Advertise on podcast: R3ciprocity.com - Prof David Maslach: Innovation; Research Life; & Striving Towards Happiness

Curate your world intentionally. Curate the people. Curate the books. Curate the conversations. Curate your social media. Curate what earns your attention. Because, in the end, you don’t simply observe the world. You slowly become the world you repeatedly pay attention to.

Going viral is not always success. Sometimes it is a stress test. I know that sounds strange. Most people who build online want more reach. More views. More comments. More shares. More people seeing the work. I do too. I am building R3ciprocity in public because I care about research, learning, and making academic life less lonely. But there is a strange thing that happens when you are open online. Most days, nothing really happens. You post something honest. A few people see it. A few people care. Then, every once in a while, something travels far beyond the people you meant to reach. It bounces. Then it bounces again. Then it lands in front of people who do not know you, do not know your story, do not know the context, and do not share your assumptions. And suddenly, the post is no longer just a post. It becomes a projection screen. People bring their own pain to it. And sometimes they put all of that onto you. That is the part of “going viral” that people do not talk about enough. The first feeling is excitement. “Wow. People are seeing this.” Then comes the second feeling. “Oh no. People are seeing this.” Because with attention comes misunderstanding. And with misunderstanding comes the urge to defend yourself. To explain. To correct. To repair. To make everyone understand what you meant. But you cannot. That is the hard lesson. Once something moves through the algorithm, it is no longer fully yours. It becomes a public object. People react to what it means to them, not always what it meant to you. That is psychologically hard. I think many people disengage after this happens once or twice. And honestly, I understand why. Being misunderstood in public is not easy. Being personally attacked by strangers is not easy. Watching people assign motives to you that you do not have is not easy. But I am trying to practice a different response. Empathy with boundaries. Because often, when someone lashes out online, it says more about what they are carrying than what you wrote. The system rewards the spiral. More comments create more reach. And the person who wrote the original post is left trying to process a room full of strangers having a fight with ghosts. So what do I do? I try to step back. I try not to make every comment a referendum on my worth. I try to remember that I cannot control how every person reads me. I try to wish people well without letting their pain become my job. Then I return to the work. One post. One idea. One awkward attempt to be honest. One more day building something that matters. That is the strange skill of building in public. You have to stay open enough to care. But grounded enough not to be destroyed by every reaction. Three takeaways 1. Going viral is not always joyful. It can be exciting, but it can also be deeply stressful. 2. Online anger is often projection. People react through their own fears, wounds, and stories. 3. Empathy needs boundaries. You can care about people without letting every stranger’s reaction control your life.

School does not always make you better. It gives you access to rooms you could not enter before. That sounds harsh. But I think it is closer to what education really does. We often tell young people a very clean story: Get more education. Get a better job. Make more money. Become happier. That story is not completely wrong. But it is too simple. Education does not always translate cleanly into skill, wisdom, money, or happiness. Some of the smartest people I know did not follow a clean school path. Some of the most educated people I know are still confused, insecure, and trying to figure out what they are doing. I include myself in that group. The better way to think about education is not as a guarantee. It is an access system. Education gives you access to people, rooms, jobs, professions, networks, language, and opportunities that may otherwise stay closed. That is the part we do not explain well enough. A degree may not make you smarter in some simple way. But it can change who will talk to you. It can change what doors open. It can change which groups see you as legitimate. It can change the set of lives you can try. That mattered in my own life. I came from a working-class background. I am proud of that. I am proud that I know how to work. I am proud that I grew up around people who did real work with their hands, their backs, their patience, and their pride. Becoming a professor did not make me better than that world. Not even close. But education gave me access to other worlds I would never have seen.

Most of life is not as planned as we pretend. That may be one of the biggest lies we teach young people. We tell them: Get the degree. Get the job. Make the money. Become happy. It sounds clean. It sounds responsible. It sounds like life is a straight line. But then you actually talk to people. Ask them how they got their first job. Ask them why they changed careers. Ask them why they moved cities. Ask them why they married that person. Ask them why they started that business, learned that skill, or ended up doing something they never planned to do. Most honest people will eventually say some version of: “I don’t really know.” Something happened. Someone opened a door. A plan failed. A chance appeared. A bad moment became useful. A strange opportunity showed up at the right time. And they walked through it. That is not the story we like to tell. We like to tell the intentional story. “I worked hard.” “I had a plan.” “I made smart choices.” “I knew where I was going.” And yes, effort matters. A lot. But effort usually works inside conditions we did not fully create. I am thinking about this because my son started a small summer business. He is cutting grass, cleaning windows, and doing neighborhood work. I am proud of him. He is working hard. He is learning how to talk to people, price work, show up on time, deal with messy tasks, and keep going when the work is hot and uncomfortable. That matters. But I also see something else. He can do this because he lives in a place where this kind of small business is possible. A neighborhood where people can pay. A family that can support him. A local environment where a teenager can knock on doors, offer help, and learn something real. That is not nothing. That is hidden privilege. And I think we miss this all the time. We turn every life outcome into a story about individual intention. But much of life is a mix of effort, luck, timing, place, support, failure, and the story we tell ourselves after it happens. That does not mean we have no agency. It means agency is messier than we pretend. Sometimes life gives you something hard. You can tell yourself: “This is unfair. I should not have to do this.” And maybe that is true. But you can also tell yourself: “This is difficult. But maybe I can learn something here.” That story does not fix everything. It does not remove pain. It does not erase unfairness. But sometimes it gives you enough strength to take one more step. That may be the real skill. Not pretending you control everything. Not pretending everything happens for a reason. Not turning privilege into virtue. But learning how to meet the strange randomness of life with effort, humility, and curiosity. Because many of the best parts of life are not planned. They are noticed. Then practiced. Then slowly built into something meaningful.

The most important PhD skill may be learning what to ignore. That sounds wrong. We are trained to listen. To take feedback. To respect senior people. To read the room. To adapt. And yes, that matters. But one of the hardest lessons of academic life is that not all pressure is wisdom. Some pressure is just fear. Some advice is just anxiety wearing a nice jacket. Some “career guidance” is just someone else’s path being forced onto your life. Some criticism is not about your work at all. It is about what other people think a scholar is supposed to look like. This took me years to learn. In academia, people will often tell you where you should be. You should publish faster. You should focus more. You should stop building side projects. You should network differently. You should act more like this person. You should stop being so weird. You should play the game better. Maybe some of that is useful. But a lot of it is noise. And if you are not careful, that noise becomes your life. Here is the strange part. I study performance. And after years of studying performance, the answer is not that magical. The two things that matter most are often painfully simple: Do good work. Build real community. That is it. Not fake community. Not transactional networking. Not showing up only when you need something. Real community. The kind where people ask better questions. The kind where people share ideas before they are polished. The kind where people celebrate others. The kind where people bring the birthday cake even when no one gives them a line on their curriculum vitae for it. That part sounds small. It is not. The birthday cake is the whole system. It is the hidden glue that lets people trust each other enough to do hard things. And yet, academia often punishes the exact things that make academic life work. Careful work takes time. Community building takes time. Helping others takes time. Thinking deeply takes time. But the system often rewards speed, status, narrow output, and self-protection. That is the tension. We know what helps people do better work. Then we build systems that make it harder to do those things. So what do you do? You ignore more than you think you should. You ignore the projected fear. You ignore the strange timelines. You ignore the people who only see one path. You ignore the pressure to become smaller, colder, and more strategic than you want to be. And then you return to the work. One paragraph. One study. One question. One helpful act. One student. One weird idea. One real conversation. One more day of building something that matters. This is not easy. The noise does not go away. The pressure does not go away. The people who misunderstand you do not go away. But over time, you learn something freeing: You do not need to answer every anxious voice. You do not need to make your career legible to everyone. You do not need to win every small game to do meaningful work. You just need to keep doing the few things that compound. Do good work. Build real community. Ignore the rest. That may be the hardest PhD skill of all. Three takeaways 1. Not all advice is wisdom. Some of it is just fear, habit, or someone else’s narrow path. 2. The work that matters often compounds slowly. Careful research and real community rarely look efficient in the short term. 3. Ignore is a skill. The goal is not to become careless. The goal is to protect your attention for the work that actually matters.

You have to build your own small world. A tiny world where you still have dignity. A tiny world where you can walk away if you need to. A tiny world where other people do not have complete bargaining power over your soul. You have to learn how to keep walking forward even when the system disappoints you.

High school never really ends. I know that sounds ridiculous, but watch almost any coming-of-age high school movie and you see something real. At some point, people realize there are groups. Jocks. Nerds. Gamers. Outcasts. Popular kids. Quiet kids. Studious kids. People with different interests, different information, different tastes, and different views of the world. Social class is defined as a set of groups that shape what people value, what they see, who they know, and what choices feel possible to them. I felt this very early. I was always a nerdy kid. I did not really fit cleanly into any one group. Toward the end of high school, I became more studious because I saw education as a path to economic prosperity. But even then, I could see that moving between groups was hard. Not just because people were mean. But because each group carried different information. Different beliefs. Different habits. Different signals about what mattered. That is the part I think we often miss. A lot of how we teach economics, business, and strategy assumes people are making clean choices. They see options. They weigh costs and benefits. They choose. But real life is messier than that. People do not just choose from all possible options. They choose from the options their social world makes visible. That is why high school is such a powerful example. It is one of the first places where many of us see status, belonging, class, identity, and opportunity all tangled together. And the uncomfortable part is this: Business schools often teach decision-making as if people are floating above society. But people are not floating. They are embedded in groups. Families. Friendships. Schools. Cultures. Neighborhoods. Signals. Stories. That does not mean economics is wrong. It means our simple models often miss the social world that makes some choices feel normal and other choices feel impossible. If we want people to make better life decisions, we need to stop pretending everyone sees the same choice set. They do not. Sometimes the biggest advantage in life is not intelligence. It is being around people who make better futures seem possible.

Most lives change in boring ways. Not in one big breakthrough. Not in one perfect moment. Just one more day with quiet confidence. One more step forward. One more time getting back up and trying again. Maybe you are finishing school and trying to find a job. Maybe you are building a business. Maybe you are trying to build a family. Maybe you are trying to build anything at all. I know how crazy-making that feels. It can feel like nothing is moving. It can feel like everybody else has a map and you do not. I was the person who got picked last. I was not the athletic one. I was not the one everybody looked at and thought, this person is going to do something remarkable. A lot of things did not come easy to me. And then at some point I realized something simple. Nothing was going to change unless I got back up and did one more day. That is still the lesson. There is very little you can change in one moment. But you can change your direction in one moment. One more application. One more hour. One more video. One more embarrassing step into the unknown. One more try when the odds are low and most people do not care. Most people are not going to believe in you. Some will doubt you. Some will laugh. Some will tell you it was easy for you. Bless your heart. You were not there for the journey. The journey is the point. You move the needle by repeating what matters long enough for your life to change. Not all at once. Not with magic. Just one more day. One more step. One more try. That is how unbelievable things get built.

Most people talk. Very few help. One of the biggest lessons I have learned as an academic entrepreneur, innovator, and builder of the R3ciprocity platform is this: do not listen to what people say. Watch what they do. I thought research uncertainty, PhD depression, scholar loneliness, and the broken research game were obvious problems people would want to solve. I thought the academic community, funding agencies, and grant systems would want to move the needle. They did not. People talk about research problems, academic culture, innovation, community, crowdsourcing, and change. But when it comes time to fund, build, pay, join, or help, almost nobody shows up. That is the real lesson. Human behavior matters more than academic talk. Actions matter more than words. So if you are building something real, expect repetition. Expect embarrassment. Expect rejection. Expect to do most of it yourself. The only strategy I believe in now is repetition and leverage. Repeat, repeat, repeat. Then find small ways to leverage the repetition. That is how real change starts.

We are sold a very modern checklist view of life. Get the degree. Get the job. Make good money. Be practical. Go on the trips. Exercise. Meditate. Do all the right things and somehow you are supposed to feel whole. But for some of us, even when we do a lot of that stuff right, there is still a longingness. There is still that quiet feeling that something is mismatched, that you are chronically behind, that there is something more you are supposed to do with your life. That is what made thinking about a doctorate feel so confusing to me. On paper, it looked irrational. More school. More uncertainty. Less money. Less approval. It looked like moving backward when I was supposed to be moving ahead. But the strangest part of adult life is that the checklist life does not fix that deeper ache. I do think some checklist things help. Exercise helps. Family helps. Doing the basics helps. But none of it fully resolves that deeper yearning if you are the kind of person who keeps searching for meaning, depth, truth, and a more genuine impression on the world. You can know not to pay attention to other people and still not fully know how to do it. So if you are in that exact same spot, wondering whether wanting a doctorate after a Master of Business Administration means you are foolish, I would say this. Maybe you are not making the stupidest choice of your life. Maybe you are finally being honest about the life that feels true to you. The hard part is that this feeling never fully goes away. There is no perfect checklist that wins the game. There is only trying to live your life as fully as you can, one day at a time, while remembering that even with the longingness, you may still be doing pretty well. Sometimes that is the real work. Not checking every box, but getting back up and trying again

I’ve been thinking about the tyranny of numbers. I know that sounds peculiar. But over the last 200–250 years, we’ve put a number on almost everything. Grades. GPA. Trade deficits. Performance. Even time itself. ⸻ It’s been the job of engineers, accountants, doctors—really all professionalization— to codify the world into numbers. And on one hand… this has been one of the modern miracles. ⸻ We’ve had enormous growth because we can: • calculate • quantify • assign numerical values ⸻ But there’s also a tyranny with it. ⸻ Once you put a number on something… you can’t escape it. ⸻ It brings out aspects of humanness that are not so great. We compare. We compete. We try to get ahead of somebody else. Sometimes at all costs. ⸻ Grades are a perfect example. A simple numerical system. But suddenly: • you are a 4.0 • or you are not And that number becomes something people believe means everything. ⸻ But it’s a made-up system. It doesn’t even make sense outside of a very specific context. ⸻ And yet… people build their identity around it. ⸻ The same thing happens everywhere. Trade surpluses. Performance metrics. Rankings. Numbers that were originally created for one purpose… get used for something completely different. ⸻ To signal status. To compare. To judge. ⸻ I’m an engineer. I understand the beauty of numbers. But I also see how self-reinforcing they become. ⸻ Once they exist… they shape behavior. ⸻ People don’t pursue things for the sake of pursuing them. They pursue the number. ⸻ And if you don’t fit that numerical system… it’s very difficult. ⸻ We start labeling people as: functional dysfunctional Based on systems that are, at their core, constructed. ⸻ And we forget something simple. These systems are very new. ⸻ Clocks. Grades. Standardized measures. These are not ancient truths. They are recent inventions. ⸻ And yet we treat them as if they define reality. ⸻ So I try to pause. And ask: Where does this system work? Where does it break down? Who prospers? Who doesn’t? ⸻ Because for most people… a single number is incredibly motivating. That’s why these systems exist. ⸻ But they are also incredibly limiting. ⸻ And the question I keep coming back to is: Are we understanding people… or just measuring them?

What’s funny is… my message hasn’t changed. People just started listening because I got older. I’ve been saying the same thing for over a decade. When I started, no one cared. It was dismissed. Ignored. Called a waste of time. People told me—directly and indirectly— that what I was doing didn’t make sense. And if I’m honest… they were right. At least in the short term. ⸻ Because anything that actually matters… looks like a mistake while you’re doing it. It looks: • inefficient • inappropriate • like you don’t know what you’re doing And people will tell you that. Especially the people closest to you. ⸻ So what happens? Most people quit. They move on. They do something that “makes sense.” And the thing that might have mattered… never gets built. ⸻ I didn’t quit. Not because I was confident. But because I kept repeating. Over and over. For years. ⸻ That’s the part nobody wants to hear. There is no trick. No shortcut. No “one move” that changes everything. ⸻ It’s just: repetition. Getting up. Doing it again. Even when you feel embarrassed. Even when you feel like a failure. Even when nothing is working.

I’ve been thinking a lot about stress lately, and I don’t think it’s as personal as we make it. I think it comes in cycles. Every year, there are periods where stress ramps up, and it’s not random. It’s tied to how we’ve structured time. Over time, we’ve become more and more synchronized. We used to live with loose time. Clocks were off. Schedules were imperfect. Now everything is precise. Our phones, our computers, our calendars… all synced to the same clock. And because of that, we’re all moving through the same cycles at the same time. Deadlines cluster. Work piles up. Pressure builds. Not just for you. For everyone. And I think that matters more than we realize. Because when stress hits, we interpret it as something personal. We think: • I’m behind • I’m not handling this well • something is wrong with me But often, it’s not just you. It’s the system. It’s the timing. It’s the fact that everyone around you is also under pressure. Which means people are: • less patient • more reactive • not at their best So things feel worse than they actually are. A short email feels harsh. A delay feels intentional. A bad day feels like failure. But it might just be the cycle. So if you’re feeling off right now… Take a pause. Zoom out.

Most PhD students think success is about intelligence, productivity, or discipline. It’s not. It’s about your relationship with yourself. Three versions of you are always in conflict: • your past self • your present self • your future self And most PhD students lose because they never learn how to manage that. ⸻ Let’s start with your past self. You were trained to believe: • work harder • get the right answer • move fast That worked. Until now. Because a PhD forces you to confront something uncomfortable: You were wrong about how progress actually works. That’s hard to admit. It means letting go of who you thought you were. It means questioning the way you were taught to succeed. Most people don’t do that. ⸻ Now your present self. This is where it gets messy. Because what actually works in a PhD feels… wrong. It feels slow. Repetitive. Uncertain. And it looks strange to everyone around you. You might: • take longer than others • explore ideas that don’t “pay off” yet • invest time in things that don’t show up on your CV People won’t understand it. They may think you’re: • inefficient • distracted • not serious But here’s the truth: Nobody is paying as much attention to you as you think. That weird feeling? That’s not judgment. That’s just you stepping outside the script. ⸻ And then there’s your future self. This is the part most people ignore. Because it requires something uncomfortable: sacrifice without immediate reward. Writing one more paragraph. Reading one more paper. Taking a course just to learn. Not because you have to. Because you choose to. You are investing in someone who does not exist yet. And you have to believe they are worth it. ⸻ This is the real PhD problem. Not intelligence. Not talent. But whether you can: • forgive your past self • tolerate your present self • and invest in your future self All at the same time. ⸻ Here’s what I’ve learned: 1. Be kind to your past self They were doing the best they could with what they knew. 2. Accept that your present self will feel out of place If it feels weird, you’re probably doing it right. 3. Pay your future self every day One small step. Even when it feels pointless. ⸻ Because one day, your future self will look back and say: “Thank God I kept going when it didn’t make sense.” ⸻ If this resonates: What’s one thing you’re doing right now that your future self will thank you for?

I have felt strangely happy at the end of the day lately. That has not been normal for me. Most days, by the end of work, I feel worn down. Grumpy. Flat. A little miserable. I am a business professor. I spend a lot of time working alone. And that, I think, is the real issue. Not the work itself. The isolation. A lot of academic work is done this way. You disappear into your office. You write alone. You think alone. You struggle alone. Then you briefly reappear in a meeting or an email. And we act like this is normal. Maybe it is normal. But that does not mean it is good. The last few days have felt different for one reason: I have been spending more time with people I truly enjoy. People who are kind. People who are fun. People who feel good to be around. That changed everything. Same job. Same pressures. Same life. Different people. That is what made the difference. I think I have been talking about this for years through the R3ciprocity Project. Not to complain. To name something that many researchers quietly live with: academic work can be deeply lonely. And loneliness changes how the whole day feels. What has surprised me is this: By being open about that loneliness, things started to change. Slowly. Very slowly. But they changed. Wonderful people started to appear around me. Not all at once. Not dramatically. Just one small step at a time. And now I am realizing something I wish I understood earlier: I do not just want interesting work. I want a good working life. For me, that means being around people I care about. People I can laugh with. People who make the process feel human. So here is my message to anyone building a career right now: Do not only ask what work you want to do. Ask: Who do you want to be around while you do it? That question matters more than most people think. A huge part of life is work. So start building the kind of work life you actually want. One tiny step at a time. Be open. Say what is not working. Imagine what better would look like. Then move toward it, even if it takes years. My kids were little when I started trying to do this. Now they are almost grown. That is how long change can take. But small steps count. And sometimes, after enough of them, you get to the end of the day and realize: I have not felt this happy in a very long time.