R3ciprocity.com - Prof David Maslach: Innovation; Research Life; Striving Towards Happiness

I’ve spent most of my career trying to understand productivity. What drives it. What breaks it. How to measure it. And—maybe most painfully—how elusive it really is. T he more you try to force performance, the more it slips away. Yes, there are systems. Yes, there are tactics. But performance—like growth—is often more about creating the right conditions and then getting out of the way. Think about...

I was lied to about entrepreneurship. I was told that if I went and tried something, it would work out. That if I did good work, people would notice. That success follows effort. The opposite is what actually happens. If you do anything that is truly important, it will be harder than you thought. You will face years, maybe decades, of rejection. People will not pay attention to you. Most will not...

AI hallucinations , Truth , and Gaslighting . I think the thing that most people are super surprised about is AI hallucinations. Where it makes things up on the spot that fit the narrative but are not necessarily tied to reality. Truth is kind of a challenging thing anyway. But what surprises me even more is how dismissive people become about virtually everything AI is doing because of this. When...

If you are in the professor game, you already know what I’m about to say. One of the most fascinating things about being online is that everybody tries to correct you. They say the message doesn’t jive. It doesn’t fit their perspective. But most people following along get it. They’ve lived this life. I try to talk about my reality to the best of my ability. Not to be shocking. But it turns out to...

I was raised a very good Catholic boy. My mom is deeply religious. Caring about other people was everything. Mother Teresa was a role model. Giving. Serving. Looking out for others. That rubbed off on me. I pride myself on caring. The problem is, I care too much. One of the hardest life lessons I keep relearning is this: not everyone cares the way you do. Most arenas in life are political. People...

I don’t know who needs to hear this today, but here it is: Just go be awesome. We don’t say that enough. We don’t hear it enough. We spend way too much time looking at what’s broken in us, and not nearly enough time seeing what’s already working. Most of us live like we’re permanently flawed. Like we’re only worth something if we fix ourselves. That’s a lie. That’s pre-Enlightenment thinking. You...

In school, we’re taught that mastery is the goal. Understand the material. Get the A. Move up. But the real world? It doesn’t work like that. We don’t live in a world of perfect answers. We live in a world of ambiguity—where the rules shift, outcomes lag, and nothing ever turns out exactly like the model said it would. That’s why this obsession with perfection can quietly destroy creativity. It st...

Almost nobody actually wants change. We say we do. We might even read a book or two about it. But deep down, most people want to work with what they already have—not challenge it. Even in places that talk a big game about innovation, like academia or startup culture, the real disruptors are rare. Very rare. This is a conversation about what it really feels like to push against the norm. Why it’s s...

Why does academia feel so competitive? I think we first have to define what competition is. I see it as a race toward a limited amount of resources. A lot of people, from all over the world, vying for a limited number of spots. That is one of the modern marvels of a successful world. But we are still in a tremendous amount of transition. There is a belief that the pursuit of knowledge translates i...

I know it’s easy to talk about the dark side of academia: the rejections, the grind, the isolation, the politics. But today, I want to talk about something else—something softer. The quiet joys of this life. The things I’ve come to appreciate after years in the profession. We don’t talk about them enough. And yet, they’re the very things that have kept me going. Here are 10 joys I’ve found in acad...

We like to believe there are clear signals of future success: good grades, the right school, a glowing letter of recommendation. We use these signals to make judgments—about students, colleagues, even ourselves. But here’s the problem: these signals are noisy. Grades often just reflect coaching or context. Prestigious schools lock in reputations—sometimes for life—regardless of what a person actua...

We think we can predict success. In grade school, it’s athletic ability. In high school, it’s test scores. Later in life, it’s houses, cars, and job titles. But here’s the truth: almost all of those signals are misleading. The people who quietly live modestly, reinvest patiently, and build long-term habits often end up far ahead of those who looked “impressive” early on. Bankers know this. Profess...

PhD life isn’t just about research. It’s about living in a culture that quietly worships productivity. From day one, you’re thrown into a world where everyone brags about all-nighters, weekend grinds, and endless papers. And if you admit you take Sundays off? You risk being ostracized. Here’s the truth: • The obsession with productivity is less about hard work and more about deep insecurity. • It’...

Success is so strongly sold to you in academia. It’s part of the culture. Part of the myth. We’re told there is one path: success → happiness → utility → more success. And business schools may be the purest version of this belief. Everything becomes about success. Publications. P-values below 0.05. Getting it “through.” As if one number can explain a complex world. But the older I get, the more th...

When I started building this innovation project ten years ago, I thought it would be exciting. The truth? It’s been rejection, stigma, and even what sociologists call taint. I never anticipated how isolating it feels to build something that doesn’t fit the mold. Even the people closest to me often don’t acknowledge it. Some are too busy. Some are jealous. Some just don’t understand. What I’ve lear...

One of the strangest things I’ve learned as a researcher is how few topics people are willing to talk about honestly. Almost everything makes people uncomfortable. Even simple facts. Even counting things. When you show real numbers, people often get angry—not because the data are wrong, but because the results clash with how they see themselves or their organization. I’ve seen this in academia, bu...

Institutions say they want innovation, entrepreneurship, and commercialization in PhD life. In practice, they actively work against it. I know this because I have spent ten years building the R3ciprocity Project inside academia. It works. My students use it. When I force every student to try it, they all say the same thing: Why does nobody know about this? Does this add value to your life? Every h...

I was a strange kid. At 14, I read The Wealthy Barber. Not because I was ambitious. Because something about it made sense. I’m 46 now, and that book quietly shaped my entire life. The lesson wasn’t clever investing or market timing. It was boring behavior: Save a fixed share of what you earn. Invest broadly. Do it early. Do it forever. That’s it. I followed it through engineering school, a master’...

Almost everything you read about PhD life, career success, or even work-life balance comes packaged as a simple hack: • Read this book, and you’ll know how to make decisions. • Follow these 3 tricks, and you’ll master work-life balance. • Do these steps, and you’ll never fall behind. But when you actually try them in the real world? They don’t stick. You end up in the same patterns you’ve always b...

We sell innovation — and PhD life — like it’s a game. Like it’s toys, breakthroughs, and fun every day. But here’s the truth: Real innovation is grinding, lonely work. It’s being rejected for years while nobody cares. It’s waking up every morning thinking “what am I doing?” — and still forcing yourself to take one more step. The culture sells us the glossy version because only the survivors tell t...

One of the hardest things I’ve learned as a professor is this: most people don’t “get it” on the first try. And that’s not because they aren’t smart. It’s because we all learn differently. When I was a kid, I was in special education until grade six. I struggled to read. Phonics saved me. Slowly. Painfully. But here’s the strange thing— as I grew older, I started to see things quickly. I could und...

One of the hardest lessons in life — and in academia — is that nobody is going to do the work for you. You’ll want someone to rescue you. To guide you. To make the process easier. But the truth is, most of the time… they won’t. I learned this growing up. My parents loved me, but they didn’t hover. They didn’t push me to do homework. They didn’t drive me to every activity. I had to figure things ou...

Almost everything you read about PhD or researcher life is about optimization. Do more with less. Catch up. Publish faster. But here’s the truth: most of it is marketing. It convinces you that you’re always behind and that someone else is producing more than you. I’m skeptical. Because the people who claim to publish hundreds of papers a year? They didn’t actually do the work. It’s ghostwritten, g...

As a professor, I live in a strange contradiction. Students assume I’m wealthy. Colleagues know how much free labor this profession demands. The truth? Professors could earn more in private industry. Many of us walked away from lucrative careers. I was a chemical engineer before academia — and I gave it up. Why? Because there’s supposed to be more to life than money. But here’s the tension: • If y...

Most people giving you advice don’t have any context for your life. Even well-intentioned advice usually falls flat, because they’re not in the game you’re playing. That’s why I’ve become more convinced than ever: repetition is the only tool we really have. You learn by doing. By failing. By repeating 10,000 times. Not by listening to critics. Not by believing every “tip” you read online. Here’s w...