<aside> 🌈 Note: Some students have made some discoveries prior to taking the course! In this case, you can “test out” of the relevant assessment.
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Assessment #1
<aside> ◼️ To complete Unit 1
Discovery 1 — Emotions Point to Values
Discovery 2 — Ubiquitous Crowding Out
Discovery 3 — Meaning & Attention
Skill 1 — Emotions to Values
Skill 2 — Sorting Values from Other Motives
Skill 3 — Writing Values Clearly
Discovery 1 is that from every emotion you can harvest a value. This tends to change people’s relationship to their feelings, and makes negative feelings, especially, much more exciting to have, because there's a straightforward way to learn from them.
Discovery 2 is about how many opportunities we miss to live by our values each day, for various environmental and psychological reasons. Students who make this discovery will become acutely aware of when they are unnecessarily goal-directed or driven by others’ expectation, or when the circumstances are making the values they’d like to live by impossible. Seeing this in detail can be exciting, shocking, and embarrassing.
Students who’ve made discovery 2 will see the fine structure of their life—where they can live by their values, and where not. They will be able to recount when their own psychological habits are leading them away from their values. They will be able to give many recent occasions where they were focused on preferences rather than values, on goals rather than values, on avoiding fears rather values, on living up to expectations rather than values, etc
Discovery 3 is about the close relationship between meaning and attention. An experience of meaning always comes with an attentional policy.
Skill 1 is becoming quick and precise with naming the values in emotions—so that you can name your feelings as they arise, and also name what they’re telling you is important. For emotionally articulate students, this can be done after a day of practice.Skill 2 is skill at sorting out your values from the other types of motivations that guide you, and—when you are talking with someone else—sorting their motivations in the same way.Skill 3 is about writing out these attentional policies so other people can understand what’s meaningful to you.<aside> 🔬 Evaluation
To test Discovery 1 and Skill 1 we’ll ask you to name your feelings and find the values behind them.
You can self assess with this worksheet Emotions to Values Practice
To test Discovery 2, we’ll ask for this fine-grained structure — how are you most often crowded out? You should be able to describe hundreds of times a day.
You can self-asses with this work sheet Crowding Out Task
To test Skill 2, we ask you to sort a list of potential “values” — to say which are real values and which are goals, expectations, etc. And we’ll ask you to sort your own motivations the same way.
You can practice honing your sorting skills with Sorting Values Task
To test skill 3 and discovery 3, we will ask you to describe values precisely, as attentional policies.
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<aside> 🤓 How to Learn
If you need these discoveries, the exercises and readings in Chapter 1. Telling Values Apart from Other Things (Previous) and Chapter 2. Finding Evidence of Values (Previous) will help. Specifically, focus on Emotions to Values and Crowding Out / Meaning Analysis.
Read Chapter 3. Emotions to Values and Chapter 1. Crowding Out
Chapter 3 covers attention and meaning. You can also try making your own values cards at meaning.supplies, and doing a careful reading of Making Values Concrete.
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