The question values actually answer
You have a decision to make. Maybe it's whether to take a new role, how to respond to a conflict, or what to prioritize this quarter. You sit with it. You consult your values. And then one of two things happens: either your values hand you a specific answer and you follow it rigidly into a wall, or your values feel so abstract that they offer nothing useful, and you're paralyzed anyway.
Both outcomes come from the same misunderstanding. You're treating your values like a map — a document that prescribes the exact route from where you are to where you should go. Values don't work that way. They never did.
Values are a compass. They tell you which direction matters. They do not tell you which trail to take, where to stop for the night, or how to cross the river you didn't know was there. That information comes from the terrain itself — from the specific, unpredictable, constantly shifting circumstances of your actual life. The compass keeps you oriented. The terrain determines the route.
This distinction sounds semantic. It isn't. Getting it wrong produces two of the most common failure modes in human decision-making: rigid dogmatism on one side and decision paralysis on the other.
What ACT discovered about values and directions
The clearest articulation of values-as-compass comes from Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT), developed by Steven Hayes and colleagues. In ACT, values are defined as "freely chosen, verbally constructed consequences of ongoing, dynamic, evolving patterns of activity" (Hayes, Strosahl, & Wilson, 2012). That's a dense definition. Here's what it means practically: values are chosen directions of living, not endpoints you arrive at.
Russ Harris, one of the most effective translators of ACT for general audiences, puts the distinction sharply: "A value is like heading West; a goal is like the river or mountain or valley we aim to cross whilst travelling in that direction" (Harris, 2009). Goals can be achieved and crossed off a list. You can finish building the house, earn the promotion, complete the degree. Values cannot be completed. You don't finish being compassionate. You don't arrive at integrity. You move in their direction continuously, through an infinite variety of specific actions, in constantly changing circumstances.
This isn't a poetic reframing. It's a functional distinction that changes how you make decisions. When you treat a value as a goal — "I value health, therefore I must run every morning at 6 AM" — you've created a rigid rule. If you get injured, if your schedule changes, if running stops working for your body, the rule breaks. And because you fused the value with the specific behavior, the value feels broken too. You didn't fail at health. You failed at running at 6 AM. But the fusion between the compass direction and the specific route makes it feel like the same thing.
When you treat health as a compass direction instead, the question shifts from "did I run this morning?" to "am I moving toward vitality in whatever way is available to me right now?" That might be running. It might be walking. It might be sleeping more. It might be saying no to a commitment that's draining you. The direction holds. The route adapts.
Why maps fail in complex terrain
Maps work when the territory is known, stable, and traversable. You can map a subway system because the stations don't move. You can map a highway because the roads don't rearrange themselves overnight. But human life is not a subway system. The territory shifts under your feet — relationships evolve, careers take unexpected turns, your own understanding deepens, circumstances you never anticipated emerge daily.
Herbert Simon, the economist and cognitive scientist who won the Nobel Prize for his work on decision-making, identified this problem decades before ACT formalized the compass metaphor. Simon's concept of bounded rationality (1956) demonstrated that human decision-makers face three inescapable constraints: limited information about the available options, limited cognitive capacity to evaluate those options, and limited time in which to decide. You cannot optimize in the way a map-based approach demands, because you never have the complete map.
Simon's alternative was satisficing — a blend of "satisfy" and "suffice." Instead of searching for the optimal choice (which requires a complete map of all options and outcomes), satisficers establish criteria for what counts as good enough and choose the first option that meets those criteria. This isn't settling. It's rational adaptation to incomplete information. And here's the key connection to values: your values are the criteria. They define what "good enough" looks like. They don't identify the single correct answer. They establish a threshold — a direction — and any route that stays within that bearing is viable.
Barry Schwartz extended this insight in The Paradox of Choice (2004), demonstrating that more options don't produce better decisions — they produce paralysis, regret, and decreased satisfaction. Schwartz's research showed that "maximizers" (people who try to find the objectively best option, which requires map-level knowledge) consistently report more depression, anxiety, and dissatisfaction than "satisficers" (people who choose what meets their standards and move on). The paradox dissolves when you have a compass. You don't need to evaluate every trail on the mountain. You need to know you're heading west, and that the trail you're on is heading roughly west too.
Wayfinding: the navigation strategy that actually works
There's a field that has studied this exact problem for decades: wayfinding research. The distinction between route-following and wayfinding maps directly onto the values-as-compass principle.
Route-following is what GPS does. It prescribes a sequence of specific turns: left here, right there, continue for 800 meters. It works beautifully when the route is known and the conditions are stable. It fails catastrophically when the road is closed, the bridge is out, or you encounter terrain the map doesn't cover. A route-follower who loses the prescribed path is lost.
Wayfinding is different. A wayfinder has a destination direction — a bearing — and navigates toward it adaptively, reading the terrain as it emerges. Research on spatial cognition distinguishes between route knowledge (a sequence of turns tied to specific landmarks) and survey knowledge (an integrated understanding of how spaces relate to each other). Survey knowledge — the cognitive equivalent of having a compass rather than turn-by-turn directions — produces more flexible, resilient navigation (Siegel & White, 1975). When the path is blocked, a wayfinder with survey knowledge can generate alternative routes because they understand the overall structure, not just the specific sequence.
Karl Weick, the organizational theorist, captured this principle in his concept of sensemaking. Weick argued that in complex, ambiguous situations, people don't navigate by following pre-specified plans. They navigate by constructing plausible interpretations of their situation — ongoing, retrospective, identity-driven narratives that are "good enough" to act on (Weick, 1995). Sensemaking is compass navigation applied to organizational life. You don't need a perfect map. You need a coherent direction, the ability to read what's in front of you, and the willingness to adjust your route without losing your bearing.
Values function as the identity-and-direction component of sensemaking. They tell you who you are and which way you're heading. The specific steps you take — the goals, the tactics, the daily behaviors — those are route-level decisions that should flex with conditions. Fusing your identity with a specific route is how organizations become rigid and die. It's also how people become dogmatic and stuck.
The two failure modes: rigidity and vapor
Understanding values as a compass means threading a needle between two opposite failures.
Rigidity happens when you treat values as maps — when you derive specific, inflexible behavioral prescriptions from directional principles. "I value honesty" becomes "I must always say exactly what I think, with no filtering, regardless of context or consequence." This isn't honest. It's a rigid rule wearing the costume of a value. ACT researchers call this cognitive fusion — when a person becomes so entangled with a verbal rule that the rule controls their behavior even when following it produces outcomes that violate the deeper value it supposedly serves (Hayes et al., 2012). A person fused with the rule "always be honest" may deliver feedback so bluntly that it destroys a relationship, undermining a deeper value of connection. The map overrode the compass.
You can recognize rigidity when your values produce defensiveness rather than openness. If someone challenges how you're enacting a value and your response is "but I value X, so I have to do Y," you've fused with a route. The compass would say: "I value X. Given these new circumstances, what's the best way to move in that direction now?"
Vapor is the opposite failure. It happens when values are so abstractly stated that they constrain nothing. "I value growth." What does that mean operationally? Everything could qualify as growth. Nothing is ruled out. The value functions as decoration rather than navigation. You might as well say "I value good things."
The test for vapor: does the value, as you've articulated it, rule out any option you're currently considering? If not, it's not functioning as a compass — it's not pointing in any particular direction. A compass that points everywhere points nowhere. "I value intellectual honesty" is directional — it rules out positions you haven't actually examined, conclusions you've reached for emotional convenience, and arguments you're making to win rather than to understand. "I value being a good person" rules out almost nothing, because everyone defines "good" as whatever they're already doing.
Useful values live between rigidity and vapor. They're specific enough to generate real constraints (some paths are not west) but flexible enough to accommodate multiple routes (many different trails head west).
How to use the compass in practice
The compass metaphor isn't just conceptual. It changes the structure of how you make decisions.
When facing a decision, ask the directional question, not the route question. Don't ask "what should I do?" — that's asking for a map. Ask "what direction does my value point, and which options move in that direction?" The directional question usually eliminates some options and leaves several viable ones. That's the correct output. If your value eliminates all options but one, you're probably fusing with a rule. If it eliminates none, your value is probably vapor.
Hold goals loosely, hold values firmly. This is the ACT prescription in a sentence. Your goal to get promoted this year is a specific route. If the company restructures, the economy shifts, or you discover the promotion leads somewhere you don't want to go, the goal should change. The value underneath — perhaps competence, contribution, or growth — remains. Find a new goal that serves the same direction.
When values conflict, don't look for the "right" value. Look for the best route through overlapping terrain. If you value both career ambition and family presence, the map-based approach tries to determine which value is "more important" and follow it exclusively. The compass approach asks: given my direction toward both of these, what's the path that keeps me moving toward both, even if imperfectly? Sometimes the answer is temporal — this season of life emphasizes one bearing; next season, the other. Sometimes it's structural — redesign the work arrangement so both directions can be served. The point is that values-as-compass allows creative routing. Values-as-map forces a binary choice.
Revisit the bearing regularly, not just the route. This is what L-0639 will address in detail, but the implication follows directly from the compass metaphor. A compass is only useful if you check it periodically. If you set your bearing at twenty-two and never look at the compass again, you'll drift off course gradually, imperceptibly, until you're walking south and wondering why the landscape doesn't match your expectations.
AI as compass calibration partner
Your personal epistemic infrastructure can use AI to sharpen the compass without rigidifying it. An LLM doesn't share your cognitive fusion — it won't automatically nod when you derive a rigid rule from a flexible value. If you tell an AI, "I value authenticity, so I have to quit this job that requires me to present a professional persona," the AI can usefully ask: is maintaining a professional persona actually inauthentic, or is it a skilled adaptation that serves your deeper values of effectiveness and contribution? Is quitting the only route that honors authenticity?
This isn't the AI telling you what your values should be. It's the AI stress-testing whether you've confused compass and map. When you articulate your reasoning to a system that has no stake in your conclusions, the distinction between directional values and rigid rules becomes easier to see. The fusion that feels like integrity from inside often looks like inflexibility from outside. An AI conversation can provide that outside perspective without the social dynamics that make it hard to hear from friends or colleagues.
You can also use AI to check for vapor. State a value. Ask the AI to identify three decisions where that value would actually constrain your choice. If you can't find three, the value may not be functioning as a compass — it may be a label you've applied to whatever you were already going to do.
The difference this makes
When values are a compass, your relationship with uncertainty changes. You don't need to know the exact path. You don't need to see the destination. You don't need a plan that accounts for every contingency. You need a direction and the ability to read the terrain in front of you.
This is why the previous lesson matters so much here. L-0637 showed that misalignment between values and action drains energy. But the correction isn't to rigidify the alignment by turning values into rules. The correction is to hold the direction firmly while staying adaptive about the route. You feel energized when you're heading in a direction that matters to you, regardless of whether the specific trail matches some idealized plan.
The compass doesn't promise an easy journey. It doesn't promise the shortest journey. It promises that when you check it — and you must check it regularly — you'll know whether you're still heading the direction you chose. Everything else is wayfinding.