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

Everyone says to optimize. To fit in. To specialize.

But what if playing it safe is exactly what’s holding you back?

In this raw and honest episode, David Maslach shares what most people won’t say out loud:

Being weird might be the only reason your career survives.

Drawing from experience as a tenured professor and researcher, he explains:

• Why the best ideas start as misunderstood

• How “goofy” projects become strategic breakthroughs

• Why great firms like Google protect weirdos—and so should you

• What it feels like when even your friends think you’re wasting your time

This isn’t hustle advice. It’s a survival guide for researchers, PhDs, and anyone trying to build something real when nobody else sees the vision yet.

If you’ve ever wondered, “Am I off-track or just early?”

This episode will help you keep going.

Hey assistant professors that are just starting out. I just wanna remind you to live with as much joy as you possibly can. It is very easy to focus on what you need to get to and be very strategic in terms of who you are going to work with, but the key thing to always focus on is joy. Make sure that you are smiling every day. Make sure you have some laughter every single day. Look for those moments that make you feel warm inside. This is what I call the Spidey sense — the warmness you feel once you start engaging and you start doing things in life.

Take a step back from the things that make you feel uptight. Engage with the moments that give you the warm fuzzies. It is not about being impractical and it is not about living life with rose-colored glasses. It is about figuring out how to survive in a world that often pushes all of that joy away. The more you focus on feeling warm inside, being light on your feet, and living your life with joy, the better off you are going to be.

You might be listening to this and saying that joy will not make you productive. You have already lost as soon as you start thinking about productivity. That is a dead-end journey. As soon as I say the word productivity, I get uptight in my belly. But if I focus on how I can feel warm, how I can live my life with joy, how I can be a more joyful researcher where every moment I am laughing and every moment I have a sense of lightness, I feel better.

For me, joy comes from people who want to laugh, who smile, who shrug off the seriousness of life. It comes from going for walks, hearing the birds, talking to you, and getting to engage in these moments where I feel good. None of this has the word productivity in it. None of this is about accomplishing things. Push that language away.

If you think this will not help you get tenure, you have already lost. Your life will be dominated by trying to get tenure, and by the time you get there you will ask why you were so focused on it. Live with joy. Live with an open heart. See people smiling. Laugh. It is OK to get a cup of coffee or grab a lunch. It is not about productivity.

My life used to be dominated by the logic of productivity, and every time I heard about working all the time, I felt awful because I could never compare. So I disengaged with that and focused on what makes me excited and joyful. When I could not get things done, when I was grocery shopping or spending time with my kids, I disengaged from the pressure. The joy comes from these moments, and it will change who you are inside.

It may not always work out for you, but at least you lived a life worth living. You will take more risks. You will engage more. People will want to be around you. There will be a fundamental shift in who you are. Ironically, by not focusing on productivity — by focusing on joy — you actually become more productive. The less you care, the better off you are.

You might not listen to this now, but one day, 20 years from now, you will hear this again and say: now I get it. Learn how to engage in the warmth and the joy of the process of discovery. Disengage from everything that pushes you toward “getting things done.” In the end, what matters is that you lived a good, healthy, lovely life where you laughed, had fun, and every moment was a joy.

If you have small kids, I know it is difficult. I live that life. But remember they are a blessing. They are not taking away from your work. They are adding to it. Live a life of inspiration for others. Do not live a life about productivity. Live a life where you want to be joyful at any given moment — where you laugh and you smile. Something changes when you do that.

All right, take care and have a wonderful day.

My dad used to sit in the backyard and just watch his garden.

No phone. No emails. Just stillness.

It never made sense to me when I was younger—how he could be happy with just that.

But now I understand.

He wasn’t chasing anything.

He had arrived.

In academia—and in so many elite careers—we’re trained to chase.

Chase status.

Chase metrics.

Chase recognition from people we don’t even know.

I feel that pull every day.

This deep, unshakable urge to be part of the most prestigious schools.

To be recognized as “one of the best.”

To earn a seat at the imagined table.

Even when my life is full—

A partner I love.

Kids who make me laugh.

Colleagues I care about.

Freedom to think, write, and build.

Still, the voice whispers:

“Shouldn’t you want more?”

Here’s what I think is happening.

We construct this amalgamated ideal—a stitched-together fantasy of all the “best” traits we see in others.

The top publication record.

The perfect teaching scores.

The charming personality.

The viral following.

The elite institution.

The MacArthur. The Nobel. The NYT op-ed.

But this ideal?

It’s a monster.

It doesn’t exist.

And comparing ourselves to it only makes us feel broken.

We forget: the entire picture matters.

That so-called “flaw” you carry might actually be the source of your integrity.

That “slowness” might be the root of your originality.

That local, quiet life might hold more wisdom than any global award.

The pressure to perform isn’t just exhausting.

It’s distorting.

It makes us forget that this—right now—might already be enough.

Maybe we don’t need to outrun the system.

Maybe we just need to stop sprinting toward someone else’s fantasy.

And remember how to sit still.

And notice the garden.

This is one of those moments I promised I’d be real with you. Nothing polished. Nothing fancy. Just the truth. Right now, I’m grumpy and tired after work—and honestly, that’s all I wanted to share. Not as a rant, but as a reminder. Because we’re surrounded by advice telling us to love every second of our careers, to feel passion at every turn. And if you’re not feeling it, then maybe something’s wrong with you. That’s the lie.

Here’s my experience: after a full day of real work—whether that’s writing papers, mentoring students, or even just managing life—I’m drained. I feel grumpy. And that’s not failure. That’s what it feels like to do something. Any kind of work, even the cool, creative kind, still wears you down. Whether you’re a professor, a parent, a podcaster, or a so-called “influencer”—at the end of the day, you’re still just a tired human trying to do your best.

I see a lot of research, a lot of career advice, and a lot of “hacks” about how to be happy at work. But I’m going to tell you what I know for sure:

A) I never fully know what I’m doing.

B) I often feel like I’m doing the wrong thing.

C) After doing the work, I usually feel completely wiped out.

And honestly? I think that’s completely normal.

It’s also normal to disengage now and again. To feel like you need to hit pause. Sometimes, switching up what you’re doing—even just a little—can bring you back. That doesn’t mean you’re lazy or dispassionate. It means you’re human. Not everything has to feel exciting. Sometimes, the best work feels like a slog.

So no, you don’t have to feel good all the time. You don’t have to be lit up with purpose 24/7. Life isn’t constant joy. It’s cycles. There are days when you feel unstoppable and days when you feel like you want to curl up and disappear. That’s not a flaw. That’s just how it works. Take care, and keep going.

Most people ask: “Why do universities produce so little innovation per dollar spent?” or “Why don’t university labs focus on real-world innovation?” The problem is that we keep using metrics that don’t capture what’s actually happening.

Universities are playing a very different game than companies. They don’t just chase performance. They teach. They serve public missions. They take on harder problems—ones others walk away from. And most of their innovation efforts? They aren’t failures. They’re options—investments in ideas we can’t yet predict.

So when you hear someone say “university patents don’t make money” or “companies do it better,” they’re forgetting the whole point: we’re terrible at predicting success. In fact, most business leaders fail at this too—they just get to pick from projects that already look successful.

If we want real innovation, we need to stop asking why universities aren’t more efficient. The real question is: how do we make life good enough for the people who can see around corners—so they actually want to show up and build?

I’ve spent the last 10 years building a platform to make research better.

To make it less lonely.

To make it more joyful.

To make rejection less painful.

At first, I thought people would jump in.

I assumed: “If I build something good—something that helps—people will just show up.”

They didn’t.

I kept building anyway.

And along the way, I learned the hardest part of innovation isn’t the tech.

It’s not funding.

It’s not even the science.

It’s belief.

Getting people to believe something new is possible…

That’s the game.

And most of us are too tired, too overworked, too skeptical, or too burned by the system to believe.

So we tell ourselves:

• “I don’t have time.”

• “I haven’t heard of it.”

• “I’m already overwhelmed.”

And those are real. I get it.

But here’s what I’ve learned:

If I want to build something that changes anything at all, it’s my job to figure out how to break through that.

Not yours.

You don’t need to believe in my platform.

But maybe this:

If something feels hard to share or grow, it’s not because people are wrong.

It’s because people are tired. Burned. Stuck.

That’s not an obstacle.

That’s the reason to keep building.

Because maybe—just maybe—someone else is quietly trying too.

And they need to know they’re not alone.

The research career is hard in a way that’s not often talked about. It’s not just intellectually difficult — it’s personally difficult. It functions a lot like entrepreneurship. You are left entirely to your own demise. You have near-total autonomy, and what that does is amplify whatever your default tendencies are.

If you are a high-anxiety person — which describes a large number of successful researchers — you will likely internalize everything. You’ll obsess, push harder, and feel like the world will fall apart if you don’t accomplish something today. That’s often why people succeed. But it also means you can burn yourself out or break down completely. The anxiety becomes the thing that eats you alive.

On the flip side, if you are naturally more relaxed or chill, it’s easy to default to avoidance. You just won’t get much done. You tell yourself it’ll be fine — and nothing happens. And nobody is really there to push you, because there’s nobody watching.

The whole system reinforces whatever your crutch is. If you’re prone to loneliness, you’ll feel it more. If you’re prone to overwork, you’ll overwork. If you need structure, there isn’t any. And over time, it becomes clear that the hardest part isn’t the research — it’s regulating your own head.

Most of the damage comes from being left to your own psychology. And that’s what makes the research profession so much like building a startup. It’s rarely about your ideas. It’s whether you can survive being left to yourself.

I’ve become increasingly skeptical of the peer review system—not because the intention behind it is bad, but because of the complicated world in which it’s embedded. On paper, the process sounds idealistic: submit your research, get anonymous feedback, revise, and resubmit. But in practice, it’s a messy system shaped by invisible games, ambiguous standards, and enormous variability in what counts as “good” science.

In this episode, I reflect on what it feels like to send work off into a black box—where editorial decisions are shaped by uncertainty, disagreement, and sometimes just luck. We talk about how reviewers often don’t agree, how “A-level” work depends on who’s judging it, and how real people’s careers and livelihoods are affected by invisible rules no one fully understands.

I still believe in the value of careful research. But I also think we need to get honest about the cost—emotional, intellectual, and financial—of playing the current game. And maybe, just maybe, we need to imagine a better system.

Why do we choose this strange, difficult career of research—and what makes it worth it?

David Maslach sits down with Olav Sorenson, Professor of Strategy at UCLA Anderson and one of the most influential voices in organizational theory and entrepreneurship.

“We’re professional problem solvers.”

In this powerful conversation, Sorenson shares how curiosity—not credentials—built his career. From almost launching a startup to shaping the field of entrepreneurship, he reminds us why the real reward in science is the process, not the prize.

We talk about:

• Why choosing “weird” ideas matters.

• How to build real, lasting relationships.

• Why intrinsic motivation is more powerful than prestige.

This is a reminder that being a good scientist means staying brave, sometimes irrelevant, and always learning to love the climb.

Most people give up.

They try a few times. It gets hard. It gets quiet. No one notices.

So they stop.

And that’s why the game is winnable.

That’s why you never see professors building open platforms.

Why researchers tell you not to start something new.

Why smart people will laugh at your idea and say,

“That’s not how it’s done.”

They’re not wrong.

They’re just done.

But I’m not.

Every day, I show up. Even when no one cares.

Even when I feel ridiculous.

Even when I want to quit.

Because I know the truth:

Consistency outlasts brilliance.

One more day of effort stacks higher than one perfect performance.

And I’ve seen this across research, careers, and life:

The people who win aren’t always smarter.

They’re the ones who refuse to stop when it stops being fun.

They do the boring thing.

The scary thing.

The invisible thing.

Until something cracks.

And then people say:

“Wow, you’re lucky.”

“Must be nice.”

But the truth is simple:

You didn’t quit.

And that’s always been the difference.