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

When I was about seven years old, I realized I just think differently than everybody else. I didn’t think like my parents. I didn’t think like my friends. I didn’t think like the people in my church. For decades, even now as a business professor, I’ve puzzled over why I see the world in such a different way. I’ve always felt a little strange. I don’t follow conversations when there’s noise. I stru...

I just get so sick of the strategic behavior that happens in science. Everybody’s smart—maybe too smart. They try to outthink the system, outthink each other. It becomes this game of “how do I win?” instead of “how do I learn?” That’s not how I grew up. That’s not how I was taught to live. The truth is, nothing we build in research—or life—is perfect the first time. But there’s this illusion that...

You know, one way to view academia in today’s economy is to see it as a platform for creators. A lot of people don’t understand this, but platforms like YouTube, Facebook, LinkedIn—they’re modeled after universities. All universities are, quote unquote, platforms. They connect people who want to create things. And that content looks different in every domain. In mine, it’s research papers. In your...

Most people will never understand what you do as a PhD researcher. Even inside your own field, you learn very fast that you are walking into the unknown. You do work no one has done before. It is easy to feel lost. It is easy to feel lonely. It is very easy to lose hope. You also learn that the comments you get are not always helpful. You learn that the path is full of confusion and mixed signals....

It’s interesting how humans can sense when something is directed to self-improvement or non-entertainment. We gravitate to entertainment and escapism — comedy, beauty, sex, drama — but if there is a learning angle with some lesson that is going to benefit you, almost all humans sense that and discount it. I was thinking about this while reading The Wealthy Barber with my 13-year-old. It was one of...

I’ve come to a pretty strong belief over the years: if I’m struggling to make progress on something, if I’m not energized at all, if nothing is moving, then it’s often a sign I should stop and find something else to do. And yes, this applies to graduate students. But it also applies to professors. Researchers. Founders. Everyone. I think we give far too much benefit of the doubt when nothing is ac...

There’s one thing that’s a real detriment in your career—and almost broadly in your life. Humans are programmed to desire success extraordinarily quickly. That’s just how reinforcement learning works. It’s the same mechanism behind artificial intelligence, and it’s why we chase the hit. The tighter the feedback loop, the faster the response, the stronger the hit we get. That’s what happens with dr...

If you ever do a PhD, there is one feeling that almost never leaves you. “I am behind.” “I am slow.” “I’m not that good.” And the entire infrastructure seems to reinforce it. The program. The tenure system. Sometimes even your colleagues. There is this quiet story that you are a mistake. That you shouldn’t be here. So here is my ask. Be the broken link in that chain. The old logic says pressure wi...

I think a lot of the unrest we’ve seen in the last 10 years is because data is exposing more of who we actually are. I read a working paper on conflict of interest in academic markets, and honestly—it was unnerving. The researchers analyzed public data, did some matching, and showed how personal relationships strongly shaped outcomes. I won’t name names—but what they found was shocking. We’re told...

Some people move through life telling you they are always busy. They never have enough time. Everything is urgent. Everything is falling apart. And then there are others who somehow… make time. Even when life is chaotic. I live in this strange duality myself. Part of me feels the constant pressure: “I need to get this done. I need to do that. I’m behind.” And the other part of me knows: Things unf...

Why Original Thinkers Rarely ‘Make It’

Doing a PhD means you are in your head a lot. You live inside your own thoughts, and it becomes very difficult not to go into great depths of negativity. You start to ruminate, to fixate, to compare yourself to others, and it becomes this spiral where you feel horrible about yourself. Loneliness becomes an industrial hazard of the profession. You are rated against others constantly, and you start...

We don’t talk about this enough: Teams don’t fail because of bad strategy. They fail when someone starts rationalizing their effort. “I’ve already put in too much time.” “This isn’t going anywhere.” “There’s no ROI.” “I’m not feeling it anymore.” If you’ve ever heard those words—you know it’s over. Because what breaks a team isn’t misalignment. It’s when one person emotionally checks out… and just...

You know what makes me most excited about artificial intelligence? It’s when I see viral posts on Facebook, LinkedIn, whatever platform—people outing others for using AI. Someone includes the wrong kind of prompt in a research paper, and suddenly… it’s a scandal. It’s a rejection. People get really, really upset. And honestly? That’s the moment I start paying attention. It’s uncomfortable. It’s we...

If you are building some form of software or doing new product development, you will never feel like you have enough time. Lots of people out there have a little startup or they are trying to build something, and that is a big part of what this channel is about. I just want to explain what has happened and why I am talking about this. I try to document all of the things I am going through. I am a...

I love building something raw — and letting everyone see the mess. That’s the point of the R3ciprocity Project. There’s uncertainty. There’s embarrassment. There’s a lot of “I have no idea what I’m doing.” But I keep going. Because what I’ve realized — in startups and in academia — is that we have a strong culture of hiding. Hiding failure. Hiding doubt. Hiding how much of this is just making it u...

People think being a professor is easy. You sit around, read a few books, teach a few classes, and write the occasional paper. But that’s not the reality. Not even close. I’ve talked to Olympic athletes, bankers, folks from construction—and many of them say the same thing after stepping into this profession: “I had no idea it would be this hard.” Because here’s what nobody tells you: Being a profe...

I’ve hit every milestone I was supposed to hit. I got the degrees. I earned tenure. I published the research. I’m raising a family. I even built a platform to help other researchers. And still—most days, I feel like I’m failing. Not because I’ve failed. But because perfection culture has trained people like us to believe we’re never enough. In academia, in parenting, in life—we are constantly bein...

I think about mental health a lot—especially mental health at work. Most of us were never taught how to manage the invisible stuff. Not in school. Not in research. Not even in our families. It’s only in the last 20–30 years that people even started talking about mental health outside of medical journals. And even now, most of what we see is snapshots. Clean. Marketable. Sanitized. But life doesn’t...

Not the pitch decks. Not the TED Talks. Not the LinkedIn wins. But the quiet moments of anxiety. The constant doubt. The deep embarrassment of putting something out into the world before it’s ready—and maybe before you are. In this podcast , Professor David Maslach (creator of R3ciprocity) shares a brutally honest take on what it actually feels like to build something real—when you have no funding...

simple: 1. Generate knowledge 2. Turn it into real-world solutions 3. Repeat—with joy But instead of pretending that this happens in a perfectly rational system, I want to remind people: it’s allowed to be fun. Serious progress can come from play. Deep insight can come from silliness. The point is to keep going, and keep trying—even when it feels pointless.

Most days, I feel like I’m failing at everything. I’m trying to be a good dad. A good husband. A good son. A good professor. A good person. And most days—I feel like I’m not doing enough in any of those roles. Like I’m stretched so thin, I barely exist in any of them. But I still show up. Not because I have it figured out. Not because I’m successful. But because I believe there are people out ther...

I’m going to say something that might sound extreme: If we got rid of higher education as we know it—college, university, all of it—maybe we’d be better off. Why? Because most people don’t actually want to learn. They don’t care. They’re checked out. And no message—no matter how true or kind—seems to land unless it’s already preaching to the choir. And yet… I keep going. Because I know this: real...

We’re taught in school to look for a single best answer. One multiple-choice question. One correct option. Select A and move on. But the real world never works like that. Most of the time, the answer is never given to you. Most of the time, you don’t even know what the question actually is. In real life, the “answers” are never independent. They’re highly connected in weird ways. If you select A i...

It’s not lost on me how wrong management theories often are. I read a lot. And I know this sounds pretentious, but I’m confident enough now to say I’m one of the few people who actually studies platforms and builds one. The only reason I got here is because I’m building the Reciprocity platform with my own money, my own time, and all the embarrassment that goes with it. And that’s why I see how di...