are considered a “distraction”. Another common issue is that people are not valued for software development, even if that software is as (or more!) widely used than a hardware instrument like a spectrograph. The valuing of software has made some progress, but only by being shoehorned into something that is publishable and citable. The relative valuing of various activities is an example of an external measuring stick, a measure that is imposed upon us regardless of whether it aligns with our values. You cannot prevent people from measuring you according to their values, but you can make sure what you do aligns with your own. Remember: work may be what you are doing on the last day of your life.

Practical Strategies for Building Your Framework
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So with all that context, let’s move onto some practical strategies. It is impossible to consciously align your actions with your values if you don’t know what your values are. If you are anything like I was as a grad student and postdoc, you are perhaps vaguely aware of having a set of values, and you may intuitively have a sense of whether you are acting within them or not. Very few people, 