Hey assistant professors that are just starting out. I just wanna remind you to live with as much joy as you possibly can. It is very easy to focus on what you need to get to and be very strategic in terms of who you are going to work with, but the key thing to always focus on is joy. Make sure that you are smiling every day. Make sure you have some laughter every single day. Look for those moments that make you feel warm inside. This is what I call the Spidey sense — the warmness you feel once you start engaging and you start doing things in life.
Take a step back from the things that make you feel uptight. Engage with the moments that give you the warm fuzzies. It is not about being impractical and it is not about living life with rose-colored glasses. It is about figuring out how to survive in a world that often pushes all of that joy away. The more you focus on feeling warm inside, being light on your feet, and living your life with joy, the better off you are going to be.
You might be listening to this and saying that joy will not make you productive. You have already lost as soon as you start thinking about productivity. That is a dead-end journey. As soon as I say the word productivity, I get uptight in my belly. But if I focus on how I can feel warm, how I can live my life with joy, how I can be a more joyful researcher where every moment I am laughing and every moment I have a sense of lightness, I feel better.
For me, joy comes from people who want to laugh, who smile, who shrug off the seriousness of life. It comes from going for walks, hearing the birds, talking to you, and getting to engage in these moments where I feel good. None of this has the word productivity in it. None of this is about accomplishing things. Push that language away.
If you think this will not help you get tenure, you have already lost. Your life will be dominated by trying to get tenure, and by the time you get there you will ask why you were so focused on it. Live with joy. Live with an open heart. See people smiling. Laugh. It is OK to get a cup of coffee or grab a lunch. It is not about productivity.
My life used to be dominated by the logic of productivity, and every time I heard about working all the time, I felt awful because I could never compare. So I disengaged with that and focused on what makes me excited and joyful. When I could not get things done, when I was grocery shopping or spending time with my kids, I disengaged from the pressure. The joy comes from these moments, and it will change who you are inside.
It may not always work out for you, but at least you lived a life worth living. You will take more risks. You will engage more. People will want to be around you. There will be a fundamental shift in who you are. Ironically, by not focusing on productivity — by focusing on joy — you actually become more productive. The less you care, the better off you are.
You might not listen to this now, but one day, 20 years from now, you will hear this again and say: now I get it. Learn how to engage in the warmth and the joy of the process of discovery. Disengage from everything that pushes you toward “getting things done.” In the end, what matters is that you lived a good, healthy, lovely life where you laughed, had fun, and every moment was a joy.
If you have small kids, I know it is difficult. I live that life. But remember they are a blessing. They are not taking away from your work. They are adding to it. Live a life of inspiration for others. Do not live a life about productivity. Live a life where you want to be joyful at any given moment — where you laugh and you smile. Something changes when you do that.
All right, take care and have a wonderful day.