’Tis the Season for Reexamining Your Values - Nir And Far

Hey everyone, it's Nir Eyal. Welcome to the near and Far Podcast. Today's article will be Tis the Season for Reexamining youg Values. And joining me is Nick Gray, author of the two Hour Cocktail Party. And Nick is going to be reading through this article and then we're going to stop from time to time and kind of discuss some of the points. Hey Nick, how's it going?

It's going great. I'm excited for 2023 and I think it's great that folks are listening to your podcast, thinking about their values and their productivity and habits. So I can't wait to keep speaking about that. I think that's going to be fun and this is going to be a great article. The name of the article is Tis the season for Reexamining your Values how will you spend your precious time this year? As one year ends and another begins, many of us won't help but reflect on who we are and who we'd like to become. Most people aiming to emulate their ideal selves will resort to New Year's resolutions, but more often than not, those are doomed to fail. Goal setting and visualization alone just aren't sufficient methods for changing behavior. However, there is another way. As we embark on a journey of introspection and self reflection, we should instead reassess our values for the coming year. That in turn will affect how we spend our most precious resources, our attention, and our time. Values are attributes of the person we want to be. Being an honest person, a good listener, and a dedicated friend or partner are all examples of values. When we re examine our values, we can better figure out how to spend our time becoming our ideal selves. We'll be more likely to become that person than if we rely on New Year's resolutions alone. Section 1 Examine your existing values Make a list of your values for this past year. What values did you focus on or think about it? This on which domains of your life did you spend the most time? It's helpful to break up your life into three domains work, relationships, and yourself. Then you can categorize your values into these domains, creating an outline of where you spend your time. In the article, there's a graph that says life domains and it has you that's in the middle and then relationships on the outside and then work on the outside of that and the caption says the three life domains you, relationships and work. As you list your values of the past year, it's important to note the difference between values and just things we care about Such as financial security or recognition at work as attributes. True values are things that cannot be taken away from you. Financial security can be taken away from you, but not your honesty. Now, to assess those values, write down your answers to these. Have your values helped you become the person you want to be? Which values were a struggle to make time for? And why? Do you feel you successfully made time for your values, or do you need to reprioritize them? Which values were well represented in your calendar and which needed more time? I'll take a pause here to check in with Nir and see if there's any of these questions or reflections on those. I'm getting excited myself to write these down.

Yeah, I think it's something that I spend a lot of time thinking about. Because, you know, there's that saying that if you want to see what someone's real values are, you don't listen to the words coming out of their mouth. You look at their time and you look at their money. That's where this is all leading up to, by the way, is when we figure out, you know, when we ask ourselves, what should we do with our time? How should we spend our money? How should we spend our lives? Frankly, the only I think, way to suitably answer that is to live your life and spend your money in a way you don't regret. That's kind of what I'm optimizing for, is to not regret the way I'm spending my time right now, to not regret how I spent my money either. And so the way to do that is to ask yourself, how can I spend my time, my attention, and my money in a way that helps me live in accordance with my values? And so then my next question was, well, what exactly are values? And so the definition I came up with, the best definition that works for me is the attributes of the person you want to become. And again, attributes can't be taken away from you. These are things that are part of your identity. But you have to live out those values, right? You can say one thing, but if you do something else, then you're a hypocrite, right? You're lying to yourself more than anyone else. And so that's why it's so important to actually ask yourself, wait a minute, which values do I hold dear and which values do I prioritize more than others? Because we can't spend our time and money in a limitless fashion. These things are limited, right? We have limits, a limited amount of resources, time, money, and attention. And so we have to be very deliberate about which values am I investing in so that I can live my life the way I want and not look back in regret?

That's a fascinating idea. The idea that. What was it? That if you really want to see what somebody cares about and what their values are, to look at how they spend their time and how they spend their money, essentially look at their calendar and their credit card receipts. Almost.

Yep, exactly.

Choose your attributes for the year ahead. Our values may change year to year. Along with our vision of the person we want to be. We also grow as people. Perhaps you did a great job of emulating the attributes of your ideal self. Well done. And are now ready to focus on expanding your values in the coming year. Take the time to think about how your values might have changed. On the other hand, some values, such as being healthy or being a loving parent, may always be values you need to make time for based on your self reflection. We which values will you hold in the next year? Once we name the values we want, we can use them as guides to navigate our life choices. Here are 20 common values to consider to get you started. You can find those on NEAR's website at www.nearandfar.com common-values well, we could take a break here to just do a side thing to talk about these 20 common values. Would you be up for that, Nir? Sure.

Yeah. Let's. Let's talk through some of them. I think it's a great point, Nick. Thanks for taking that pause. Because you know, back to this definition of values or attributes of the person you want to become. And there are things that can't be taken away from you. So for example, values like toughness, self reliance, attentiveness, determination, generosity, courage, compassion, humility. There's a whole list of them in this article. But looking back at this as a reference and saying, hey, look, which one of these are important to me? Which one of these are attributes of the person I want to become? They don't have to be something that someone else says is important. Quite the opposite. You want to pick which values are important to you and then make sure that you can translate those values, that you can turn those values into time.

That's really cool. Well, at the risk of beating a horse of values, I'm going to read what the 20 common values are on this article and I'll just read them real quick because maybe you're thinking about what are my values. I want to set my values. I'm inspired to and so here are some common values from Nir's article loyalty, spirituality, humility, compassion, honesty, kindness, integrity, selflessness, determination, and generosity. The next 10 are courage, tolerance, trustworthiness, equanimity, altruism, appreciation, empathy, toughness, self reliance, and attentiveness. Nir, I'm going to go to the next section make time for who you want to be Unless there's anything else on those values.

Yeah, perfect.

Make time for who you want to be. When we don't make time for our values, we unintentionally spend too much time in one domain of our lives at the expense of others. If we chronically neglect our values, we become someone we're not proud of and our lives feel unbalanced and diminished. Instead, we can plan days that help us become an authentic reflection of the person we want to be and using one of the most effective methods for getting things done Timeboxing Timeboxing uses a well researched technique. Psychologists call setting an implementation intention, which is a fancy way of saying deciding what you're going to do and when you're going to do it. Here's how it works. Now that you've identified your values, you have to make sure they are represented in your calendar. First, turn your values into time by asking yourself how much time in each life domain would allow me to be consistent with my values values. If you relied on a time boxed calendar this past year, consider how you might adjust your calendar to better reflect your values. Then plot that time into a weekly calendar template to create your perfect week. The goal is to eliminate all white space on your calendar, so you're left with a template for how you intend to spend your time each day. Reassessing your values and making time for them is one of the best things you can do to make sure you stay motivated and and indistractable after the new year. If you adhere to your values based time boxed calendar, then by this time next year you'll be able to look back and feel content with how you turned your values into time.

Perfect. Well, thank you Nick for reading that. And I just wanted to mention I should have mentioned this earlier. You know, one of the things that people have a tough time doing is figuring out what are their values and which values to prioritize. And that's kind of the point of this exercise. So if you go to this article on my blog, near far.com, forward/common hyphen values again that's near and far.com forward/common hyphen values, you'll see this list of 20 values. Now you know it might be nice to prioritize all of these values, but you can't, right? You just won't have enough hours in the day to prioritize all of them. So what my team did was to create this very simple tool that helps you prioritize your top values. And so there's a very, like, kind of makes you rank choice your top values. So it says, you know, do you value honesty or tolerance? Do you value empathy or selflessness? And so giving yourself just five minutes to go through this quick quiz and coming out the other end with, here are my top five values. Now, you can take those top five values. You don't have to deal with the list of 20. You can just deal with your top five and say, okay, now how can I turn those values into time? If, for example, I value loyalty? Well, do I have time for the people in my life to be loyal to spirituality? Is that in my schedule? Do I have time in my schedule to practice compassion, for example, if those are my top values? Again, you shouldn't look to others to tell you what your values should be. You shouldn't judge others by their values. The important thing here is to live the kind of values that are important to you. This is the whole basis of integrity, is doing what you say you were going to do.

If not, we're hypocrites.

So by knowing what those values are, identifying what our top most important values are, and then turning those values into time, this is the best way that we can make sure that we live according to a plan that helps us become the kind of people we want to become.

Now, in the last section of your article, Nir, you mentioned that maybe the ideal calendar is entirely filled up with time boxed areas. And I struggle with that because I love flexibility and spontaneity and I love just following some thing. On the other hand, I'm not always the most productive, and that probably gets the best of me at times. Is there a balance there that someone can find?

So this is a very common question, Nick, around, you know, people saying, hey, I like time to be spontaneous. I want that freedom to kind of go explore whatever I want to explore. That's fine. There's nothing actually wrong with that. The idea, though, is to not let it run your entire day. So how can you make time for that, that need for that desire? And there is some value to exploring the things you want to explore. How can you do that? The first thing is to plan for spontaneity. Now that sounds like an oxymoron. How can I plan for spontaneity? You Actually can. So, for example, when I plan time with my daughter, okay, I have time with my daughter. We have three, four hours every weekend. And that time, we don't know what we're going to do. It's planned spontaneity. Now, why do I need to plan that time if it's spontaneous? Well, we don't know what we're going to do with that time. Maybe we'll go to the museum, maybe we'll go to the park, maybe we'll go get some ice cream. I don't know what we're going to do, but. But I know what I will not be doing. I will not be checking my phone. I will not be on social media. I will not be checking work emails. I will be with this person that I love very much. And so by having that time apportioned and knowing what you're going to do with that time, even if it's letting your mind wander, is the right way to do it. So it's great. If you want to go play around and explore your favorite topics on the Internet, there's nothing wrong with playing a video game or doing whatever it is you want to do, but make time for it. This is important for a few reasons. Number one, by apportioning that time, it makes sure that you're not letting yourself give in to a difficult internal trigger, an uncomfortable emotional state, because you're trying to escape it by giving yourself an excuse of, oh, I need spontaneity. I want to be able to have this freedom. And really what you're doing is escaping uncomfortable sensation. The second way this is important is when your brain knows that that time is coming, it can relax a bit, right? If you don't schedule a time, your brain is always looking for, yeah, but when am I going to get time to explore that idea? I've been thinking about, when am I going to get time to go play a video game? When am I going to have time to go putz around on the Internet? Whatever the case might be, it's not that any of these behaviors are wrong. It's why we do them. If we are doing them to escape discomfort, if we're doing them because of an internal trigger, then that leads to distraction. But if we plan for it, if we put it on our calendar now, we're turning what previously was a distraction into traction. So I recommend actually putting time on your schedule to explore that crazy project, to have some fun, to do whatever it is you want to do. Again, it's not up to me or anyone else to tell you how to live your life or what your values should be. The idea is to live your life according to your values and your schedule, not someone else's.

That makes sense. I like that. Hey, if you're listening to this podcast, you are listening to near and Far Business Behavior and the Brain. Nir Eyal is the best selling author of Hooked, how to build Habit forming Products and also how to control your attention and choose your life. Near blogs at near and far.com and he has a weekly newsletter filled with science backed strategies for designing healthy habits that your customers will love. If you guys haven't signed up yet for his newsletter, you have to. It is filled with fantastic info and you get all of his articles first. Look. Sign up for the free newsletter@www.nearandfar.com.