Session 6 · Guide and forms
Homework: Compass Worksheet
S E S S I O N 6 · H O M E W O R K P A C K E T
The Compass Worksheet
Workview · Lifeview · Life Theme — the expand-then-reduce behind Charter §1.2 My Compass
“Making a compass is a way of making sure you don’t lose your way.” — Bill Burnett & Dave Evans, Designing Your Life |
Why this week, and why this much
You have just spent three sittings remembering your story and two minutes reading it aloud. Before you apply it — to values at Session 7, to strengths after that — understand it. That is the whole job of this packet, and it is the one place in Part One where the program asks you to write long before it asks you to write short.
Bill Burnett and Dave Evans, who teach life design at Stanford, ask two questions of every student before any planning is allowed: what is work for, and what is life for. Each gets a short essay — about 250 words, the length of a good letter — and then the two are read against each other. Where they agree, you have a bearing. Where they collide, you have found a value you did not know you were carrying. That collision is the reason this worksheet exists.
The essays are the marble; your Life Theme, and at Session 7 your two Core Values, are the carving. Do not skip to the carving. A man who writes the two-sentence version without the essay behind it writes what sounds right. A man who writes the essay first writes what is true, and then notices it.
The budget — about two hours, in three sittings
Sitting 1 · 45 min | The Workview essay. Read the prompts, then write without stopping. If you run dry, answer the next prompt. |
Sitting 2 · 45 min | The Lifeview essay. Same rules. Different question — resist the pull to write about work again. |
Sitting 3 · 35 min | The Compass: read both essays back, mark where they agree and where they fight, circle 3–5 candidate values on the Values Inventory, and write your Life Theme into Charter §1.2. |
Busyness will win some weeks. If it wins this one, come back — this is the page most worth catching up. Bring whatever you have to Session 7; a half-finished compass still points.
WHAT IS DUE, AND WHEN
Before Session 7 — Three Tiers
1.DO The Compass Worksheet — both essays, the compass and your Life Theme — copied into Charter §1.2. About two hours in three sittings.
2.DO The Values Inventory — circle 3–5 candidate values where your essays collide, in sitting 3. About 20 minutes.
3.READ Genesis 50:20, slowly, twice. Bring one sentence. Your VIA top 5 (taken after Session 5) comes to Session 7 too.
4.GOING DEEPER · optional Burnett & Evans, Designing Your Life, chapter 2 — “Building a Compass.” Brené Brown, Dare to Lead, pp. 185–197 on living into values.
Two things finished beats seven started — but this week the two things are big. Chunk them. A sitting a day is enough.
CLIFTONSTRENGTHS COMES LATER CliftonStrengths is assigned at the close of Session 7 and used in Session 8. You took VIA after Session 5; bring your top 5 to Session 7. The compass says what matters; your strengths say what you are wired to do about it. |
SITTING 1 · THE WORKVIEW · ABOUT 250 WORDS
What Is Work For?
Not your résumé, and not your job description. A Workview is your philosophy of work — what it is, what it is for, what it has meant in your life and what it should mean now. Retirement is the first season in which you can answer this without an employer in the room. Write in the first person, continuously, without editing. Aim for 250 words; more is fine.
Prompts — use the ones that bite
•Why work? What is work for — for a man, and for the world?
•What does work mean to you — beyond the paycheck, and now without one?
•How does work relate to the individual, to the community, to the Kingdom? Whose good was your work for?
•What makes work good? What has made it hollow?
•How do experience, growth, and fulfillment relate to work — and did your career deliver them, or defer them?
•What did forty years of work teach you that you would not have learned any other way?
•Is there such a thing as work in the Jubilee season — and what would make it work rather than busyness?
A Christian Workview will eventually run into Colossians 3:23 — “whatever you do, work at it with all your heart, as working for the Lord” — and Genesis 2:15, where work precedes the fall. Let it. But write what you actually believe, not what you think you should.
SITTING 1 · WORKVIEW ESSAY
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
SITTING 2 · THE LIFEVIEW · ABOUT 250 WORDS
What Is Life For?
If the Workview is your philosophy of work, the Lifeview is your philosophy of everything else — meaning, family, faith, the people your life touches, what you believe the whole thing is about. Most men have never written this down. Some have never been asked. Same rules: first person, continuous, no editing, about 250 words.
Prompts — use the ones that bite
•Why are we here? What is a life for?
•What gives a life meaning — and what has given yours meaning so far?
•What is the relationship between you and the people your life touches — your wife, your children, your friends, strangers? What do you owe them?
•Where do family, community, and the rest of the world fit — and where does God?
•What is good, and what is evil? What is worth suffering for?
•What role do joy, sorrow, justice, love, and peace play in a life well lived?
•If your grandchildren asked what life is for, what would you tell them — in your words, not a creed you borrowed?
The Charter’s ground — Galatians 2:20 — is a Lifeview in a single verse. Yours does not have to quote it. It has to be honest enough that the verse could be read beside it without embarrassment.
SITTING 2 · LIFEVIEW ESSAY
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
SITTING 3 · THE COMPASS
Read Them Against Each Other
Read both essays back, slowly, with a pen. Burnett and Evans call this building the compass: the two views together tell you which way is north. Where they agree, you have a bearing you can trust. Where they collide, you have found something that matters — a value you have been living, or failing to live, without ever naming it.
Where do the two views complement each other? Places where what you said about work and what you said about life point the same direction.
|
Where do they clash? Where your Workview says one thing — “provide,” “build,” “prove” — and your Lifeview says another — “presence,” “rest,” “love.” Name the collision plainly. This is where the values are hiding.
|
Does one drive the other? Which one — and should it? For most men in this room, the Workview has been driving for forty years. Say so if it is true, and say what that cost.
|
SITTING 3 · THE LIFE THEME
The Thread Through the Whole Story
Your Life Theme is the thread that runs through your whole story, named in one or two sentences: what has stayed true of you in every chapter. It goes at the end of Charter §1.2, under the line on where your essays align and collide.
McAdams ends his Life Story Interview with one question, after the chapters, the scenes, and the challenges have all been told. It is the right question to end this packet with — and you are better placed to answer it than he was, because you have two essays and a story in front of you, and two witnesses who told you what they heard at Session 6.
Looking back over your entire life story with all its chapters, scenes, and challenges, and extending back into the past and ahead into the future, do you discern a central theme, message, or idea that runs throughout the story? What is the major theme in your life story? — Dan McAdams, The Life Story Interview II |
What my Session 6 witnesses heard in my story: Write it in their words if theirs were better than yours.
|
The theme, in my own words — one or two sentences:
|
The title of the book, if my story were one:
|
SITTING 3 · INTO CHARTER §1.2
Now Carve
Everything above is marble. Charter §1.2 holds your two essays (copy them in, or a tightened version), one or two sentences on where they align and where they collide, and your Life Theme. Your two Core Values wait for Session 7. Draft the short lines here, then copy them into the Charter. The test for each line: would a man who had not read the essay still understand what you mean?
My Life Theme · 1–2 sentences
|
What work has been for · 2–3 sentences
|
What life is for · 2–3 sentences
|
Where they align — and where they collide · 1–2 sentences
|
Your values are your theme made operational. Bring this page, the circled Values Inventory and the Charter to Session 7 — the values work starts from the 3–5 you circled, not from a blank list.