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

I talk openly about my life as a researcher, particularly one that is very open online. One of the things that I learn, is just how many people are actually feeling bad about themselves in the research game. remind you, feeling bad about yourself is an endemic to research life. Rather than think about all of my limitations and what I actually don’t have, I have chosen to think about all the positive things and the things that I have going right in my life. I think the subtle switch, has helped me out immensely with imagining where I fit in with the world.

stop thinking about how you can get to greater efficiencies, and really drastically improving your life. What you can do instead is focus on just doing a little better every day at little aspects of your life. There’s no need to drastically change who you are. You’re good enough.

I talk about the problems that we face ecological impact. We have a rather large impact on the environment, and as we become more wealthier we’re going to have an increasingly large impact. We have to think about how to solve this problem, that fits the way that we actually operate as human beings.

Solving these problems is particularly challenging, given the constraints that we have in the macro environment. One way that we can solve these problems is to use entrepreneurship and innovation. we also have to think about ways to minimize the diffusion of the waste that we actually produce.

if you frame everything in your life as obtaining the least possible good that you can get, you will completely change how you view the world. Imagine that you were living in a tent eating rice and beans, and everybody else around you has died, you will quickly realize that everything that you have is nothing but pure joy.

You don’t have to keep up with what everybody else has, and you don’t need that much to survive. Everything else is golden and apple pie.

It’s important to have boundaries in your life. One of the challenges with doing research is that there’s few boundaries between your life and work. You quickly realize that we need to create boundaries so that you can live a healthy life.

Remember to set boundaries in where and when you work, and who you work with, and what you work on.

I talk about making decisions about investments when the stock market is doing poorly. There’s no right answers, and know that whatever you choose is the best thing that you could possibly do for you at the moment.

you need to remember that you’re not alone, and most of the thoughts and feelings that you’re going through is completely normal. Many people experience the same thoughts and emotions that you are feeling.

Part of the reason why we have these thoughts and feelings are structural, in the sense that it is because of how society is set up then encourages a large number of people to feel in the way that they do.

You’re being measured or proper because you were thinking about other people’s reactions to who you really are, and how they will judge you.

Remember that any negative reactions is on them. How they deal with their self has a little to do with you.

Be more of who you are, and less of who they are.

don’t ever think that your life is gonna be a linear process. It’s not going to be a step-by-step process.

Your life is going to be utter chaos, and you bob and weave to get to where you want to go to.

Just keep going, and keep taking Luke steps forward. It’s going to feel like nothings happening in in the day today, but what matters is what happens over the years.