Defining Your Values
Yes, it's plural.
I would hazard a guess that most of us want to live fulfilling lives. We want to live in tune with ourselves and our deepest values. We would like, in short, to be happy—or at least content.
This presumes we know, in an explicit way, what our values are. And yes, that is plural. As with many profoundly important things, nailing down our values is easy to say but subtle and difficult to actually do.
Advice on how to identify your values tends to coalesce around “sit in a corner and think deeply about who you are and what you want and what you value.”
I mean, sure, that’s part of it. But in my experience, this approach is likely to result in a list so vague as to be meaningless, or close to right but lacking the resonance of core truth.
Anyone who has thought seriously about what they value can see that we have our own personal values. And also, we are steeped in the values of the societies and cultures we live in, from our family and social groups to the power structures that lead corporations, shape economies, and govern nations.
These external values are not always in alignment with our own. And in our modern world full of noise and so often bereft of true solitude, it can be difficult to tease apart what is naturally a part of us and what has grafted itself on as something of a parasite. As the saying goes, no one swims in the ocean without drinking salt water.
For me, the key that unlocked this rather sticky door was the idea that all of one’s values are not equal.
I must credit Joshua Fields Millburn and his book with Ryan Nicodemus, Love People Use Things. It’s in chapter 4; if you have no interest in minimalism1 and want to skip the rest, pick it up at “Understanding Our Values.”
Millburn’s framework breaks values into four categories:
Foundational Values
Structural Values
Surface Values
Imaginary Values
His framework starts at the core, and then each successive level becomes more superficial until we are expressing values that we do not personally hold (and yet succumb to).
Foundational values, as the name would suggest, are the values that form the bedrock of our being. These are the things that we, as humans, wither without. You can do and be everything you have ever dreamed of, but if you violate the foundational values, you will feel empty, exhausted, bored, or dead-while-alive.
Millburn lists the five seemingly-universal foundational values as: health, relationships, creativity, growth, and contribution. Combined, these five elements can create a stable bedrock on which we can build a meaningful life. When any of the foundational values is compromised, it creates real harm to us.
You might have more than the baseline five. If there is something so deeply meaningful to you that when it is lacking, the very ground seems to erode out from under your life, that probably goes on your foundational values list. The characteristic that seems to make a value foundational is that its importance doesn’t change with time or circumstance, and you truly cannot live well without it.
Doing one’s best to live in ways that support this foundation is important for thriving, but alone is not enough to describe any one person. We all have other values that are important for us, specifically, to thrive.
Structural values are where things get personal. While everyone benefits when their health, relationships, and other foundational values are being well-served, our structural values define who we are as individuals. Someone who highly values autonomy and self-determination will make different choices from someone who considers social cohesion and getting along to be paramount.
While we change and grow over time, outside of watershed events, our structural values tend to remain fairly constant.
For example, a friend of mine has small children and a pool at home. In addition to having installed a pool fence, she wants all her kids to go to swimming lessons. Her oldest is 4. He loves the pool at home and wants to swim whenever he can.
At swimming lessons, however, he refuses to get in the water.
The consensus is that while he loves swimming, he HATES being told what to do, especially by a stranger. Having known his mother for upwards of two decades now, I feel confident that he probably won’t grow out of that trait. He’ll learn to temper it enough to get along in society, but self-determination will always be one of his structural values.
To be fair, essentially everyone values self-determination to some extent. But for some people, it is a hill worth dying on; for others, it is a preference; and for some, it is just easier if someone else handles the details for them.
Surface values are the things we do to support and express our foundational and structural values. I suspect that specific surface values result from a combination of our structural values, preferences, interests, and the constraints applied by the rest of our life.
Thus, surface values are apt to change as our circumstances and interests change and grow.
For instance, engaging in exercise is vital for health, a foundational value. Before the COVID-19 shutdowns, I rode my bike to and from the train station to get to work, logging about 10 miles a day. After work went remote and the trains stopped running, I stopped riding daily because, while I enjoy cycling, it is a hassle, and the forcing function disappeared. Now that I have a house with a yard, I spend much more time and effort gardening than I did when I had 30 square feet (less than 3 square meters) of dirt to plant.
Both provide exercise and support the foundational value of health, but what I do at a given time is a product of my immediate circumstances, which change over time.
Finally, imaginary values are the barnacles we have picked up along the way. These are the values held by the people or communities we interact with that we do not share.
I suspect that much conspicuous consumption and “keeping up with the Joneses” falls under this heading. It’s one thing for someone who is really into cars to buy a fancy car. It’s another thing for someone who could not care less about cars to buy a fancy car because it’s what is done in their social group.
Furthermore, I suspect many imaginary values fall under the broad category of “things that are good until they are bad.”
The spousal unit and I moved from a 550 square foot (51 sq. m) apartment with a 1-car garage to an 1100 square foot house with a 2-car garage.
In this case, doubling the size of our living space was a quality-of-life improvement. The spousal unit now has a home office that is not an unheated, uninsulated enclosed porch, I have enough room to take up oil painting, and we have gained a dishwasher, a guest room, and outdoor space.
And also, the mortgage is higher than the rent was, we are responsible for the time and money needed for maintenance and repairs, we are responsible for yard maintenance, and even basic cleaning takes longer given that there is more space to clean.
Every minute and every dollar spent on the house and the yard are unavailable for other projects. In this case, doubling our space (and bills) does support our values. But if we fall into the enticing trap of lifestyle creep and decide to double our living space again, the increased costs of time, energy, and money would vastly outweigh any marginal benefits we would gain from having more space than we need or, frankly, even want.
Imaginary values prevent us from living in accordance with our true values by taking up our time, energy, attention, and money. Once these resources are spent, they are no longer available for more meaningful-to-us uses. And more insidiously, the work of performing our imaginary values can prevent us from developing the solitude and self-knowledge to figure out our actual values.
Now, onward to the caveats!
Caveat One: Different people are different.
Values, or even the same value, will differ for different people.
For one person, “competition” might be a structural value that spurs them to achieve their dreams; for someone else, it might be an imaginary value that causes strife and erodes meaningful relationships when they engage in it.
Know thyself, and act accordingly.
Caveat Two: Multivariate optimization is an unwinnable game.
In our modern-day mindset, when we want to improve something, we tend to think of optimization: finding the best outcome for a given variable.
In nerd-speak, the absolute, unequivocal best result is a global optimum.
When optimizing, you can only get a global optimum for one (1) variable. Every variable you add to your optimization, and every constraint you place upon this search, will compromise every variable. You can get the best possible result for one (1) thing, and it comes at the cost of everything else.
Okay, back to English.
The inescapable truth is that you will not adhere perfectly to your values—any of them.
Instead of viewing living in accordance with your values as an optimization to be solved, think of tuning a steelpan: Every note is connected to every other note, and when you change one, it affects the others. Bringing each note into tune is a process of give-and-take, trial-and-error, iteration. And, inevitably, notes will go out of tune over time as you play, and the tuning process must begin again. Not easy, but worth the effort. (Volume UP.)
I have a fascination with minimalism—and also a conflicted relationship with how it is so often discussed. At its core, minimalism is about understanding what is truly important to you and living in accordance with that. This is a line of thought I can get behind.
That said, I am betting you can have come across at least one example of a self-proclaimed “minimalist” who crows about living in a perfect white cube with only 12 possessions and has more of a “rampant perfectionism” and “social oneupmanship” vibe than a “grounded in deep principles” one. (Also: the disposable income to eat out for every meal.)
If you live in the developed world, with a CONSTANT influx of stuff, you (and I) likely have some (possibly large) amount of stuff that we would be better off without. Things wear out, needs and interests shift, and bodies change over time. We are not the same person we were ten years ago, and I’d bet basically everyone has at least one or two possessions they’d be happy to trade for the space it would create.
And also, stuff helps us DO things. Tools let us take on activities or projects we otherwise couldn’t. I can’t play the violin without a fiddle. I can’t paint without paints, brushes, a palette, and a surface to paint on. I can’t cook without a knife, cutting board, pans, utensils, and so forth. I can’t host a dinner party at my home without enough plates for everyone to eat and enough places for everyone to sit. And while I don’t use power tools every day, I’m damn glad to have them when I need them.