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"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 :)."
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Devi ParikhTo be honest, I dont get the phrase “work-life” balance. To me, all of — Devi Parikh
"To be honest, I dont get the phrase “work-life” balance. To me, all of it is life! Life is a portfolio, and work is one part of the portfolio. Why don’t we talk about work-family-friends-hobbies-health-etc balance? Why do we pull just work out, and almost think of it as “anti-life”? I understand that I am privileged to have a job that I do out of interest. In contexts where one works primarily to support the rest of their life, the work-life divide makes sense. But I believe most people I interact with who discuss work-life balance are not doing their job just as a way to support the rest of life. I suppose the reasoning behind the work-life "split" is that studies show we run the risk of burnout by working too much, and we don’t run the risk of burning out by hanging out with friends too much :) I imagine that’s why work gets pulled out? Shellye Archambeaus take on work-life integration (as opposed to work-life balance) resonated with me."
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Devi Parikh
Devi Parikh
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Devi Parikh is an American computer scientist.
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"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."
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Devi ParikhQuote
"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."
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Devi ParikhQuote
"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."
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Devi ParikhQuote
"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”."
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Devi ParikhQuote
"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."
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Devi Parikh