👣 Exercise: Your Turn to Come Up With Hard Steps

Before you start: Pick a Value

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Find a value with Emotions to Values or use one from the previous class.

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Make sure your value isn't bundled up with non-values and is phrased well for design purposes by running it through the values gauntlet.

Write your 🌳 Personal Value as a phrase here:

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Treat people... Act... Approach things... Keep things...

Step 1: Come up with potential Hard Steps

Come up with many imperfect hard steps. You can filter, make them more specific and refine them later.

Ask yourself:

You lived by your value! What actions did you do to get there? Write yourself a recipe.
Scan what you wrote down so far. Anything missing in between? Anything that you need to do in preparation of or after the event?
Scan what you wrote so far again. Which of those seems hard? What exactly is hard to do? Where do my attempts to live by this value usually break down? Can you zoom into what exactly makes it hard?

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The Second Cheat Sheet: What's the action that is hard to do?

What aspects of your environment do you have to take into account?

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The First Cheat Sheet: Scanning your context

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Your potential hard steps go in here. Once done, copy and plug into step 2.

Step 2: Screen and Pick

Go through the list of potential hard steps. Maybe kick some out. Improve them one by one.

Ask yourself:

Is it necessary for living by the value? (i.e. if you could never do this, could you not live by the value?) If it is not really necessary to live by this value, tag as 🎉 (not necessary) or kick out. Ask yourself: Is there a related action, that IS necessary?

Is it hard? (at least for some people, some of the time) If it is not really hard (for some people, some of the time), tag as 🚲 (not hard) or kick out. If you are not sure, ask yourself: "What is it that is hard about this?"

Is it general enough to apply across cases? (e.g. a classroom, a hospital, a chatroom; lover, friend, parent) If it is so specific that it doesn't apply across contexts tag as ❄️ (too specific) or kick out. Which action IS hard to take across cases?

Is it an instruction that could be followed? (i.e., an action, that the person living by the value can take themselves?) Often, potential hard steps are states or collection of actions or dependent on others. Could you act this out right away? If not, tag with 🚷 (not an instruction) and refine.

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The Second Cheat Sheet: What's the action that is hard to do?

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Copy and paste your potential hard steps from Step 1 in here. Improve them one by one. Is there any way to live by the value without doing this step? Is it hard to do? Does it apply across cases? Is it an instruction you could turn into action right away?