You are what you eat; you believe what you do.

You and everyone you know are a set of rules you make for yourself.

People make choices every day. What to eat, what to wear, what to do this weekend. In college, we’d guess that people would generally choose to do the thing that they thought was most useful or have the most utility for themselves.

And while seeming too basic an idea to be true, you can bring in a surprising amount of nuance to the system.

  1. I chose to sleep in this morning because I value the sleep more than I value the incremental benefit of exercise.
  2. I didn’t proofread this text message because I would rather spend my time on something else.
  3. I became a developer instead of a teacher because I enjoy this particular balance of risks and rewards.

These are conscious and unconscious values we place on our interactions with the world. But what’s really interesting about human behavior is people will impose different rules on themselves, and change those rules over time. Their justifications and reasons for their choices are just as varied and at times arbitrary. My father as a child heard the phrase:

Blue and green should never be seen.

And so he applied that rule to his life. A rule that I’ve never heard anyone else apply to themselves. What rules do you apply to yourself? Take a moment and gauge yourself of a few different metrics:

  1. How pragmatic are you:
    • More Pragmatic: I’m going to spend my time on the most valuable things.
    • Less Pragmatic: I prioritize following the process even if its less efficient.
  2. How idealistic are you:
    • More Idealistic: Some things have value in and of themselves.
    • Less Idealistic: I only pursue goals that have clea, achievable, and measurable results.
  3. Are you an individual or community?
    • More Community Focused: I forego my needs so X can succeed.
    • Less Community Focused: I can only accomplish what needs to be done if I take care of myself.
  4. How do you handle risk?
    • More Risky: I am confident in my abilities and choices despite the risks.
    • Less Risky: I use my talents to build security and safety into my life.

You have unquantifiable values for each of these, and so do the people around you. So know your personal values, and when you take the same measuring stick and apply it to your professional life.

Manager X is pragmatic and highly risk averse, so making concerted effort to show up on time, and explicitly show how decisions compensate for risks is going to have more value demonstrating how your choices align with company values.

Manager Y is very culture and community oriented. So showing preferences that demonstrate personal sacrifice for the benefit of the group are going to carry weight.

This is not chess though, we do not have perfect information, but I think a huge amount of unforced errors would be avoided if we thought about:

  • So do you know what the real rules are for your goals, your team, and your life?
  • Do your actions reflect the rules you make for yourself?
  • Do you know what the people around you value?
  • Do the people around know what you value and do your actions reflect that?