Values – Practice Exercise

Self-Awareness & Career Direction • Values — Practical Exercise

Map Your Career Values in 30 Minutes

Self-Awareness & Career Direction — Practical Exercise

The deep dive this week makes the case that your values are the foundation of every good career decision — but knowing that doesn’t help much until you actually know what your values are. This exercise is designed to help you find out. It’s not a quiz or a personality test. It’s a structured reflection that works backward from your own experience to surface the patterns that tell you what you genuinely need from your work. Set aside about 30 minutes, find somewhere quiet, and bring something to write with.

The Exercise

1. Recall three high-engagement moments — Think back over your career — or your life if your career is newer — and identify three specific moments when you felt truly engaged in your work. Not just comfortable or fine, but genuinely alive to what you were doing. Write a few sentences about each one: what you were doing, who was around, and what the environment was like. Spend about 8 minutes on this step.
2. Look for the patterns — Read back what you wrote and circle or underline every word or phrase that describes a quality or condition that was present in those moments. Things like “working alone,” “tight deadline,” “creative problem,” “visible impact,” “trusted to figure it out.” Don’t edit — just mark everything that stands out. Then ask yourself: which of these show up across more than one memory? Those are your most reliable signals.
3. Name your frustration patterns — Now flip it. Think of two or three work situations that consistently drained or frustrated you. Write briefly about each one. What was present in those situations that felt wrong? This is the other side of the same coin — your frustrations point toward values that were being violated. Add those insights to your list of clues.
4. Draft your top five values — Using everything you’ve gathered, try to name five core values that seem to show up as genuine needs in your work. These don’t have to be single words — “working where my effort has visible impact” is a perfectly good value. The goal is specificity, not elegance. Rank them if you can, even roughly.
5. Write one values statement — In two or three sentences, describe the kind of work environment that would allow all five of your values to be present at once. Don’t describe a specific job — describe the conditions. This becomes your benchmark for evaluating future opportunities.

What to Do Next

Keep your values statement somewhere you’ll actually see it. The next time you’re evaluating an opportunity — a new role, a project, a career shift — pull it out and ask honestly: does this environment allow my values to be present? You don’t need a perfect match, but knowing where the gaps are will help you make clearer decisions. You can also share your values statement with a coach or mentor and ask them what they notice — sometimes someone else’s perspective surfaces things you’ve normalized.