Recently I went through an exercise where you take a bunch of cards with values listed on them and sort them into three piles: Never Important, Sometimes Important and Very Important. You then toss aside the two lesser piles and order everything that is Very Important. After this you finish by selecting the top 6 Very Important values but I read the 6 as a 5, so I my final result is slightly value-deficient:
- Teaching
- Creativity
- Listening
- Leadership
- Cooperation
The values are, of course, constrained by the options in the deck of cards you use. If a value isn’t listed, you can’t choose it, but it seemed fairly complete. I am always aware of my tendency to game these evaluations so I picked quickly to reduce the possibility of my brain being too clever for its own good. Let’s see how these values break down:
1. Teaching. I was about halfway to a teaching certificate many years ago before shifting gears and I’ve always tested strongly for it, so this does not come as a surprise. I really enjoy teaching others how to do stuff. The positive feedback is incredibly rewarding to me.
2. Creativity. I write, I draw comics, I dream up elaborate worlds and systems, I make maps of imaginary places. I sometimes arrange my food on my plate more for the aesthetics than the practical. Yeah, this is pretty spot-on.
3. Listening. I have always thought of myself as a good listener. If the person is at least somewhat engaging, whether they are talking about things positive or negative, I find it easy to stay engaged and absorb like a human-sized sponge. I generally prefer to listen rather than talk, though the inner stand-up comic in me does sometimes want to take over.
4. Leadership. Have you ever been in a situation where you’re part of a team assigned to some task and everyone just sits around and shrugs at each other and nothing happens and you find yourself thinking, “Stupid people! Do something!” and then you suddenly realize that you have to be the one to take charge and so you do and then things happen and it turns out okay? I’m that person.
5. Cooperation. This one seems a bit weak as a top 5 value. Sure, it’s got a good beat but can you dance to it? I guess I prefer cooperation to the alternative but what rational person wouldn’t? Well, one who didn’t have to cooperate to get things done, I suppose.
I always double-up on these tests to see what, if anything, changes when I do it again. Here are the results from take 2:
- Creativity
- Teaching
- Utilizing
- Listening
- Honesty
Here we see Creativity and Teaching swapping spots at the top, so no big change there. But then we have:
3. Utilizing. I’m not sure how this got in. I’m not even sure what it means. Maybe I wrote down the wrong card. Utilizing. Okay, the dictionary says “To put to use, especially to find a profitable or practical use for.” Seems very practical. I’m not sure how it’s a value. I think I picked the wrong card.
4. Listening. Swapped from #3 to #4, not much change here.
5. Honesty. Is such a lonely word. Everyone is so untrue. Like Billy Joel, I also like honesty, though I’m not as bitter and jaded about its apparent absence. Nor do I record songs about it and make millions of dollars and blow it on coke and crash cars and marry woman half my age, either. Anyway, this seems like a reasonable choice for me, as honestly is pretty fundamental. If you’re not being honest, you’re lying and there’s a good chance you’re a big ol’ poopypants because of it. I see a lot of people refusing to communicate effectively because they are afraid to be honest.
And here are my bottom 10 values, the ones I declared Never Important:
- Spirituality/faith.
- Appreciation.
- Ambition.
- Intellectual status.
- Mastery.
- Competition.
- Discipline.
- Conviction.
- Wealth.
- Beauty.
Some of these are definitely here because of the specific way I interpreted the values. In other words, I gamed the test a bit.
1. Spirituality/faith. This one is easy. I’m agnostic, so no surprise here.
2. Appreciation. I interpreted this as “I don’t care if someone recognizes my work, although it’s a nice bonus if they do”.
3. Ambition. This is not to say I’m lazy, shiftless and prone to laying on a sofa eating cheese doodles. What it means is that while I strive to improve on whatever I am doing (well, except for stuff like breathing. I figure if air is going in and going out I probably don’t really need to work on doing it more efficiently, barring things like a stuffed nose when I have a cold), I am not driven by the desire to constantly improve. I just do what I do and will naturally improve until I reach a peak.
4. Intellectual status. There are lots of people out there who are smarter than me. That doesn’t make them better than me, just smarter.This is not the same as appreciating smart people — which I do. It’s one of my dating criteria. I’m just saying a membership in MENSA is not going to make my socks roll up and down.
5. Mastery. I’ve always seen myself as a jack-of-all-trades kind of guy, so this is probably why mastery ranked so low. Breadth, not depth, or something similarly pithy.
6. Competition. While I do have a bit of a competitive streak in me (put another jogger ahead of me in the park and watch me feel compelled to catch up), I am generally not driven to excel by pitting myself against others. I just do what I do.
7. Discipline. This is a bit of an odd one because it seems like a good value to hold close and cherish. My thinking here was probably “Discipline is important but not at the expense of creativity or thinking outside of the box”. I also bristle at organizations that are highly regimented or driven by an elaborate set of rules. A formal office environment is a place I would not fit comfortably in.
8. Conviction. I get things done without seeing the need to feel conviction. That’s pretty much it.
9. Wealth. I have never had much money. Material things are nice but I’ve never been driven to accumulate and consume things just for the sake of it and I’m not impressed by people who have lots of wealth in and of itself. I’m also one of those outraged by the gigantic paychecks and bonuses CEOs get. They’re simply not that valuable but our screwed up values say otherwise.
10. Beauty. I’ve never thought of myself as being particularly handsome/cute or whatever and while I certainly appreciate beauty on an aesthetic level, it’s not something I seek out on a date, for example. Erm, it’s a nice bonus, though!
Next up: Needs!
