Take eight minutes to sort through our deck of a hundred values and winnow it down to your top five.
Find your values, freeDeciding for myself
Being deeply known
Having control over others
Having direction and meaning
When you're forced to decide which values you'll give up, you find out which ones you most need to keep.
Everyone says they value honesty, family and growth. Nothing was at stake in saying so. This exercise removes the free lunch, because you can't keep all hundred, and you can't keep thirty either. By the time you're choosing between loyalty and independence with one slot left, you're learning something.
Winnow also includes the values you'd rather not admit to.
Most values tools quietly removed the uncomfortable cards. You won't find power, wealth, fame, popularity or ambition in them, because a deck of admirable options produces a flattering result and nobody complains about a flattering result.
The trouble is that nobody's embarrassed to rank kindness highly. If every option is one you'd happily say out loud, the exercise can only tell you what you were already willing to say. Winnow keeps those cards, and they're often the ones that change the outcome.
You might be surprised by what you notice about yourself along the way.
A hundred cards, one at a time, into three piles. Very important, important, not important. Keyboard shortcuts keep it moving, and your first instinct is usually the honest one.
Your "very important" pile will be far bigger than ten. Now you have ten slots. This is the step that does the real work.
Rank your final five in order. Then read what the pattern underneath them says, drawn from how you sorted the other ninety-five.
Most self-knowledge exercises hand you a list and ask you to agree with it. This one makes you choose, then shows you the pattern running underneath your choices, including the tension between the two things you ranked highest.
You'll get your five, a map of the themes behind them, and a card worth keeping. It's free, it takes eight minutes, and there's nothing to sign up for.
If you're printing and cutting cards, or reading a list aloud, you're spending billable time on logistics. Send clients the link beforehand and they arrive with a ranked five and a themed profile already done.
You spend the hour on the conversation instead of the setup. It's free to use with as many clients as you like.
Team values sessions usually produce a poster nobody reads, because the values were chosen by consensus, which really means chosen by whoever spoke last.
Have everyone sort privately first, then bring the results together. The kit gives you a step-by-step facilitator guide, an aggregate results template and a slide deck, so you can run it without hiring anyone.
The sort is free and always will be. It's built on an instrument in the public domain, so charging for it would be poor form.
No account, no email required.
Unlimited clients, no licence needed.
Delivered within 48 hours.
The Personal Values Card Sort by W.R. Miller, J. C'de Baca, D.B. Matthews and P.L. Wilbourne, University of New Mexico, 2001. It's been used in motivational interviewing, addiction treatment, career counselling and couples work for twenty-five years. The authors released it into the public domain and explicitly permit copying, adaptation and use without permission.
Winnow keeps all 83 of their original values, shortens the definitions so they read on a phone, and adds seventeen more.
A 25-year-old instrument has gaps. The additions come from the three standard instruments in values research, and each one is genuinely absent from the original rather than a synonym for something already there.
From the VIA Character Strengths (Peterson and Seligman, 2004): Curiosity, Courage, Gratitude, Kindness, Perseverance, Wisdom, Leadership. From the Rokeach Value Survey (1973): Wisdom as a terminal value. From Schwartz's Theory of Basic Values (1992): Ambition, within the achievement cluster.
From contemporary coaching and clinical practice, where they're now standard vocabulary: Balance, Belonging, Connection, Integrity, Patience, Respect, Empathy, Resilience, Trust.
Every added card is flagged in the data, so anyone who needs the unmodified 2001 instrument can filter them out.
Because leaving them out is what makes most values exercises useless. If every card on the table is admirable, the result is a list of things you were already comfortable claiming. The information is in whether you'd rank wealth above compassion when only one slot is left.
Ranking something here isn't an endorsement of it, and nothing you sort is visible to anyone else.
Neither, exactly. It's a structured elicitation instrument. It doesn't score you against a population or sort you into a type. It surfaces what you prioritise when forced to trade off. It isn't a diagnostic tool and it isn't a substitute for therapy.
Nothing leaves your browser. Results are held in local storage on your device, and the share link encodes your results in the address itself rather than storing them on a server. If you ask for a retake reminder, the only thing we hold is your email address and your five values.
Yes, freely and with as many clients as you like. Since nothing is stored on a server, there's no client data sitting anywhere, which sidesteps most of the usual questions. Clients can send you their results themselves, or bring the printed page to the session.
Eight minutes, free, and nothing to sign up for.
Find your values, freeWe named it after the second one.