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A Foolproof System for Making Big Professional Decisions

How to stop agonizing over your career choices

Manoush Zomorodi
Forge
3 min readJul 29, 2021

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Photo: Klaus Vedfelt/Getty Images

As I get older, I get cheesier. Phrases I scoffed at as a Gen-X’er are now words I’ve come to live by.

Take the cliched term “core values.” Up until my forties, I equated those two words with hollow corporate mission statements recited by executives who, inevitably, put earnings above any list of morals allegedly guiding them. “Don’t be evil?” F-you.

But I think there’s something magical in listing your own personal “core values.” For me, it’s made professional strategizing a whole lot simpler. Rather than agonize over which projects to pursue and which to politely decline, I can refer to my Rules to Work By. The list, I find, functions as a kind of decision-making algorithm: I run an offer through the gauntlet of my five values and, if it pops out whole on the other side, I proceed without hesitation.

To get specific, I’ve decided that the work I do must meet these specifications:

One- put a new creative spin on journalism

Two — inform and inspire others

Three — make it possible to compensate my colleagues fairly

Four — be produced with partners who have similar ethics and goals

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Manoush Zomorodi
Manoush Zomorodi

Written by Manoush Zomorodi

Journalist, mom, Swiss-Persian New Yorker. Host of @NPR’s @TEDRadioHour + @ZigZagPod. Author of Bored+Brilliant. Media Entrepreneur-ish. ManoushZ.com/newsletter

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