A lot of advice about living more intentionally starts with knowing your values. This guide walks through three exercises that can help you figure out what those values are, each with a free worksheet you can fill in online. By the end, you should have a short list of values you can point to in your own life.

Why identifying your values is harder than it sounds

The first challenge is that almost every value sounds good. Read through any list of personal values and you’ll probably agree with most of it. But agreeing with a value isn’t the same as living by it.

A second challenge is in values we might pick up from other people. Many of us carry values that came from parents, a profession, or whatever gets rewarded online, rather than ones we chose for ourselves. But some of those can sound right on paper and still feel hollow when you try to live by them.

The third is the gap between admiring a value and acting on it. It’s easy to admire courage from a distance. The values that are really yours tend to be the ones you’ve acted on, even when it was inconvenient or cost you something.

The exercises below work around all three by looking at how you’ve actually lived and what you’d want your life to add up to.

Three exercises to identify your personal values

Each of these has a free worksheet you can fill in on this site. Nothing you type is saved or sent anywhere, and you can print or download a copy when you’re done.

Any one of these is a good place to start.

1. The 80th Birthday Exercise

This exercise comes from Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) and reached a wider audience through Russ Harris.

In the 80th Birthday worksheet, you pick up to three people to hear from, like someone in your family, a friend who’s known you a long time, or someone you worked with. For each one, you write what you’d most want them to say. Then you read back what you wrote and name the qualities those speeches describe, in a word or two each.

Try to write the speech you’d honestly hope for rather than the most impressive one. The qualities you pull out are good candidates for your values. It’s also worth comparing them with how your last few weeks have actually gone, and noticing where the two don’t match.

2. The Bull’s Eye

Also from ACT, the Bull’s Eye worksheet splits your life into four areas: work and education, relationships, personal growth and health, and leisure. For each area, you write a sentence or two about what matters to you there, then mark on a target how closely your life matches it right now.

Going area by area helps with a common blind spot, where values for work are clear but the ones for rest or friendship are more difficult to name. The marks you make are useful data points too. A mark near the edge shows an area where something you care about is getting less of your attention than maybe you’d like.

3. Sort Your Compass Values

The Sort Your Compass Values worksheet starts from a list and helps you narrow it down.

First, go through our list of 50+ values and rate how strongly each one resonates with you: strongly, somewhat, or not really. You can add your own if something is missing, including anything from the other exercises if you’ve tried them.

Second, the evidence test. For each value you rated strongly, try to recall a specific moment in the last month when you put it into practice. If nothing comes to mind, remove it for now. This step helps sort the values you live by from the ones you admire. Aspirational values are still worth having, and you can always add them back later.

Third, once you’re down to five or fewer, put them in order and write down one small way you could act on each this week.

Why five? Fewer than that can leave whole parts of your life uncovered. More than that, and it gets hard to remember them when you’re deciding what to do with your day. Brené Brown’s Living Into Our Values exercise goes further and asks people to narrow down to two. Whichever number you choose, it helps to keep cutting past the point where it feels comfortable.

Common mistakes

  • Keeping too many. A long list can feel thorough, but it’s hard to use. If ten things are top priorities, none of them really are.
  • Choosing values out of obligation. Ask whether you’d still choose a value if no one else ever knew. Values you’re still growing into are fine to keep.
  • Leaving values undefined. “Growth” can mean a lot of things. Write down what it looks like for you on an ordinary day.
  • Treating the list as permanent. Values can shift with new seasons of life, like becoming a parent, a health scare, or a new job. It’s worth coming back to these exercises when life changes.

From naming your values to living them

Identifying your values is the first step in values-based living. The next is noticing whether what you spend your time and attention on lines up with what you say matters.

Two more worksheets can help with that part. Toward and Away Moves has you pick one value and list the things you do that carry you toward it and away from it. Passengers on the Bus looks at the thoughts and feelings that tend to pull you off course, and how to keep going with them.

Living your values is also what we’re building APPA around. When you plan your day, you’ll tag tasks with the value that drives each. And over time, APPA helps you see whether your days are aligned with the values you want to live by.

APPA is the productivity app that wants you to do less.

→ Try APPA today