WORKLIFEDESIGN

“It’s not hard to make decisions when you know what your values are.” Roy Disney

In order to go into the world and live a life you love, you need to know a little bit about yourself. You need to know what’s important to you, what your values are, and how they can guide all the decisions – big and little – you make in your life.

Being aware of your values not only helps you with decisions but also gives you direction. You are able to ask yourself at any time, “Is doing this helping me create a life I love, or is it hindering me?” You begin to live with intention, rather than adrift in the drama of your own and other people’s lives. Your purpose becomes clear.

Getting in touch with your values also helps you reconnect with and understand your passion for life.

A passion for animal rescue may reflect how important the treatment of all living creatures is for you.

A passion for the provision of services for immigrants may reflect how important social justice is for you.

A passion for, um, disco music may reflect how important feeling joy may be for you.

There are all sorts of ways to get clear on your values. You can look at moments in your life when you’ve had heightened emotions (happy, sad, angry, etc) and draw out the value that was being honoured or in conflict in those situations.

One of the easiest ways I’ve found is by doing a Values Sort. It took me 20 years to find a really good list of values but I finally came across the list used in research by Miller, C’DeBaca, Matthews and Wilbourne which captures the core values quite well. (As well as having scope to ‘add your own values’)

To help you get clear on what’s important to you, I’ve developed the handy Sorting Out Your Values exercise.

Download Sorting Out Your Values

Ahh, Monday morning. How I love thee…

I rarely check my email over the weekend so by the time Monday morning rolls around, my Inbox is full to the brim with fascinating things that could suck at least 28 hours of the day away. Combine this with a rapidly expanding to-do list in my head and a sense of anticipation that “this week I’ll actually get a substantial slab of work completed” and things start resembling chaos.

So taking some time-out on Monday mornings to organise my week is essential.  I’ve found that I need to move beyond a to-do list of things that need my urgent attention and check in with what’s important (goals and priorities), what I need to do to realise these priorities and scheduling it into my calendar.

For this worthy, weekly task I have my handy Weekly Actions Worksheet. It’s fairly straight forward:

1. Check-in with my overall goals (eg beautiful home, work I love, etc).

2. Determine what this week’s priorities will be (depends on where I am, what needs attention, what I feel like doing this week).

3. Write down the ‘next steps’ or actions for each of the priorities and/or goals. Plus anything that may be floating by that needs attention but is part  of a greater goal (such as ‘feeding myself’, ‘having hot water’, etc). I keep the actions easy, small, managable. I can always create new actions later in the week if I complete them.

4. Work out what I’ll do on what days, and perhaps when (AM, PM, or specific time)

5. Transfer whatever reminders I need to my iCal

6. Refer back to the worksheet every morning during the week. Add, delete or change as necessary.

Download Monday Morning Weekly Actions Worksheet (MMWAW!)