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

The hardest part of building something meaningful isn’t the outside criticism. It’s the silence—or worse, the doubt—from the people closest to you. Family. Friends. Colleagues. They love you, but they didn’t sign up for the risk. They’re not in it. They’re watching from the sidelines, eating popcorn, while you’re out there doing the work. They can’t see what you see. And that hurts. But it doesn’t...

I feel that I am the most successful person alive, and I know that sounds really presumptuous of me. But I want to explain. If I was to look at the norms or the way that we’re supposed to treat my career and classify my career, I would inevitably come to the conclusion that I am a failure. By very definitive measures. I’m considered very much behind. I’ve heard that I was supposed to have X number...

What drives me bonkers about our culture is that we do not encourage people to struggle in a healthy way. We don’t encourage people to sit with failure. We don’t encourage people to dwell in negative outcomes and actually learn from them. Instead, the only message that seems to exist everywhere is that success is the only thing that matters. And not just being okay. Not just doing reasonably well....

Why Doing Research in 2026 Is Objectively Better Than in 2005 (Even if it still sucks) 1. Access is radically better In 2005, most people outside a few Western countries never had a real shot. Today, someone in rural Italy, India, Brazil, or Indonesia can actually imagine becoming a researcher. 2. The world is materially better off Despite what social media feeds you, most long-run indicators show...

The best feeling in the world isn’t the workout. It’s what happens after. You finish. You’re warm, flushed, a little euphoric. Your eyes feel strange. Your body feels loud. Then you step outside on the coldest night of the year. The air hits your skin and it stings. For a second, your nervous system panics. Then everything wakes up. I swim outdoors. Even in winter. The pool is heated, but barely....

I just came back from one of the biggest international conferences I attend. Over 14,000 people—researchers, professors, thinkers—all incredibly talented. It’s humbling. And a bit overwhelming. There’s so much brilliance in one place that you can start to feel small. Everyone is trying to carve out a niche, to be known for something unique. But instead of feeling proud, many of us feel more insecu...

Here’s the truth I’ve learned as both a business professor and a software builder: software development isn’t elegant. It’s a series of embarrassing bugs. You fix one thing, and something else breaks. Then you fix that, and another part stops working. It feels endless—because it is. People imagine progress as a straight line. But real progress looks like this: bug → fix → new bug → fix → embarrass...

The easiest way to understand PhD life is to imagine a world built on shame. It’s full of thou shalt nots. It’s full of don’t do this. It’s full of quiet messages that say: You’re kind of a mistake. You’re kind of a screw-up. Here’s how you should behave if you want to fit in. And for years, I listened. I tried to be good. I tried to follow the rules. I tried to help people, be kind, be generous,...

After years studying business and building something real, I’ve learned this: there’s no hack, no shortcut, no one-time breakthrough. Everything that matters—staying married, building wealth, launching a meaningful startup—requires the same thing: Repetition. Uncomfortable effort. And doing what others think is “pointless.” Every real gain in my life has come from repeating hard things when it fel...

My research sounds narrow: how do you learn from failure, and how does that turn into innovation. But “failure” is a misleading word. Once you look closely, it is not one event. It is a messy story. It is nuance. It is trial and error inside real life. I started in medical technology, staring at adverse event reports. On the surface, it looks simple: one report, one problem. Then you open the text...

I found old newspapers in a recycling bin while moving offices. They were from the 1940s. One article was about Bethlehem Steel. At that moment, it was the future. It made a huge share of the steel that built North America and it helped power the war effort. The plant was massive. The company was “doing everything right.” Efficient. Disciplined. Serious. Business pages love that story. And yet it...

If I’m honest, most of my daily interactions are dismissive. Not because people are bad, but because they don’t want to spend the effort to understand what I’m actually doing. The easiest response is always, “I’m too busy.” Polite. Distant. Uninterested. I’ve learned that if you’re trying to move the needle in your life and do something even a little strange, this is just part of the deal. I think...

If you’re in school and it feels like everything is falling apart—you’re not alone. Whether you’re in undergrad, doing a PhD, going back as a mature student, or taking just one course that’s pushing you, the hard truth is: real learning hurts. It’s supposed to. That doesn’t mean there’s something wrong with you. People outside the game won’t get it. Some will call you dramatic. Others will treat y...

There’s something I find deeply fascinating—and honestly, troubling—about how many people are willing to cut corners when they think no one will notice. It happens in all parts of life. High school. College. Work. Startups. Even in world-class labs or engineering teams. And yet, we rarely talk about it. We praise outcomes. We reward success. But the process? The part where character gets built? Th...

I’m just so glad that there are wonderful people in this world. People who are genuine. Sincere. People who care about the person—about the soul inside—rather than accomplishments. That’s the thing that matters most in my life. And it’s so atypical in the world I live in, where everything is about productivity, outcomes, and “what did you get done today?” When I think about the people who changed...

Most people believe a PhD advisor is supposed to “add value.” Or that a student is supposed to “add value.” Like there’s this clean exchange. Like everybody knows what they’re doing. But if you’ve spent even five minutes in this world, you know that’s not true. What actually happens is two people trying to survive the same weird, messy system where nobody has a clue what the right answer is. Every...

I hear this every single year: “This is a particularly bad year for the PhD job market.” And yes, this year is brutal if you want a tenure track job. But here is my hot take. We need to get off our high horse. Academia trains smart people to believe there is one “real” path. Get the PhD. Get the tenure track job. Anything else is a failure. That story is not just harsh. It is also out of date. Eve...

There are two paths in research. One where you sit in a room, alone, writing ten pages a day for twenty years—no recognition, no guarantees. You don’t talk to anyone. You just keep going, because that’s what “success” is supposed to look like. And the guilt if you’re not doing it? It’s crushing. And then there’s the other path. The one where you still write, but you define impact your own way. May...

People keep telling me building my own platform is a mistake. That I look foolish. That I’m stigmatizing myself. That this is “not what serious people do.” And I hear it. It rings in my ears because it usually comes from the same people. Here’s the thing though. If there were a better way to build something like R3ciprocity, I would do it. If there were a shortcut, a cleaner path, a way to pay my...

I struggle with charitable giving. I always have. And I think it’s because of ambiguity. When you buy a carton of eggs, you get instant feedback. You know what you paid. You know what you got. You crack the eggs the next morning and you know if it was good or bad. Charity doesn’t work like that. You give money and it disappears into a system you can’t see. You don’t really know what it bought. Was...

One of the strangest things about being public is the split reaction I get. Half the people say, “Are you okay being this open?” The other half say, “Oh… I thought it was just me.” And that second reaction is the whole point. I’m trying to meet people where they actually are. Not where LinkedIn tells them they should be. Not where podcasts or YouTube thumbnails pretend life exists. But where peopl...

There’s one thing I’ve learned that no one really prepares you for in academia: You can do all the right things. You can follow every step perfectly. And you’ll still be told you’re not good enough. It doesn’t matter if you publish, get your PhD, get the job. You’ll hit these thresholds—tenure, full professor, whatever—and you’ll realize: none of it actually guarantees you belong. It’s not you. Th...

I don’t talk about this much, but my grandpa was a severe alcoholic. And I mean severe. He would disappear for days on benders. As a kid, I never saw it directly, but I lived with the fallout. It shaped my family in ways that are still raw decades later. He was also a World War II veteran. He saw heavy fighting. He came home injured. And he came home to a world that told him to man up and never ta...

Here’s something I’ve learned the hard way: this is how nice people get taken advantage of. I’m a management professor. I study innovation and failure. But this pattern shows up everywhere. Academia. Hospitals. Small businesses. Big corporations. If you put a grumpy, irritable, forceful person next to a kind, laid-back, empathetic person, most people will work harder for the grumpy one. Not becaus...

gotta say the single most important thing that gives me joy today is this puzzle of trying to make my life more fun and more exciting. That’s what the whole Reciprocity Project actually is. For decades, research has never been as fun as people think it is. If you want to test this, go write a research paper on the weekend. You’ll realize instantly: “oh my gosh, I hate this.” That’s been my life fo...