PERSONAL VALUES / A CLARIFICATION EXERCISE
Make room for
what matters.
Some priorities come easily to mind. Others deserve a quieter look. Sort a full deck of values, then decide which feel most central to your life.
100 cards · five importance piles · optional ranked priorities · your pace
Your own importance.Choose what matters to you, without right answers or a score to maximize.
Room for different priorities.Sorting makes space for what feels central and what matters less right now.
Your choice to save.No account. Optional journal text is saved separately, only when you choose Save.
A SIMPLE, DELIBERATE PROCESS
Sort. Choose.
Reflect.
This is the public-domain Personal Values Card Sort, updated by Miller and colleagues in 2011. It helps clarify priorities without turning them into a personality type.
- 01
Sort the cards.
Place each of the 100 values into one of five importance piles. Choose, then continue at your own pace. You can pause and edit.
- 02
Choose your priorities.
After the full sort, optionally choose 5–10 values and put them in your own order. No order is inferred from your piles.
- 03
Bring them into focus.
Look at your choices and consider what a value means in everyday life. Your snapshot has no overall score or population comparison.
Opening the optional local journal…
SOURCE, RIGHTS & LIMITS
A useful exercise.
An honest scope.
The deck has a clear public-domain source. The result is your own set of choices, rather than a psychological measurement.
We use the complete 100-card 2011 Personal Values Card Sort by William R. Miller, Janet C’de Baca, Daniel B. Matthews, and Paula L. Wilbourne, University of New Mexico. The source explicitly permits copying and adaptation without further permission.
The five supplied piles are Not Important to MeSomewhat Important to MeImportant to MeVery Important to MeMost Important to Me. All 100 cards must be sorted before your finished snapshot. A pile is a choice of importance, not a numerical strength or psychological score.
The source then invites a person to select and rank 5–10 central values. That step is optional here. Cards within a pile stay in source order until you deliberately choose a priority order.
This is a values-clarification exercise. It is not a validated Schwartz questionnaire, a personality assessment, a diagnosis, or a comparison with other people. It does not measure whether you actually act on a value, and a lower priority is not a character flaw.
Ownfacet adapts the deck to accessible browser controls. We preserve the source card wording, with display typography and line breaks normalized. The source also provides blank cards for values you wish to add. Our optional journal offers up to five custom entries and context notes as a separate supplement; these do not enter the 100-card sort or its ranked priorities. That panel’s space limit and reflection prompts are Ownfacet’s interface choices. No author, university, or publisher endorsement is implied.
The journal can be used before or after sorting. Save or clear it within its own panel. Ordinary result downloads and prints leave out personal text; only the dedicated private-journal controls include it. Clearing the card-sort snapshot keeps this separate journal.
START WITH WHAT MATTERS TO YOU
Give your priorities
a little space.
Take time with the cards. You do not need a ready-made answer about who you are.
Start the card sort