon assumed the entirely self-appointed role of "public ambassador" for the concept — word-vomiting the value of values to anyone that would tolerate me for more than two minutes.
And I think what I loved most about values was this: they felt so...nice. So ~chill~. So wonderfully agreeable. They were merely the things important to me. Plus, it's easy to work with your values when they don't explicitly demand any work at all. I loved that about them.
Some of the biggies were:
Travel. Exploring the world, everywhere and as often as possible.
Creativity. Making videos and writing, as often as possible.
Feeling good. And, if I’m being honest about my shameful number of Sephora splurges and rigorous workout regiments, also “looking good.”
Career. Professional progress, and all the rewards and recognition that comes with that (and in spite of the recent social ~trendiness~ to categorically bash corporate life).
Wealth. Agreed, money doesn't buy happiness. But stable disposable income and a fat 401k sure as heck helps.
Community. Quality time and quality conversations with those that make me feel the deep contentment of connection — family, friends and my fiddle leaf named Frankie (though, he's not much of a conversationalist).
Love. For all the joy that comes with loving, and being loved, by someone that you admire, appreciate and adore.
I was feeling good about my values, and though I wasn't necessarily proud of all the things that I valued (namely "wealth"), I found satisfaction in the explicitness of a distilled set. And at a minimum, I felt proud that I had knocked my homework assignment out of the park (bonus points for more values, amIright!).
But, the joy was short lived.
From the red flags in our first session, I already half-expected more preposterous homework assignments from my ~suspect~ shrink. And, indeed, here it was:
"Great, now put them in order of importance!"
Those pesky things called "priorities"
~Sigh~
See — part of the reason I readily latched onto the concept of "values" was because they were so much more approachable than their more mentally taxing conceptual counter-parts, annoyingly ordered on importance.
Priorities.
"Priorities" always tested my spotty patience and my even shottier spelling. I reluctantly tolerated the principles of prioritization at work, but intentionally kept it on a tight leash. Confined to the parts of my brain only called upon during board meetings, along with the other sterile terms that trigger me and my acid reflex — things like "KPIs", "OKRs", "EBITDA" and — who could forget — the "bottom line."
Plus, the pretentious aesthetic of the word alone pained me, which is why I left it to the more professional settings of my day job and out of the details of my personal life. It always sounded so stiff and surgical. So un-forgiving and formal. So cruel, callous and... bloody corporate.
Really, it's downright cringe.
And sure — I saw the small, ever-so-slightly pesky problems of over-indexing on "values" over "priorities." Like the fact that these puppies — my values — were in no particular order. But isn't that the beauty of values? Values don't wade into all the controversy of curation. They deftly navigate around all the tension of discourse. They're the very definition of ~good vibes only~ baby!
So why. WHY, would my thera-pixie therapist destroy all of the uncontroversial positivity of values by proposing such a conflict-prone exercise?
Ordering them?
Again, Bjorn, being the feisty inner-force that he is, obviously did the assignment. But, he wasn't happy about it.
And when we did the exercise, we noticed something — Bjorn and I. Something that seemed somewhat important and warranted more unpacking: while values make for all the ~good (theoretical) vibes~ on paper, they can sometimes get a bit too comfortable kicking it in the world of the abstract. Put simply:
Values aren't in the business of figuring out how to actually bring your life philosophy into your life's fruition.
Priorities are.
And in spite of all the cringe corporate connotations — there's nothing quite as powerful as them.
The dream team: turning values into priorities
Don't get me wrong — values serve a purpose. And, an important one: clarifying your core values can be an enlightening first step towards focusing your efforts on fulfillment, and stripping away the noise of what the world wants, to anchor on what you want. But, you can't stop there.
Because in isolation, values have some issues.
They can sometimes act like the politicians of life purpose. Pontificating about all the nice ~principles~ in broad sweeping statements. Rallying support and ~fuzzy feels~ without wading into all the pesky details of an actual policy. Priorities on the other hand, are more like the stiff, stoic 5-star Generals leading the Pentagon task force of your life. You don't want to be friends with them, per se. But you can appreciate the fact that they're managing all of the difficult dilemmas. Tackling all the hairiest tradeoffs. And actually executing a concrete plan for more fulfilled living, every day. And that right there, requires addressing some mean conflict between what — at surface level — seemed like "nice" values.
For example, here's some of the violent conflict going on between my values that Bjorn continues to battle within me:
Career vs. Creativity: Fun fact. It's hard to muster the mental bandwidth to move the needle on your manuscript each week when you're pulling 80+ hours in your day job. Who knew?
Travel vs. Love: Apparently, romantic partners expect some commitments on quality time. And apparently, eagerly hopping from place to place can be slightly prohibitive to the proximity required to achieve that.
See — my values were fine when they existed in a vacuum. But, as soon as you delve into the practicalities of what it takes to actually honor your values — things like limited energy, limited money and even more limited time — things get tough. And that's what makes the exercise of shaping priorities nothing short of a royal pain in the ass.
But, I'm convinced that dealing with the troublesome tradeoffs between your values to shape them into a stack-rank, is table-stakes for more fulfilled living.
Now, how do you actually do that?
Ah yes. Well. Let's discuss shall we?
A thought exercise: taking a pass at your priorities
Bjorn and I remain on the front-lines in the battle for fulfillment. And while the war certainly isn't won, we have managed to uncover some combat-ready learnings on how to convert values into priorities.
So, to make this slightly more concrete, humor me with a brief exercise. Before continuing on, take a moment to grab a pen and paper.
Step 1: Write down 5 values. There are a ton of lists out there, but here's a list of values to get you started. Remember to select the values that actually resonate with you — not the one's that you think you should value. And relatedly, don't fudge your truth and skip over the values that you're not proud of valuing. You may in fact value things that make you a far cry from Mother Theresa — things like "popularity", "success" or "status." If so, welcome to the club of imperfect humans, of which I’m a founding member. Because there's nothing wrong with that.
Step 2: Now, map a tangible action to each value that would honor it. I mean something specific. Time-boxed. For example, if you value "friendship," with whom does this apply? Does it mean seeing them with weekly regularity? Does DM’ing memes or Facetime count? Get specific. It's easy to fall into the trap of "knowing" your values in a theoretical sense (I mean, who doesn't love some"happiness!"), but never actually defining the actions that honor them.
Step 3: Now, order your values based on priority. Literally, numerically. And shape a set of routines (daily, weekly and/or yearly) with the associated actions, weighting your time or energy investment in-line with the relative importance of the underlying values.
Yea, this is the hard part. And I know there’s a lot packed in there. How do you rank amongst all of these important things? To help with that brutal battle that's about to ensue — look back on your values, and go through the following thought-exercise to shape that stack-rank:
Front-load honoring the values in your life that are disproportionally costly (or unachievable) if delayed. For me, the one that falls into this bucket is "love." Having a baby (if you want one biologically, at least) is an exploding deadline that weighs on many women. So for me — pursuing "love" must be a higher priority than nearly every other item in the stack, and a conscious part of my routine. There's no shame in that, and I've learned that it doesn't need to make me any less of an #independent woman, in all of the other bold and delightful senses of the term.
Clarify the one value that feels deeply sacred, and ringfence a significant portion of your routine to bring the best version of yourself to it. No one needs to understand why this item is deeply meaningful to you, other than you. But, for those that feel incomprehensibly sacred — pursue them when your mind, body, spirit, or << insert whatever you need to do it best>>, is the most fresh. In my case, "creativity", and more specifically — the tangible action of making progress on my book by writing at least ~2 hours every day — really, really matters to me in ways that I can't fully articulate. After "love" at #1, this is my unequivocal #2. And because the best version of my brain exists early in the morning between the hours of 6am and 8am, I always block writing before work— even when the urgent work-tasks of the day try their best to barge into my sacred space.
Identify opportunities for parallel progress. Some of your value-actions by nature can't happen simultaneously — but that's not necessarily always the case. I spent a good portion of last year traveling, very intensely, and investing in my career, very very intensely. (Note: that may sound like ~an absolute dream~, but know that it had plenty of its own challenges. Timezones are, apparently, a thing). But, it was amazing validation that I could honor these two values in parallel, and I found it deeply satisfying. Speaking of "satisfying"...
Focus on "satisficing" all values, rather than maximizing some values. You shouldn't (and indeed can't)maximize every value variable. If one tried to operate that way in optimizations of home ownership, for example, you could end up with a 6,000 square foot home (sweet!), on a 20-acre lot (very sweet!), with 9 beautiful bedrooms (very, very sweet!), but next to an unstable nuclear power plant. Yea. I'll pass. Sometimes, the opportunity to maximize on a sub-set of values can distract from the absence of coverage across the full-set, but it's best to actually "satisfice" the baseline across as many of your values as possible. To do that, consider the following exercise: imagine a "sub-optimal" future scenario for each of your values. For example, if you value "career", let's say that you, hypothetically, remain at the same current position for the rest of your life — no more promotions, no more ownership, no more accolades, no more compensation. Would you be okay with that? For me, the answer is actually, yes. If your prioritize up to the satisficing point for a given value, rather than the maximization point, you’ll free up bandwidth to address the alchemy of inputs required to feed your soul.
Finally, if your keen to nerd-out more on that last concept in particular, consider checking out a guy named Herbert Simon, who literally won a Nobel Prize in Economics in 1978 on satisficing as a heuristic in decision making.
Conclusion
Soooo it's not lost on me that this is an imperfect framework. Like most things in life, it’s an art more than a science. But, keep in mind that it’s okay for this to be imperfect. Your values, and prioritized practices that honor them, can and should change at different chapters of your life. And I’m convinced that the 3rd grade mathematical approach of “guess and check” is actually a totally acceptable, and effective, strategy for figuring out fulfillment.
And, if you walk away with nothing else from this post, hopefully it's this: try to refrain from myopic focus on either values or priorities. Values can be intangibly optimistic. But, priorities can also feel depressingly practical. And that's why I find it essential to think about them both, together. Values rally the crew with a battle cry to point the ship in the right direction, and priorities tactically organize the troops to paddle in rigorous rhythm. You need the inspiration and execution.
And, that’s hard.
It will undoubtedly require tremendous strength. And perhaps, even the strength of your own Bjorn-equivalent at the helm.
So a final set of suggestions: find your inner battle-ready Bjorn, mentally prepare yourself to tackle all of the toughest tradeoffs together, and carry-on in the noble fight for fulfillment.
I'll be cheering for you both from afar as I continue to battle uncertainty in the contested territory of my own calling.
But I'll never stop fighting to feed my soul — indeed, a most worthy cause for us all to be fighting for.
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