There is a particular kind of tired that comes from a full calendar and an empty compass — weeks that were busy the whole way through and somehow still felt beside the point. Acceptance and Commitment Therapy has a blunt diagnosis for that feeling: activity has come loose from values. This worksheet is the ACT tradition's classic repair, rebuilt as an interactive compass. Six life domains, the quality you want to move toward in each — written in your own words — one committed action per value, and a star on the one or two domains that get the needle this season.

A value is a direction, not a destination

The single most useful idea in ACT's values work is grammatical: values are verbs of direction, not nouns of arrival. You can finish a goal; you cannot finish a value. "Run the marathon" ends on a Sunday in October. "Treat this body kindly" offers you a fresh step every day for the rest of your life — and never once tells you that you have arrived and may stop. That is not a bug. A direction you can never complete is also a direction you can never permanently fail: however far off course the last month went, the heading is still exactly where you left it.

ACT is not a folk practice borrowing a scientific costume — it is a well-studied therapeutic model with decades of process and outcome research behind it, developed by Steven Hayes and colleagues. And its values work has a measurement tradition of its own: the Valued Living Questionnaire asks people to look at life domain by domain, which is exactly the structure this worksheet keeps.

Six compass points, your own words

The worksheet lays out six domains: relationships, work and craft, health and body, learning and growth, play and rest, and community beyond yourself. At each point you write the value in your own words — not because lists are bad, but because a borrowed word carries no instructions. "Integrity" from a picklist means whatever the list meant. "Present, not just punctual," in your handwriting, tells you exactly what to do at dinner tonight.

If you enjoy the pick-and-rank approach — a long menu of value words cut down to a top five — the core values worksheet does precisely that, and the two exercises complement each other well. This one starts from your life; that one starts from the words.

One committed step, small enough to happen

Under each value sits the second half of the exercise: one committed action for this week. ACT is insistent on this pairing — values without action decay into decoration, and the worksheet would rather have "the short loop after lunch, three times" actually walked than a beautiful paragraph about vitality admired from the couch. Small is the discipline. A committed action you can finish inside an ordinary week is a vote your values can actually cast.

Star a heading — one or two, not six

The worksheet lets you star at most two domains as this season's heading, and it will gently refuse a third. The cap is the exercise. Every domain matters, which is precisely why "all of them, equally, now" is not a strategy — a compass needle pointing everywhere points nowhere. Starring relationships and play this season does not demote your work or your health; it names where the deliberate effort goes, and the stars are yours to move when the season turns.

One more thing, in ACT's own spirit: somewhere along the way your mind will probably announce that you are failing your values. That announcement is a thought, not a verdict. Notice it, let it pass like weather, and take the small step anyway — if that skill appeals to you, leaves on a stream is the classic ACT exercise for practicing it.

What this page is, and what it is not

Honest labels: ACT is a full therapy, practiced with a trained professional, and it covers far more than values — acceptance, defusion, mindful attention, self-as-context. This worksheet borrows the values-and-committed-action corner of that tradition as a self-help exercise, with attribution and without pretending to be the rest. If you are seeing a therapist, bring your compass along; it makes good session material. And if the reason the weeks feel beside the point is heavier than a misaligned calendar — a low that will not lift, anxiety that runs the day — a mental-health professional is the right next step, and no worksheet is.