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

investing should be a long slow grind overtime. At no point did you ever feel like you’re going to be in the money. If you feel like you’re going to be in the money, you should run from that situation. The goal with investing is to incrementally grow overtime. Imagine investing as if you were watching a child learn how to do calculus. You would not expect a kindergarten or to understand calculus....

Our notion of freedom is quite perverse, and we need to stop and think about what freedom actually means. Freedom doesn’t mean that you can choose and do whatever you want. Freedom means that you are are free of fear.

I talk about the consequences of our idealistic view that men should be men on things like steroid use and the hidden depiction of manly men within popular culture. I remind everybody to be careful and how they understand the imagery of what it means to be a man and how they think about their own choices in their own life.

Can we stop with the “manly man” act? You know. The barrel-chested, tall, asshole that we see depicted as a “real man” in business, life, and culture. The man who “mans up” or gets the tough job done. The idea that we need to be manly men and do things because that is what men do is holding us back and where we get to in life. We don’t need to “man up” or act like a man. We don’t need to “be a man...

How do you deal with burn out? Stop worrying about the outside world and start living your own life. Enjoy your life for the sake of the fact that it’s your life.

I wonder about why more people are not walking around as billionaires. It seems absolutely ridiculous to even stay, but it is possible if you do the financial calculations.

Problems exist everywhere. Many of these problems are rather large and scary. Yes, at any moment, the world is facing some terrible outcomes. However, I have to pick and choose the battles then I want to fight. For me, I know that there’s many problems, but the only thing that I can do is get up and fight the battles that are in my local neighborhood. This means I have to ignore some battles, and...

if you look at how much resources you would actually have by properly investing over 90 years you would be baffled in the extent it would be. Properly investing will result in unbelievable amount of wealth in the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars over the course of a century. How come you were not investing for the next century?

During your #PhD education, you often have some really bad bouts of loneliness. The two most important things that have made me feel not lonely is getting exercise and having a busy social schedule outside of any solo endeavors. The most important things to deal with loneliness is to just have a busy social schedule outside of work. Yes, it is okay not to work. What I have found interesting in my...

Just go get things done. You’re going to learn a lot of things when you actually try some thing. The biggest lesson you realize it’s really up to you. You also realize all of the little issues along the way that you would never forecast. Things that you think would be easy upfront are not easy and you can’t anticipate the problems that you can experience. However, you can’t wait for other people t...

Most people will sit back and think that somebody else is creating some thing in their life. Remember everything around you has been made up. If you want to actually make a difference, you just have to make it happen. You start doing things that you think are seemingly below you, and you keep pursuing those things relentlessly. There’s no other way of making some thing happen then just getting up...

I discussed the nature of sophistication in empirical methods. I struggle with finding the appropriate amount of sophistication for the broader audience. My preference is to not have any sophistication, and allow people to see information based on base rate data. However, the rest of the world wants some sophistication in what you actually do.

we only role models in our lives. His role models come in different ways. They don’t necessarily have to be people that are close to you, and you can understand your self through them. I’m a big fan of media in allowing us to understand ourselves. Listening to the stories of other people allows us to frame her thoughts and come to understand who we are. Try to find role models in your life that wi...

How do you manage switching costs, given their switching costs? Work on as few projects as possible, and avoid switching between projects unless you have to.

The answer to how do you build community is complicated, and there’s really not a good solution.

In order to make good decisions in your life, you need as much information as possible. Because of that, you need people in your corner that are going to be honest and tell you both the costs and benefits of what you were going to do. And with larger decisions in your life, you need to find people that are going to tell you the truth and be in your corner. Unfortunately, few people in this world l...

can you be a good researcher without publishing in scientific journals? The question that comes up often and is debated within the public domain. The issue is is whether you will have the same legitimacy without that mechanism. It’s not that the science will be any worse, in fact there’s a lot of great science published on blogs and books, but it’s whether the external world believes what you’re d...

You can’t change the endowments you are given. Our background, ethnicity, parents, and home are what you are born into. The only thing that you can change is the opportunities that are presented your way. The only way that I know of to change these opportunities is to repeatedly be nice and do the right thing. It is dumb advice, I know — be nice and work hard. It doesn’t happen overnight. Legitima...

The key thing is think about when your alternative actually is. For the most part, you don’t know what your alternative actually is, and you have to simply just keep working at what you’re actually doing right now. You can choose to make your environment incrementally better all the time.

Be fiscally conservative and think about the possibility that emergencies to happen. Every once in a while weird things actually happen in your life, and you have to think about how to deal with that occurring. The way you deal with it is by mitigating it before it actually happens. I have things like contingency planning, thinking about insurance, and having emergency funds that are available jus...

Keep taking consistent steps every day. There’s nothing that you can do that can change your life in a more impactful way than to keep taking consistent steps towards a big goal in your life. Everybody should pick some absurd goal and go after it. Whether it’s weight loss, building a software project (eg., R3ciprocity), financial freedom, or her pursuing your career, we all need to think in terms...

if you believe that you need to get student loans to get a degree, it’s probably a mistake that you’re getting that degree. Remember that that is a signal that there is very little return for the efforts that you’re doing. Use the signals at the market provides you.

I think we need to have a long conversation about academic productivity measures. First of all it’s not measuring productivity its measuring output. There is a big difference between output and when actually goes in to making of the sausage. Given that we have a tremendous amount of data available, it seems strange to me to only measure academic productivity in a very narrow defined way. I think w...

be aware that the displays of wealth often do not correlate with actual well. They may correlate weekly, but for the most part wealthy people are not gonna be walking around displaying the assets that they actually own. Most wealthy people are not actively disclosing the wealth that they actually possess. Moreover, displays of wealth, like a large home or fancy cars, are a poor investment. The bes...

Should you do innovation projects or something entrepreneurial as a researcher? The answer is no. It’s going to be far too difficult and you’re gonna face a lot of uphill battles. If you’re not ready for those battles you’re likely to quit