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💡 The Big Idea: Core Values are Not Just for Companies

Personal core values can provide the clarity you need to cut the things that aren’t really important so you can focus on what is.

Here’s how to do it.

The Mission to Mars

There’s a famous exercise that business guru Jim Collins makes the companies and organizations he works with go through to help them codify their core values. He gets all the leaders in a room and then asks them:

The goal is to identify the essence of what makes your business or organization unique. The 4-7 core values you identify serve as a guiding framework for decision-making, behavior, and culture throughout the entire organization.

But you can get the same benefits from identifying your own personal core values.

Instead of going back and forth between two options when trying to make a decision, you can use your personal core values to provide instant clarity as to what the right course of action is.

How Core Values Connect to The PKM Stack

Personal core values are a big part of the Philosophy level at the top of my PKM Stack framework:

Your core values (along with your LifeTheme) provide two major benefits:

1. Motivation to consistently take action on the things that are important
2. Clarity that is needed to cut the things that aren’t

Without these, it’s hard to know which projects are truly important, which ideas are any good, and what information is actually useful. But if you have alignment with your vision and your values, it makes it much easier for information to flow into and out of your PKM system.

A Midwestern Tale About Core Values

I live in the Midwest, where there are a ton of family farms (my wife's extended family actually owns a multi-generational farm that's been in the family for over 150 years). One fall, I took my family to a small farm and went through a corn maze with my kids, who were 8 and 6 at the time. Because we went during the week (remote work FTW!), the place was pretty much empty, and we were the only ones going through the corn maze at that time.

At first, my kids were a little apprehensive, but I totally get it: to an 8-year-old, the corn maze is enormous! Not only does it span several acres, but because the corn goes over your head, you literally can’t see the end of it.

It’d be very easy to get lost and turned around.

But as we navigated the corn maze together, we came to an elevated platform in the middle of the maze. Once we walked up the handful of stairs to the top of the platform, we could see the entire corn maze. From here, we could get our bearings and decide which way to go.

From the platform, we were able to see several details we missed while in the maze: where we started, how far we’d come, the overall size of the maze, and most importantly, the location of the exit.

Once we found the exit, we were able to locate a marker — a big oak tree near the exit. When we got back into the corn maze, we simply had to look for that oak tree. We were able to use it as a focal point to make sure we were ultimately moving in the right direction.

Even though we couldn’t see the exit, we knew that as long as we were moving towards the oak tree, we knew we were moving in the right direction.

The lesson here is that you need signposts on your journey to help you stay on track. And that’s exactly what core values give you. Just like the tree in the corn maze, they help you keep moving in the right direction by providing a foundational decision-making framework you can use for every decision you make. Your core values keep you on the path toward your ideal future and help you to make sure that you are living your life in alignment.

Example: Our Schmitz Family Core Values

Core values can also benefit your entire family, creating alignment for everyone in your home and making sure that everyone is pulling in the same direction.

That was the goal my wife & I had when we sat down in 2017 to identify our Schmitz Family Guiding Principles document (she wouldn’t let me call it Standard Operating Procedures 😂).

We started by creating an image of the type of relationship we wanted to have with each other and our kids. Then, we took that ideal future image and broke it down into habits that would lead to our desired outcome.

From there, we condensed it down into five family core values. I had a graphic designer friend make a manifesto-type graphic for them and had it framed so we could hang it on our living room wall:

We see these core values every day. It’s a great reminder of what’s really important and acts as a filter when we’re trying to decide on the right thing to do.

How to Identify Your Own Personal Core Values

I find it helpful to use guiding questions to identify your personal core values. Here are several questions to get you started:

• How do you want to be remembered?
• What legacy would you like to leave?
• What do you love doing?
• What do you absolutely refuse to do?
• What are the immovable boundaries in your life?
• When are you happiest in life?
• What gives you life?
• What makes you jump out of bed in the morning?
• What do you value more than anything else?
• How do you measure success?
• Why do you do what you do?

Use these questions to get your brain thinking in the right direction, then just start writing down everything that comes to mind.

From here, you want to consolidate everything into a short list of potential values. Just keep a few things in mind:

1. Keep it simple. Don’t get too wordy. Make your core values punchy so that they are easier to remember.
2. Don’t pick too many. 4-7 is the sweet spot, in my opinion. If you have too many values, they start to get watered down.
3. Make them actual, not aspirational. Don’t pick values that you don’t live out right now. Stick to things that are important enough for you to already be taking action on.
4. Pick the things that really resonate. You’re not picking values to indicate your worth as a person. You’re picking the things that you care the most about.

The important thing is not that you absolutely nail them on the first go around. It's to have something you can start using to filter things. As you put them into practice, you'll see which ones work and which ones don't. Feel free to make changes and modifications as you go, but the real key is to start using what you have.

😎 Something Cool: Morgen Adds Obsidian Tasks Integration

A few weeks ago, I wrote an essay for the newsletter on effective time blocking. Shortly after that, I received beta access to Morgen, which included a local integration with Obsidian for scheduling your tasks.

Honestly, I hadn’t really given Morgen much of a look before this. But I have to admit that I am VERY impressed with the Obsidian integration! It even supports emoji-style dates recognized by the Obsidian Tasks plugin and pulls those tasks into a list for you so you can drag them onto your calendar and decide when you’re going to do them.

It does require adding IDs to all your tasks, but there is a Morgen plugin that lets you hide these in the notes that contain the tasks, and you can easily hide them in queries by using the code hide ids.

I’ve been using this for the last couple of weeks, and my workflow looks something like this:

1. I add tasks in Obsidian using the Obsidian Tasks plugin
2. I view my essential lists during my afternoon shutdown routine
3. I open Morgen, look at tomorrow, and time block my tasks that are due on my calendar (kind of like a 1st draft of my time-blocked plan)
4. The next morning, I recreate my time-blocked plan in my fancy notebook and write my essential tasks on a notecard

It’s not cheap, but I’m a big fan of Morgen. And the Obsidian integration is now live for everyone, which definitely warrants a mention here.

😎 Something Else Cool (But Also a Warning): Obsidian 1.7.2

Obsidian 1.7.2 is also available for Insiders, and it offers some HUGE speed improvements. If you have a big vault, this update will definitely make it much snappier to use.

There is a catch, though.

This update also breaks a number of plugins. So many, in fact, that there is a pinned message in the Obsidian Discord channel with a list of the affected plugins. Unfortunately, one of those is Query Control which I use heavily, so I have rolled back my Obsidian version so that it still works.

As a result, I actually don’t recommend you update to 1.7.2 yet.

BTW, rolling back an Obsidian version is a little bit tricky. So if you find yourself needing to do this, check out this Obsidian forum post.

📚 Book Notes: Hero On a Mission by Donald Miller

Yes, Donald Miller is the Storybrand guy. But don’t let that keep you from reading Hero On a Mission, which is one of the better purpose-driven productivity books I’ve ever read. I like the analogy of putting yourself on the Hero’s Journey, and I enjoy pretty much anything that speaks intelligently about lifestyle design.

There’s a lot to like about this one. Personally, I really enjoyed Donald’s storytelling. I also feel like he has some great advice here for dialing in your mission and purpose. One of the things he recommends in this book is writing your own eulogy, which I did and now review every couple of months during my Personal Retreat.

(I’ve included not only my eulogy but also my LifeTheme and personal core values as examples in LIfeHQ. They’re connected to all the templates, so all you need to do is update the contents 🙂)

To download my book notes for Hero On a Mission, click here.

— Mike

P.S. Only 8 days until the LifeHQ launch! I’m putting everything I have into this product, and I’m REALLY happy with how it’s coming together. There will be a special discount for newsletter subscribers at launch, so click here if you want to join the waitlist and keep your eyes peeled next week 👀