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

I strongly believe that working harder reduces research quality.

And I know that sounds wrong in academia.

But 95% of the advice I hear is either:

• “You just need to work harder,” or

• Some kind of anxious humble-brag about late nights, weekends, and exhaustion.

And every time I hear it, it makes people feel terrible.

Behind.

Like they’re not doing enough.

Like they’re the problem.

That advice is filled with anxiety and insecurity. And it’s incredibly harmful.

I’ve done the late nights. I’ve done the weekends. I’ve done the stretches where I told myself, “Just push harder.”

Here’s what actually happened:

• I got burned out.

• I spiraled in the wrong direction.

• I wasted time and effort.

• And eventually, I hurt myself physically. Every single time.

That culture doesn’t just hurt individuals.

It poisons labs, departments, and entire fields.

It creates fear.

It creates comparison.

It creates silence.

And no, this isn’t the same as those rare moments where a group is together, energized, and it feels fun. That’s not graduate school. That’s not real life. Most of the time, you’re alone, it’s dark outside, and you feel like everyone else is ahead.

What actually works is boring and unsexy:

• Small amounts of work.

• Done consistently.

• With feedback.

• Over a long period of time.

Little bits compound.

Every time I’ve tried to sprint, I lost traction.

Every time I slowed down and focused, things moved.

So don’t listen to the nonsense.

It’s not making you better.

It’s not making your work better.

One day at a time. One step at a time.

That’s how real research gets done.

Take care.

The longer I’ve been a parent, scholar, and human being, the less faith I have in the neat, clean economic logic I once believed in. Those tidy models—pick only the “best” people, copy best practices, dial up the traits that matter—work on paper, but they often fall apart when you’re dealing with real people.

In reality, human progress looks a lot less like optimization and a lot more like kindergarten teaching, therapy, and palliative care. It’s not about maximizing widgets or chasing the biggest metrics—it’s about building trust, caring without expecting a return, and being there when people need it (and when they think they don’t).

Mentorship isn’t cheerleading or networking; it’s showing up when it’s messy, frustrating, and unglamorous. It’s giving people the room to struggle through the hard parts themselves, knowing they’ll come back for help when they’re ready. The “magic bullet” everyone’s searching for? It’s simply this: get back up, do it again, and keep going long after you’ve lost the applause.

You can’t control your starting point, your genetics, or the cards you were dealt. But you can control whether you stand back up one more time. That’s the only consistent factor I’ve seen in 20 years of studying why some people and organizations thrive: they just don’t stop.

So here’s my strategy now—ignore the politics, avoid the traps, be a decent human, and quietly keep moving forward. If that costs me career points, so be it. I’d rather have the power to walk away with my integrity intact.

I swim a lot.

And almost every week at the pool, I see someone in their 70s—sometimes even in their 80s—learning how to swim for the first time.

They’re out there, kicking slowly, trying to float, listening to the lifeguard’s instructions. And every time, I think:

They still believe they’re in the game.

That belief—staying in the game—is far more important than any technical skill you’ll ever learn. Most people check out early. Some in their 20s. Many in their 30s or 40s. They decide the system is rigged, or they’ve missed their chance, and they quietly stop trying.

But here’s the truth: almost everything that matters in life comes down to stability.

Stable people, stable institutions, stable relationships—they tend to do better over decades. They may not be flashy. They may not grow the fastest. But they last. And lasting is what wins.

Stability is saving 10–15% of every paycheck—even when you don’t make much—and putting it into index funds for decades.

It’s showing up to your work and relationships every day with kindness and generosity.

It’s cutting out people who burn you, but not letting it turn you bitter.

This isn’t glamorous advice. It’s not “hack your way to success” or “find the magic bullet.”

It’s get up. Do the thing. Do it again tomorrow.

And when you’re in your 70s—or your 80s—maybe you’re learning to swim for the first time.

Not because you have to.

But because you still believe there’s something worth showing up for.

That’s the real win.

I strongly believe the way we teach fitness and athleticism is completely wrong.

We start with competition. We teach that the goal is to win, to maximize, to go as hard as possible. And then we wonder why most adults stop.

Once you are past 30, the number of people doing athletic activities is spectacularly low. I do not think this is about sedentary lifestyle. I think it is about how we frame fitness.

If I train to win, I burn out. I get injured. I feel behind. My body slows down and I think I am losing.

When I flip it, everything changes.

I stop maximizing the short run. I focus on longevity. I focus on stretching this out for decades. Some days I go hard. Some days I recuperate. Some days I nurse what hurts.

I am not training to beat anyone.

I am training to live fully and joyfully for as long as I possibly can.

I’m probably too open about my inner life.

What I’m thinking.

What I’m struggling with.

What I don’t understand yet.

I don’t know many people in academia who are that public. I do it because I hope it helps someone else feel normal. But I also know it comes with a cost.

Because I don’t like strategic behavior.

It leaves a bad taste in my mouth.

And here’s the thing I’ve learned with age:

When something feels off in an interaction, it usually is.

I used to ignore that feeling.

I don’t anymore.

If I get that quiet “Spidey sense” now, I listen. Almost every time, it ends up being about inauthenticity. Filtered information. Positioning. Someone playing a game I didn’t agree to play.

What surprised me most as I got older is this:

There are very few people in your life who are fully open, fully honest, and genuinely want you to do well.

Very few.

And I think business education taught us the wrong lesson. We train people to be strategic. To optimize. To get ahead.

In my experience, that kind of strategy erodes trust, culture, and real relationships. It “works” in narrow ways. And quietly destroys everything else.

So yes, I keep my heart open.

And yes, that means I get hurt.

But I’d rather live that way than turn into someone I don’t recognize.

If you’re open and honest, don’t expect short-term career rewards. Maybe long-term. Maybe not. But you will sleep at night knowing you were real.

I’ve always been a crusty old man. Now I just admit it in public.

Here’s the thing that drives me a little crazy: almost nobody has a long-term vision anymore. The internet is full of quick wins, instant credit, and absolute nonsense. Even in my own profession. Especially in my own profession.

I built an internationally recognized conference from nothing. I was a nobody. A PhD student. No money. I funded it myself for years. It took 15 years. I looked like a loser for a very long time. No credit. No out-of-boy. Just grinding.

The R3ciprocity project is the same thing. Ten years in. Still scary. Still embarrassing. Still no guarantees. Still doing it anyway.

Most people won’t do something that takes decades. They won’t build without credit. They won’t look foolish for years. They won’t carry uncertainty in public.

But that’s the whole point.

If you need quick feedback, don’t build big things.

If you need applause, don’t build real things.

If you need safety, don’t build anything at all.

I grew up in a town of 6,500 people in the middle of nowhere. No network. No money. No path. Just one more day of grinding.

If I can be one annoying, crusty voice in your ear saying, “You can do this. One more day. One more step,” then that’s a life well lived.

I honestly think that a lot of what we call “financial problems” are not really financial at all. I think money, most of the time, is just an indicator. A symptom. It points to something else that is deeper and far more important going on inside someone’s life.

And I see two sides to this all the time.

On one side, people cannot save anything. No cushion. No margin. Always behind.

On the other side, people save too much. They accumulate but never trust the world enough to take a risk. They choose assets that feel safe, but they stall. They freeze.

Both groups look very different on the surface. But underneath, it’s often the same thing.

They’ve lost hope.

What breaks my heart is that most people stop believing in the connection between tiny, painful, boring steps and what those steps become after decades. The beginning is grueling. The payoff is invisible. So people quit early. Or they numb themselves. Or they panic. Or they cling to whatever feels safe in the moment.

And then they think the problem is money.

It usually isn’t.

Here’s the part that nobody likes to talk about. Most people who do “spectacularly well” financially are completely ordinary. Not lottery winners. Not celebrities. Not genetic freaks of talent. Just average people who stayed with the process longer than everyone else.

Education.

Reinvesting in yourself.

Being frugal but generous.

Treating people well.

Staying when it would be easier to quit.

This works. It has worked for hundreds of years. We know it works. We just hate how slow it is.

Most people don’t fail because they are stupid.

They fail because they get tired of believing.

They stop trusting the long run.

When people can’t save, it is often because they’ve already decided—quietly, inside—that the future doesn’t really belong to them. So why sacrifice today?

When people hoard, it is often because the world feels unsafe. So they cling to control instead of growth.

Both are fear responses.

What I keep learning, over and over, is that this is not really about money. It is about courage. About patience. About fighting the daily message that says, “Short term is all that matters.”

The world trains you to panic.

The world trains you to compare.

The world trains you to chase fast wins.

And the quiet work of building anything meaningful—wealth, health, love, knowledge—moves at the opposite speed.

If you feel panicky about money, I don’t think the right question is, “How do I optimize faster?”

The better question might be, “Where did I lose hope?”

Because once you lose hope, everything feels urgent. Everything feels scarce. Everything feels behind.

The real work is not some fancy strategy.

It is calming down.

Taking one tiny step.

Then taking another one tomorrow.

When you follow something like the R3ciprocity Project—or any long, hard project—you need to understand something: recognition might never come. And if it does, it won’t feel the way you imagined. By the time it arrives, you’ll be too tired, too changed, or too bored to care.

In year one, people cheer you on. “Great idea!” they say. You’re excited, they’re excited. But by year five or six, the mood shifts. Friends, family, even strangers start asking, “Why are you still doing this? Isn’t it time to quit?”

Here’s the truth: that’s exactly when most people give up. Not because it’s impossible—but because it’s boring, embarrassing, and lonely. You’re grinding away, and nobody is paying attention. You’re building something, but it feels like nothing’s moving.

Every big thing works like this. There’s no shortcut. No secret system. Just one small, awkward, often painful step every single day. And yes, some days will make you want to vomit from frustration. That’s normal.

If you can learn to live in that space—to keep going when nobody is watching, to stop expecting applause—you win. Not because it’s glamorous, but because almost everyone else quits.

One more step. Every day.

century ago, most of us wouldn’t have lived past 30—especially young men, lost to war and hardship. Today, we face a new challenge: living long enough to feel the grind. That means normalizing the slow, often frustrating reality of progress. In business, even the best companies—growing at 10% a year—take seven years to double your money. The same is true for life’s big goals: every day requires showing up, enduring setbacks, feeling foolish, and sometimes pushing through short bursts of intense work. The rest of the time, it’s steady effort, small steps, and ignoring the people who have never been in the game. It’s not glamorous, but it’s the reality of building something that lasts.

I study as a business professor is how badly we infer causes from surfaces.

We walk into a classroom, a gym, Walmart, a town meeting, and we instantly start telling ourselves stories.

Who looks successful.

Who looks competent.

Who looks like they have it together.

We infer all of this from watches, cars, clothes, houses, how someone talks, how confident they sound, how firm their handshake is.

And those inferences are almost always wrong.

What’s worse is that we rarely self-correct. It actually takes real mental work to stop believing the story your brain invents in five seconds.

I see this constantly with ideas about success and failure. People assume there’s something magical going on. Some rare talent. Some hidden trait. Some genius level ability.

But when you actually look at the evidence—decades of it—the drivers of long-run success are boring and deeply unsexy.

Get a solid education in something the environment values.

Accumulate experience over time.

Engage in deliberate learning, not frantic overwork.

Get feedback from people who are honest, not impressed by you.

Repeat this for a very long time.

That’s it.

Not 14-hour days. Not heroic suffering. Not looking the part. And definitely not signaling success before it exists.

We also confuse correlation with causation constantly. People don’t succeed because they wear expensive watches. Often they wear expensive watches because other people already believe they’re successful—and then opportunities follow. That’s reverse causation, and it fools almost everyone.

The hardest part is unlearning the reflex to compare yourself to a random slice of people you see in public. Your brain will always default to the wrong story unless you actively correct it.

I have to coach myself through this all the time.

When I slow down and return to what is tried, boring, and proven—education, patience, repetition, feedback—I do better. Every time.