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

rather than assuming that everybody is nice, or everybody is not so nice, let’s assume that people are very much a mixed bag. We are a mixture of many different things that allow us to adapt to a broader system.

In business and engineering, we aim for #efficiency by achieving the best outcome with limited resources. This involves focusing on one goal, such as maximizing profit or utility, and using available resources to achieve that goal. However, many things in life that bring us joy are not efficient, such as spending time with family, celebrating holidays, and giving hugs. Think about how difficult it...

#PhDs and #researchers pour countless hours into their research, but unfortunately, much of their work often goes unnoticed. It's not uncommon for a PhD student to spend years working on a project only to have it rejected through the review process. This can be a frustrating and overwhelming experience. In fact, many PhD students feel unappreciated, and it's easy to see why. The workload and expec...

Being able to delay, a purchase or action is an extremely powerful strategic choice. We often think about action, but perhaps a more powerful tool is in action. The binary choice to actually do some thing or not.

The outcomes we see today are not just the result of our efforts alone but rather a culmination of #decisions and choices made by others. The school we attend, the career we pursue, and the life we lead are all shaped by the decisions our parents and the people around them made in the past. Your grandparents and their grandparents affected you. Recognize that your outcomes are not independent of o...

Working is never easy, no matter what particular task that you’re actually working on. From the outside world, it might seem fun and exciting, but from the inside, it’s always a challenge to get up and get going at every single thing that you work on. The goal then is to simply try every day. Get up and get going smile and consistently. Keep trying. Keep knocking at the wall. Little steps are what...

Our general understanding of business and economics generally is quite in need of improvement. However, it’s unlikely to happen anytime soon as much of this desire to understand these fields requires the individual learner to take the time to learn it. It’s not the availability of information that’s the problem.

most will not want to resonate with what you’re saying, but you have to find those backs will match with your style. It’s not about trying to connect with everybody, it’s about getting one person to understand where you’re coming from.

You have to actually will it to happen. Put on your resources in it too create the world that you actually are thinking about. It requires unbelievable determination, but you can create the world that you like.

You are good enough just as you are. You don't have to conform to the outside world’s expectations or try to please others to feel worthy or #validated. The most important thing is to be true to yourself, and embrace your unique qualities and strengths. Many people get caught up in the trap of impression management and sacrificing their #authenticity. This can lead to feelings of anxiety, insecuri...

We should improve the #academic peer review process to align it better with the incentives of participants. Currently, important roles such as reviewing, friendly reviews, and editing articles are not given enough credit and remain hidden from the public eye. As a reviewer, I know firsthand that it can take several days to complete an article review. However, this work is not always recognized as...

Research and development always involves workarounds. Very little of what you think will happen will actually happen. You have to be OK with creating work around to resolve these inconsistencies. What you realize is that what you believed about the world is not really true. There’s always nuances and heterogeneity across contexts. You need to embrace this heterogeneity to get anything done.

but you can move it if you keep dedicating yourself, and investing in yourself and other people around you. You make feel like you don’t get anywhere, but you slowly move up every day if you keep trying.

I wish I knew what I was doing, but it don’t. I wish I understand what I was doing, and then I can make sense of the world around me based on this definition of who I am. However, I never really quite understand what I am about, and what I’m actually doing. Any definition of what I’m about doesn’t seem to fit. Every time I try to explain who I am, I can’t put it in words. Or, I miss out on some im...

There’s no other option. I just have to keep going until it actually gets done.

For me, I often think about myself in terms of #efficiency, and as if I am a machine. This machine runs perfectly at 95% capacity at all times. However, that’s not real life. Real life means that you have downtime that you have to account for. Even within #manufacturing operations, the expectation to have 95% up time of a machine is completely unrealistic. Allow yourself to have downtime for maint...

Rather than focusing on product differentiation or competitive advantage, I believe that having gumption is the key to long-term success. Gumption can be defined as a combination of persistence and determination, or the strong desire to maintain these qualities over time. In addition to gumption, emotional, cognitive, and behavioral abilities are also important for taking advantage of opportunitie...

do people inherently, like to learn, and pursue things around learning for the fun of it? I would argue that this is a rare situation, and most people are not interested, because of how difficult it actually is to learn in a rigorous fashion.

Being an entrepreneur comes with a unique set of challenges. As a risk-taker, you may find yourself making decisions that differ from what is considered socially acceptable. This can make you stand out from the crowd, but it also means that you may face some negative reactions from those who don't understand your choices. You know what I’m talking about—the unusual looks and baffled stares. To suc...

One of the challenges that I face is that I often feel like a loser, and I have very little to give. However, I think it’s important to remind everybody that you’re just different than everybody else. Those differences are your unique gifts.

emotions are our super powers. Not everybody feels emotions the same way that you do, but you can often use emotions as indicators of some thing is occurring in your life. Use them as a superpower.

even on the days when you don’t feel like you’re doing OK, you just show up and put in that motion. Just showing up, is better than when everybody else does. You don’t have to go rigorous every day, you just have to show up.

We need to start embracing our voices, and being proud of you in the small conversations that we have. There’s at least one person in this world that likes what you have to say.

we often feel like we don’t have a lot of knowledge when you’re searching or discovering new things. However, when you go and look back and what you actually learned through the search and discovery process, you realize that you have a very good understanding of the world around you.

When I was growing up, my dad was a Polish immigrant. By de facto, I eat, cabbage, meat, and boiled potatoes every day. If we had boiled potatoes the night before, and there’s leftovers, I would have fried potatoes for lunch. Sometimes I would have leftovers for three or four days. The meals were always meat and potatoes. When I moved away to go to university, I went to one of the most diverse par...