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Short Summary
Main recommendation: Create a core values document that you review regularly and use as the foundation for planning your life, even if the first version is imperfect. Cal Newport argues that the document does not need to be exactly right to be useful, because your values will evolve with experience, and having a direction is better than wandering.
Key Points
- The values document is meant to be reviewed regularly and used when writing strategic plans, such as deciding what to do in the next semester, by checking whether each plan serves your core values.
- There is no single correct set of values required before the document becomes usable; it should reflect your experience and intuition at the moment.
- Values shift over time as life changes, and Newport says intentional movement in a direction is better than aimless drifting even when that direction changes.
- Newport's own first values plan was drafted in his 20s as a grad student, and it has since changed after marriage, having kids, career shifts, and exposure to philosophical or theological traditions.
Details Worth Noting
- Concrete instructions: Write a first draft of your core values now, using whatever feels right to you at the moment. Keep it in a place you can review regularly, and use it as the reference point when making plans for the coming months. Revise it as your life and thinking change.
- Newport's first draft was written in a Moleskine notebook while waiting to sit shiva with a friend whose father had died, which shows the draft can come from a reflective moment rather than a formal exercise.
- He has kept a stack of Moleskines for about 20 years, which read like a diary, and he has drawn on them occasionally for blog posts, newsletter articles, and for citations in his book Digital Minimalism.
- Revisiting old notes showed him how his thinking matured, including his transition away from writing only for students, which he recalls working through in a Moleskine while watching a Disney nature documentary at a movie theater in Brookline, Massachusetts, around 2008.
- The speaker's own advice to Allison is to lower the stakes: having something is better than having nothing, and an imperfect starting point is acceptable.
Bottom Line
A values document does not have to be perfect to be valuable; starting one and letting it evolve with your life is what gives your planning intention and direction.
