What is a Tenet?

If you search for “Core Values” online today, you’re inundated with bullet-point lists of hundreds of words that are no better than opening a thesaurus. They lack specificity, and are thus not useful. In what context? Is this an end-state to achieve or a mode of behavior? Is this something you want for yourself or for others?

For example, “Risk” is not a value. People may like to take risks for some underlying reason, but “Risk” itself is not enough. If risk taking does feel like a precise thing a person wants to do more of, they should contextualize it: “Risk: because it makes me feel alive and helps me avoid living a constrained life — opening up possibilities, and continually surprising myself.”

We want the output to contain core value clusters, actionable statements (tenets?) specific to the domain in question.

Examples

• Autonomy
• Financial Safety: Taking a path where I know I’ll always unquestionably be able to keep food on the table and a roof over my head
• Financial Flexibility: Being able to live a day to day life where I don’t have to constantly check prices with paranoia to make sure I’m within budget
• In control of my Direction: want to feel like I’m making choices out of my own volition, versus feeling “forced” to. Feeling freedom to walk from
• Love & Care
• Prioritizing Loved ones: Want to feel that I’ve prioritized connecting with loved ones and making room for them in my life
• Warmness in the Everyday: Want to feel more general warmness when going through my day, even when conversing with strangers
• Making a Difference
• Making a world more like one I want to live In: Taking actions that make the world more like one I would want to live in
• Inspiring Pride: Want my work to be something I’ll feel proud looking back on, even if it doesn’t turn out how I hope it will
• Swinging for the fences: I want to be putting my time towards things that are not very bounded in their potential scale of success.

More examples

• Intensity and Vividness
• Creative: I want my daily work to involve a creative component. I don’t want to fall into routine.
• Intense: I want my work to be intense – high highs, low lows, long hours, rich with emotion. But not overbearing! It should have the CAPACITY to be INTENSE, but not DEMAND it of me.
• Purpose in Existence
• Meaningful: I want the mission of the company to be meaningful, more than I want every task I do each day to be meaningful.
• Valuable: I want the output of my work to feel valuable to the users. I want the users to be people I care about.
• Respected: I want to be respected by my peers. The type of respect I want is a quiet kind, where either I am helpful, or I am inspirational. If I am inspirational, it’s because I live according to my values and encourage people to do the same, not because people want to copy my actions.
• Differentiated: I want my work to be something few other people (like me) are doing (in the way that I’m doing). This means the cause is either non-obvious, very difficult, or altruistic.

Todos:

“If you search for ‘Core Values’ online today, you’re inundated with bullet-point lists of hundreds of words that are no better than opening a thesaurus. They lack specificity, and are thus not useful. In what context? Is this an end-state to achieve or a mode of behavior? Is this something you want for yourself or for others?”

"What does it actually mean to value 'intellect?' and do something about it in your life?"

Shitty one-word value: "Risk."

Useful Tenet: "I want to be more open to risk and chance in my career."