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

You will mess up, and things will not work out as planned. If you assume this is the case, you will be a lot more humbler about the future. Always bet on the fact it’s not gonna work out, but work towards the fact that it might.

do things in your life that other people won’t understand and have no economic value in other peoples lives. Most things that matter in our lives would not be considered rational to anybody else. Those are the little things and big things that allow you to get up every morning to do the rational things in your life.

I’m excited to talk about some of the interesting features that we are currently working on with the R3ciprocity platform for 2024.

How do you deal with an #academic #career that is unfair? How do you deal with a career where you will inevitably push a rolling stone uphill? You can either accept that you are a #failure, or you can either try to fight the system. I choose a third alternative. I choose to focus on how I can feel grateful for myself and other people near to me. I choose to encourage other people that are going th...

If you want positive #change in your life, it often requires a great deal of effort. It requires collective agreement that you are going to put an effort to do the challenging thing that you’re thinking about. Change is not an easy thing, and it requires you to be uncomfortable with uncertainty. If you want to change to happen, you WILL have to make it happen. If you don’t, nothing will happen.

How can I make others feel better inside?

Identifying the effects of education is very difficult, and I would be skeptical, if anybody outlines that they can see a one-to-one relationship between education and performance. What does this mean? For many people education is going to be a bad idea, however, for some people it’s going to be immensely important. We will just never know who will actually benefit from education, and who will not...

Doing things right takes an awful lot of time. Don’t worry about whether the external world things that you’re making progress, rather focus on doing things right. It’s one of the harder lessons I’ve learned, but doing things right is slow. The outside world will not appreciate or think about all of the small steps along the way. But, you do.

You are already #remarkable—You don’t need to “perfect” or improve anything. Rather than look for ways to be more productive, succeed, or any other performance metrics. Look for ways to leverage who “you” are and continue to be you. Despite what the outside world says, you are already remarkable.

Negative events will happen in your life. The more that you disassociate and detached from these negative events, the more likely that you’re gonna laugh them off. Disassociate as much as you possibly can and don’t take yourself so seriously. I’ve learnt to better laugh off the seriousness that we assigned to ourselves. You are just not that important.

Don’t forget that you need a lot of positive self-talk and a supportive group to allow you to be successful. Doing well is not just about getting things done, but also feeling good about yourself and others. You will surprised how much it matters.

Finding support is often challenging.

Life's unfairness doesn't ask for permission; it just shows up, throwing obstacles in our path that seem insurmountable. The world of #academia is no stranger to this reality, with its own unique set of challenges and inequities. But here's where your power lies: in your response. You might not have control over the injustices that come your way, but you do have control over how you stand up to th...

Despite the fact that I don’t want to get up and do this yet again, I will try. It’s one more time that I put something out that only a few people are going listen to. I’m going to get back up and do it again. It’s about telling the story some day that you lived life to the fullest. Nothing that matters is ever easy. From relationships, to wealth, to losing weight, it’s the same process every day....

Don’t compare apples to oranges. Just because they are round, doesn’t mean they are the same.

we often think that our job is to move the dial in the next year. And almost all of my experience, that dialed does not move that much in a given year. In fact, the dial moves about 10% for the top performing companies in the entire world. this means that if you make $10,000 this year, a good outcome for you is to make $11,000 next year. What does this mean? Don’t expect a lot of change, and you w...

We are often taught from a very young age that there is a single solution to a problem, yet this is rarely the case in that solutions come from many different angles. Most problems are extremely difficult to solve and have a complex array of factors that are leading to it occurring.

What can you actually do about it? Most people will not care about the thing that you’re thinking about, a small fraction will be so upset that all they do is sit and argue about it endlessly. You will be the one that will actually do something about it. What can you actually do? Here is what I think: What is the problem that you’re facing? And how can you tackle it, such that people don’t even re...

There are many moments where your work will not get rewarded. This is a fact of life. Your job is not to focus on the outcomes, but the focus on your actions. This logic of focusing on outcomes inevitably will lead you astray. What you can do is work on you being a kind and generous person regardless of the outcomes that happen. There are many moments where your work will not get rewarded. This is...

I’ve been increasingly convinced that starting incredibly small is far better for entrepreneurship than starting bigger.

Often you have to work within the constraints that you are given. You might not agree with these constraints, but it’s a part of making hard decisions. One has to comply with these constraints. It means that you’re making difficult adult choices and that even though that it may be inferior at the moment, in the long run, you can make better choices as the environment changes.

Are you missing out on digital changes in the economy? We tend to default to what we know when there are macro changes that are going on. The digital economy is revolutionizing and democratizing much of our life, and instead of participating in it, many of us are deciding to tune it out because it is foreign or challenging the process. Many of us will default to consumers of the digital informatio...

Analyzing all data is difficult, and until you get the experience of looking at data and trying to make sense of it, you will always under appreciate how challenging it is. I encourage you to look at real world data and see if you can make sense of it. You’ll often come to the terms that you just don’t know what you’re looking at. It is completely normal to feel frustrated and anxious when you loo...

I grew up with the smell of tanning beaver pelts in our basement, eating moosemeat, and snaring rabbits. Then, I became a business professor. When you explore life, expect a lot of inconsistencies with your identity. This is something that few people discuss, but by default, you often have identities that you will never be able to reconcile when you explore the world in different ways. You may not...

Living below what you make is always a challenging thing for all of us. We have challenges of social comparison, the pain of giving up joy today, and the inability to see the future. All of us experience this. If you are struggling with this, you’re absolutely normal. However, in order for you to do well, you have to be willing to give up some of your joy today. What you’re giving up (around 10 to...