Best PromptsThe Values Ladder
Climb down from your everyday choices to the two or three values actually running your life, then measure the gap between what you value and how you live.
Find out what I actually value: not what I'd say on a job application, but the values my choices reveal.
Method: laddering, the interview technique researchers use to climb from surface preferences to core values. One question per turn. Wait for each answer.
Phase 1, PICK THE THREADS. Ask me for:
- A choice I made recently that I didn't have to make (a purchase, a commitment, a no)
- Something I consistently spend money or time on that others might consider a waste
- The last thing that made me disproportionately angry
- Something I do even when nobody would know either way
Phase 2, DESCEND. For each thread, ladder down with variations of one move: "What does that give you?" / "What would be lost if you couldn't?" / "What matters about that?" Four to six rungs per thread, until we hit bedrock: an answer that only repeats itself when pushed. Note it and move to the next thread. Don't accept my first abstract word ("freedom", "security") as bedrock; ask what it looks like in a scene.
Phase 3, THE REGRET CHECK. Values also hide in regrets. Ask me for my two or three biggest regrets, then sort each into one of four types: foundation (I didn't do the work), boldness (I didn't take the chance), moral (I didn't do the right thing), connection (I didn't reach out). The category I cluster in points at the value I most fear violating.
Phase 4, THE MAP. Now deliver:
1. My 2-4 operating values, named precisely (not the nearest cliché: if the evidence says "being the person others can hand a crisis to", don't round it to "helpfulness"). Each with the ladder that led there, quoting my answers.
2. Collisions: where two of my values fight each other, and which one has been winning, based on what I told you.
3. The gap audit: for each value, ask me to rate 1-10 how fully my current week reflects it. For the biggest gap, ask: "What's the smallest change that would move this one point?"
4. The stated-versus-revealed test: ask me what I would have listed as my values before this conversation, and show me the diff.
Rules: no flattery, no horoscope-vague values everyone claims, quote my words when you name a pattern, and label inference as inference. If my answers are thin, say so and ask for a real scene instead of proceeding on vapor. Begin Phase 1.How to use
Answer Phase 1 with real choices rather than admirable ones, since the ladder can only climb down from what you actually did. The stated-versus-revealed diff in step 4 is where people get surprised: most discover one value they perform socially but don't organize their life around, and one they live by but have never named. Laddering comes from means-end chain research and the four regret types are Daniel Pink's taxonomy from the World Regret Survey. Redo the gap audit monthly, since the ladder rarely changes but the gaps do.
More rabbit hole prompts
Take me down into gratitude, past the list. I want to find what I am actually grateful for, understand why it is a gift and not just a fact, and come out seeing my life differently rather than just holding a longer inventory of it. A list is where most gratitude stops. It is where this starts. Rules for the whole descent: - One question
Everything You Were Given
A descent past the gratitude list into what gratitude actually is: what each gift cost, what your life would lack without it, and how much of it you can never repay.
Help me find what I've disowned in myself by examining what I can't stand in other people. The premise, stated plainly so we both know what we're doing: an ordinary dislike is information about the other person, but a reaction out of proportion to the offense is usually information about me. Contempt, disgust, and a specific kind of fasc
The Projection Audit
The traits you can't stand in other people are a map of what you refuse to see in yourself. This walks the map, using your own irritations as data.
Audit my hidden motives using signaling theory: the argument that much human behavior is about advertising qualities to other people, and that we hide this from ourselves precisely so we can advertise more convincingly. The logic to apply, so your analysis has teeth instead of being cynicism for its own sake: a self-deceived signaler is
The Reason and the Real Reason
Most of what you do has a stated reason and a real one. Signaling theory turned on your own purchases, arguments, and donations to find the gap.