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

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 “productivity” and “performance.” However, “productivity” has all sorts of baggage attached to it that leads to unhealthy behavior.

Screw the culture of “productivity,” and focus on just doing good work that you are currently capable of doing. Worrying about “productivity”does not make you productive anyways. It leads to unhealthy strategic behavior. Everytime.

I just want you to remember that your life and how it is right now is perfectly awesome. What you get to, and how much you “perform” right now is exactly what you need to do, and what you can possibly do with what you have.

Don’t let the outside world tell you otherwise, and you are at the right stage for who you are right now. Don’t forget how amazing that you actually are.

You’re absolutely remarkable. The outside world does not who know who you are, so why should they ever give you any sort of special consideration? That’s why it’s extra important for you to remember that you are amazing.

You be you. You are good enough.

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 it actually is to build any software. Try to write 100 lines of code and see how long that takes.

You also realize that nobody cares, and you simply have to deal with that and keep going regardless of what they say and do. What you do find out is that there are very cool people that are “distant” that might actually understand why what you’re doing is important.

Regardless, what you learned is to keep going and have your own determination. You learn an inner strength that you did not think it was possible.

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-term outcomes for everyone