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

The scientific effort is a political economy. Like everything else that involves humans, the scientific effort requires a political decision-making process. All decisions within science should be viewed through a political lens as the actors involved have limited information and limited resources. Once you understand that scientific effort is a political process, and likely going to make different...

I challenge how you are thinking and making inferences about the world. Take a step back and think about what you really want to prioritize in a world that has very few constraints.

I encourage you to see what it’s really like to do some thing by taking the romance out of an occupation. Most often we are going to view a certain occupation or career through a romantic lens. However, what you need to do is actually take an account of what people really do in those particular careers. Once you understand what they really do then you’ll have a good sense that it’s not very romant...

Take your time with your decision-making, and never look for the quick win. Anybody that thinks you can “fail fast” to make a lot of money doesn’t know what they’re talking about. #Failure still hurts. You need to take your time and do a good job. Going for the quick win is going to get you burnt, every time.

You need to remember that it’s not about your skills at or inherent abilities. You have to remember that it is just repetition to get good at some thing. Unbelievable amounts of repetition. Just keep showing up.

It’s important to have adequate celebrations and treats in your life. Member that treats and celebrations build the life. You don’t build a life by being efficient and focusing on productivity all the time. Treats make your life.

Encourage you to keep taking steps forward in. It’s the only thing that you can do in your life to make progress. Even if you don’t have any gifts, you can work more than everybody else.

I just want to share my sincere appreciation to all single parents, other people that have dependents, people that they care for, and everybody else that has some sort of constraint that prevents them from “performing” in #academic life. Academic life unfortunately has placed “performance” above all else. Understandably, with budget constraints and global competition, it makes sense to focus on “p...

always try to focus on how appreciative you actually are to be in the world around us. The world is quirky, unusual, and interesting. You have to realize that just being part of this interesting world is the gift. Be grateful for all that you have, and remember that adversity is just part of the journey. The adversity that you experience allows you to tell a story in the future.

I talk about the challenges of dealing with the rolls and schedule of PhD life. It’s important to take breaks and spend time doing the things that you would like to do, in as well as actually doing the work. Work happens when you try and you naturally gravitate towards it. It doesn’t happen when you actually force it. You have to have the desire to keep going with research.

You are going to fall for the hacky stuff and get persuaded it’s gonna be very easy. If you need to actually get there, you have to put in a slow steady effort to get there.

Every venture that you ever do is gonna take you an awful lot of time and effort, just like how your train for the Olympics. You don’t get to the Olympics overnight. You have to train for 15 to 20 years by the time something actually happens.

I can’t really do too much in terms of improving your performance more than just putting in the work. The key is just repetition and enjoying it when you’re doing it.

Keep trading off your pleasure today for tomorrow, and repeatedly do that with all of your decisions to build wealth. It requires you to be constantly doing that day in and day out for you to actually get to where you would like to be. For me, I see the R3ciprocity project being an important part of the world, and I will continue to forgo pleasure today for tomorrow by working on it.

Important lessons that you learn when you build software (as an academic) The two most important things that you realize when you build software is that nobody cares, and it’s going to take you a lot longer than you ever thought it would. The reason why it’s going take you a lot longer to build it’s because you experience a lot of problems that you have to work through. Just think it how difficult...

I discuss how you deal with complex interpersonal situations and management. I like to think of myself in the third person, so that I can detach myself from the emotional situation. Thinking of myself and the third person allows me to better walk-through went outcomes that one would expect to see in the future. The goal is to not to necessarily win in the short term, but I think of better long-ter...

keep building, and keep persisting. It’s gonna take you a heck of a lot longer than you think it will, but if you keep persisting at something things to get better.

You have to remember that you need to constantly feel like a failure to get better at something.

it’s absolutely fascinating to me that I have very strong emotions about corporations, and other made up entities. Emotions I feel are just as strong as if they are real people.

I talk about dealing with crashing in the afternoon, and how I deal with it. The afternoon crash is real depending on what you eat.

I talk about pushing against the outside world, so that you can have the time to do your work. It’s always just work, and you don’t have to worry about what other people are thinking of you. Just do the work and keep going.

I talk about whether we should be focusing on creating unified theories of this world. Talk about the complex thing that we face within this world, and the difficulty and challenges that you’re going to face of coming up with a unified theory. The question then become should we actually be creating unified theories? Or should we just be pondering stuff?

You are absolutely privileged. If you’d simply just look at any category of your life and compared it to one it was even a few decades ago, you’ll quickly realize that you are doing better than most people I have ever done in the past. This goes for almost everybody in society today. Don’t let the cynicism and negative news get into your mind. We are doing way better than we have ever been. Keep m...

Please push against the outside world. The objective is to do the thing that you’re interested in, and to do better work within that particular area. In order to do better work and to see greater improvements, you have to slow down every single time. From research to piano to swimming, you have to slow down to get better, not speed up. It’s about the focus on specific areas, not about focusing on...

Important lesson that I’ve learned is to remove me out of the situation, and view myself as a third-party. It almost always allows me to collectively think about complicated and emotional decisions. It helps me figure out how much I should actually care in the moment.