Approaching life in this holistic way has led to it being overall an i — Devi Parikh

"It might be an English-as-a-second-language thing, but “sustain” to me sounds a bit like “survive”. And that feels like a low bar to be shooting for; I optimize for thriving :)."

"I work on things I am intrinsically excited about -- things I can’t not work on! These can be questions I am curious about (what would happen if we had humans go through the same processing pipeline we put machines through?), activities I can’t wait to go back to (macrame, origami, generative art), outcomes I want to be a reality (a machine that you can ask questions to about images and it answers, a model that can generate fantastical depictions of creatures), projects I think would be fun to work on (e.g., semantic understanding of clipart scenes), etc."

"I came across this quote by Adam Grant recently that resonated with me. "Saying no frees you up to say yes when it matters most." This brings me to the next theme."

"I minimize things that don’t bring me joy -- where I am not bringing any value and it is not bringing any value to me. I ruthlessly optimize for this. If I find myself in a meeting where I zone out and think “what am I doing here?”, that’s a trigger for me to take a very careful look at my involvement. Depending on what role I am playing in the effort, it could mean reconsidering the format or cadence of meetings or reconsidering my involvement altogether."

"Unless I see the need to be thoughtful about it, I try to get bureaucratic things done as quickly as possible to “get it over with”."

"When a lot of pings are coming my way -- I pause to think whether they all need to be addressed right away. Can some wait till tomorrow? Can some things planned for tomorrow be done later in the week? I have found this to be highly effective in not feeling overwhelmed."