Values
Skills describe what you can do. Interests describe what holds your attention. Values describe what makes work worth doing. They answer different questions: not "Am I capable?" or "Am I engaged?" but "Does this matter to me?"
Values are priorities. They reveal what you are willing to trade for what, which sacrifices feel acceptable and which feel like betrayal. When you understand your values, you can evaluate options against what actually matters rather than optimizing for everything at once.
Where Satisfaction Comes From
Work can provide satisfaction in different ways. Some people find meaning in the tasks themselves. Others find meaning in what work provides. Still others find meaning in who work connects them to or what their work represents. Understanding where satisfaction comes from helps clarify which values matter most.
These values relate to the actual tasks and activities that fill your working hours. Satisfaction comes from what you do, not from what you receive for doing it.
Autonomy
Freedom to determine how you work, when you work, and what approaches you take. Making decisions about your own activities rather than following detailed instructions from others.
Creativity
Opportunity to generate new ideas, approaches, or works. Producing something that did not exist before rather than replicating what others have already made.
Intellectual Challenge
Engaging with complex problems that require sustained thinking. Work that stretches your cognitive abilities rather than tasks you can complete on autopilot.
Mastery
Developing deep expertise in a skill or domain. The satisfaction of becoming genuinely excellent at something through sustained practice and learning.
Variety
Diverse tasks and responsibilities rather than repetition of the same activities. Novelty in what you do from day to day or project to project.
Physical Engagement
Work that involves your body, not just your mind. Using strength, dexterity, or movement as part of how you create value.
Aesthetic Expression
Creating or working with things that are beautiful. Attention to form, design, and sensory experience as part of the work itself.
Problem-Solving
Diagnosing issues and developing solutions. The satisfaction of figuring out what is wrong and making it right.
These values relate to the rewards and conditions that come from working rather than the work itself. Satisfaction comes from what you receive in exchange for your effort.
Income
Financial compensation sufficient to meet your needs and desires. Money as a measure of value and a means to other ends.
Security
Confidence that your income and position will continue. Protection from sudden loss of livelihood through layoffs, business failure, or economic shifts.
Stability
Predictable routines and expectations. Knowing what tomorrow will look like rather than constant change and uncertainty.
Work-Life Balance
Time and energy remaining for life outside work. Boundaries that protect family, health, relationships, and personal pursuits.
Time Freedom
Control over when you work rather than fixed schedules set by others. Flexibility to arrange your hours around your life rather than your life around your hours.
Location Independence
Ability to work from anywhere rather than commuting to a fixed workplace. Geographic flexibility in where you live and work.
Benefits
Non-wage compensation including health insurance, retirement contributions, paid leave, and other protections. The infrastructure of security beyond salary.
Working Conditions
The physical and social environment where work happens. Comfort, safety, and pleasantness of the workplace itself.
These values relate to the relationships that work creates and sustains. Satisfaction comes from connection with others through the medium of work.
Helping Others
Direct contribution to the wellbeing of specific people. Seeing the impact of your work on individuals you serve or support.
Collaboration
Working alongside others toward shared goals. The experience of being part of a team rather than working in isolation.
Working Alone
Independence from the needs and schedules of collaborators. Solitary focus without the coordination costs of teamwork.
Belonging
Membership in a community or organization you identify with. The sense of being part of something larger than yourself.
Public Contact
Regular interaction with many different people. Variety in who you encounter rather than the same colleagues day after day.
Friendship
Deep relationships with people you meet through work. Colleagues who become friends rather than remaining purely professional contacts.
Mentorship
Teaching and developing others. Sharing what you know with people earlier in their journeys.
Leadership
Guiding and directing others. Responsibility for team outcomes and the people who produce them.
These values relate to the significance of work beyond tasks and rewards. Satisfaction comes from what your work represents and what it contributes to the world.
Purpose
Work that serves something you believe in. Labor directed toward ends you consider worthy rather than merely profitable.
Social Impact
Contribution to the betterment of society, community, or world. Work that makes things better beyond your immediate circle.
Recognition
Acknowledgment of your contributions by others. Visibility for what you accomplish rather than anonymous labor.
Status
Respect and standing in your community or profession. Position that commands attention and deference from others.
Influence
Power to shape decisions, opinions, or outcomes. The ability to affect what happens rather than simply executing others' plans.
Achievement
Accomplishing difficult things that demonstrate competence. Tangible results that prove what you are capable of.
Legacy
Creating something that outlasts you. Work whose effects persist after you have moved on or are gone.
Moral Alignment
Work that accords with your ethical principles. The ability to feel proud of what you do and how you do it.
Values in Tension
The structure of values creates inherent tensions. Pursuing one value often means sacrificing another. This is not a design flaw to be corrected but a feature of how values work. Understanding which values conflict helps explain why decisions feel difficult and why perfect arrangements rarely exist.
Why tensions matter
These tensions are not problems to solve but realities to acknowledge. The person who wants both maximum income and maximum time freedom is describing an arrangement that rarely exists outside of fantasy. The person who wants both deep belonging and complete independence is asking for things that pull in opposite directions.
Acknowledging tensions does not mean abandoning values. It means getting clear about priorities. Which value matters more in this season? Which sacrifice feels acceptable? Which trade-off can you live with? These questions cannot be answered in the abstract. They can only be answered by someone who knows their own situation, constraints, and aspirations.
Some tensions ease over time. High income earlier can create time freedom later. Mastery in one domain can enable variety across domains. Achievement can generate recognition that then allows autonomy. In the moment of decision, however, tensions are real. Pretending otherwise leads to paralysis or disappointment.
Values Across Cultures
The values that feel natural and obvious depend partly on where you grew up. Cultures differ dramatically in which values they emphasize, how they rank competing priorities, and even how they think about the relationship between individual and group.
Emphasize self-direction, personal achievement, and self-expression. Success is defined by individual accomplishment. Work is a vehicle for personal fulfillment and financial independence.
Emphasize harmony, loyalty, and group welfare. Success is defined by contribution to family and community. Work is embedded in relationships and obligations that extend beyond the individual.
Neither orientation is right. Both are real. The person raised in an individualist culture may find values like family duty or group harmony unfamiliar, just as the person raised in a collectivist culture may find values like self-expression or personal achievement uncomfortable.
Even within a single culture, individuals vary. The child of immigrants may navigate between collectivist family expectations and individualist professional environments. The corporate employee in Tokyo may privately value autonomy while publicly honoring group consensus. Values are shaped by culture but not determined by it.
Values Across Seasons
Values shift. What matters at 25 may not matter at 45. What feels essential when you are single may feel negotiable when you have children. What seems paramount during scarcity may recede during abundance. This is not inconsistency. It is responsiveness to a changing life.
How priorities shift
The psychologist Daniel Gilbert has shown that people consistently underestimate how much they will change. We know we are different from who we were ten years ago. We somehow believe we will remain who we are for the next ten years. History suggests otherwise.
The implication is significant. The values that guide your decisions today are the values that fit your situation today. They are not permanent truths to be discovered once and followed forever. They are priorities that make sense now and will need to be revisited as circumstances change.
This is why long-term career planning is difficult. You are not just predicting what opportunities will exist. You are predicting who you will become. Both predictions are unreliable. A more modest approach is to get clear about what matters now, make decisions accordingly, and expect to revisit those decisions as you change.
Using Values for Decisions
Values clarify trade-offs. When you know what matters most in this season, you can evaluate options against those priorities rather than searching for an arrangement that optimizes everything. The question shifts from "What is the best choice?" to "What choice best honors my priorities given my constraints?"
This does not make decisions easy, but it makes them possible. Knowing that you prioritize time freedom over income does not tell you which opportunity to pursue, though it does tell you how to compare them. Knowing that you prioritize purpose over status does not eliminate difficult trade-offs, though it does tell you which way to lean when they arise.
Values are not answers. They are criteria for evaluating answers. The work of deciding remains, but with clear values, that work becomes navigable.