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

In general, there is a relationship between #education and the amount of #income that you will bring in.

However, there is plenty of nuance at the individual level between your education and income.

Many people become highly successful without an education, and many people do poorly with an education.

For you as an individual, getting an education might not matter, however what you have to think about is an aggregate the relationship between education and income is quite strong.

Encouraging people to get an education almost always leads to improve success at the #system level, but you have to think wisely at the individual level.

Think about whether and when it will benefit you. What do you think the longterm consequences of your education will be?

Think about comparable others, not just outliers. is far more likely that you will be average than that outlier.

Becoming an academic expert has made me less secure in who I am as a person.

It’s an interesting result given what you’d expect in building #competence. One would expect that as you repeat an action, you should become more secure with the actions that you repeat.

However, in #academic research, I’ve become completely insecure.

I do not understand both the field of study (#learning), and how to actually study it (#research).

Even if I was to play the game, and look for tight connections between actions and outcomes in the academic game, I still think I would feel just as insecure about my own identity as I do now.

The only time that I feel secure about my identity is when I’m not thinking about research.

Oddly, I don’t really understand what is the driving force behind the insecurity we feel in #academia. Perhaps, others know the answer.

when you do something for the first time, like get a PhD, or any other difficult project, you can’t trust the process. There is no process for you because this is the first time you’ve ever done it. Moreover this process is completely different for everybody.

Your goal is to keep trying no matter what is happening to you. Once you’re in the grind, and you keep trying, then you will make it happen.

I talk about the importance of insurance to protect her wealth. I also talk about why you should treat insurance for only catastrophic events, and everything else you should try to cash flow.

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. It takes many years to understand all of the ins and outs of mathematics before you can get to the point of understanding differential equations in 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.”

What we need is to be ourselves. To be human beings. To be your unique and imperfect person.

Being a manly man is physically impossible for many of us. So often many younger men decide to take steroids or other performance-enhancing drugs.

The pressure to be this unrealistic manly men often creates men to be jerks.

We have this depiction in the business world that men have to be jerks to get ahead. We have to “man up” and “make the hard” decision.

Why do think men are men are 1000% more likely to die in industrial accidents than women? They manned up and did the dirty work to their peril.

Why do you think men are 4 times more likely to commit suicide than women? Why do you think 70% of homeless people are men?

Thinking that we need to “be a man” makes many of us want to do it on our own, and not ask for help when we need it. We automatically default that it’s our fault when things go wrong.

Manning up and making a tough decision makes us be disliked by our friends, family, and coworkers. Nobody likes to be around somebody that has to be a jerk.

Manning up is the problem.

Listen. You are not any less of a man if you act like yourself, whatever that is.

You might call me “woke” for saying this, but facts are facts.

“Manning up” creates problems.

Let’s just start being ourselves. Be kind to yourself and others.

You don’t need to “be a man.” You need to be a human being.

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.