I despise most business news, and I say that as a business professor.

It teaches the wrong lesson. It trains you to chase fast money, big deals, and quick wins. That is not what real work looks like.

Most of business is boring. It is tiny steps. It is dull. It is slow. Most days nothing happens. Value comes from getting up and doing the same thing again, even when it feels pointless.

The real problem is what we measure. We measure the highlight reel. We measure the degree, the deal, the exit, the big number. We do not measure the years of grind that made the moment possible. We do not measure the boring weeks when you show up, make small fixes, and still feel like you are not improving.

That is why I do not pay attention to headlines. They are not the thing that builds your life.

And here is another hard truth. Most days, you do not get better. You repeat. You hold steady. You mess up. You do the work anyway. Over decades, it compounds.

Even at the top, performance can slide. Athletes peak young. Many leaders “look” better on paper later, but their day to day output often drops. That does not mean they are less worthy. It means our story of success is wrong.

So if you want real progress, stop chasing the news. Start chasing boring reps. Repeat so long you get sick of it. Then repeat again.

I used to have this fantasy that somebody would come rescue me.

A boss would notice. A mentor would step in. Money would get easier. Work would get simpler.

Here is the part people do not want to hear.

That hero in your mind almost never shows up.

And if you wait for them, you stay stuck. You stay needy. You stay quiet. You keep hoping instead of building.

What I learned is boring, and it works.

I did things step by step. Little by little. For years. The kind of choices that make you feel weird in the moment.

Like walking past the crowd and not doing what everyone else is doing. Like not smoking when that was the “normal” thing. Like turning the car around to grab coffee at home instead of buying it.

Yes, it feels petty. Yes, it feels small. But small choices compound.

Over decades, “small” turns into freedom. The kind where you can walk away. The kind where you stop begging the world to approve of you.

And here is the irony.

By the time help finally shows up, you do not need it anymore.

We are living in the most opportunity-rich time humans have ever experienced.

And so many people are terrified of it.

What surprises me most is that researchers and scholars might be the most afraid.

We would rather study what’s happening than actually participate in it.

Think about what exists right now.

With social media alone, if you hit the right message, the right tone, or just do something quirky or funny…

Your opportunities can explode overnight.

That has never existed in human history.

Someone can go from relative obscurity to global attention from a single post or video.

Yes, it’s like winning the lottery.

The odds are terrible.

But something important happens when you try.

You begin to see the world differently.

You stop waiting for permission.

You start betting on yourself.

And suddenly you become more of an actor in the world, not just an observer.

You try things.

Most of them fail.

Many will be awkward.

Some will be embarrassing.

But you gain something incredibly valuable:

A sense that you are actually participating in life.

That’s why I find this moment so strange.

Professors are supposed to profess.

To speak.

To share ideas.

And yet we now have a tool that allows anyone to reach millions of people with ideas…

And almost everyone is afraid to use it.

I know the fears.

You won’t be taken seriously.

You won’t get tenure.

People will think you’re a joke.

Those fears are real.

I live them too.

But this moment in time is extraordinary.

For all its flaws, the digital world is also the most democratizing communication system we’ve ever had.

People from anywhere can share ideas.

And sometimes those ideas change lives.

No one will count that impact.

Academia won’t track it.

Promotion committees won’t value it.

But it’s still happening.

And it’s shaping the world.

So don’t underestimate this moment.

And don’t underestimate the power you have if you decide to participate in it.

It may require you to be a little weird.

A little quirky.

A little unconventional.

But that’s where interesting things happen.

Take it one day at a time.

Have fun with it.

And remember:

The people who change the world usually look strange at first.

Anything meaningful is just repetition.

The same work.

Every day.

For years.

Sometimes for decades.

Look at Wikipedia.

Roughly one person contributes for every tens of thousands who read it.

One person quietly building something that thousands benefit from.

Most people consume.

A few people build.

The builders usually look strange.

Obsessed.

Unreasonable.

Maybe even a little crazy.

If you’re a senior professor or academic leader, I hope you hear this clearly.

Most days, you’re navigating enormous ambiguity.

You’re expected to have answers.

But the truth is: you’re making a lot of it up as you go.

We all are.

There are three groups I try to speak to every day:

1. Senior faculty who quietly carry the emotional weight of an entire department.

2. Early-career scholars who are confused and overwhelmed.

3. People who work with students or colleagues who are struggling inside.

And the hard part is this:

So much of the conflict you face has nothing to do with you.

People project their own ambiguity, fear, and frustration onto whoever is nearest.

Sometimes that’s you.

Sometimes it’s your students.

Sometimes it’s that mid-career colleague who is drowning but won’t say it out loud.

You cannot fix them.

You cannot say the “one perfect thing.”

You cannot change their personality or the baggage they’ve carried for decades.

But you can change how you walk through it.

You can get back up in the morning.

You can set boundaries.

You can refuse to internalize someone else’s chaos.

You can be calm, steady, and kind — even when others don’t reciprocate.

And you can show junior scholars that strength doesn’t have to look harsh.

It can look like patience.

It can look like dignity.

It can look like choosing joy when everyone expects bitterness.

If one or two people in your orbit are making life miserable, remember:

It’s not you.

It’s them struggling with themselves.

You don’t owe them your emotional energy.

You owe yourself — and the people who rely on you — a steady voice, a daily practice, and the reminder that you can move forward one small step at a time.

Be gentle with yourself.

My biggest message with the R3ciprocity Project is simple:

Hope matters.

And small steps matter even more.

If you think you’re behind…

If you think you’re not the “right kind of person”…

If you think you don’t have the money, the network, the background — I want you to listen to what I’m saying every day.

If you show up for 15 minutes…

Then tomorrow, 15 minutes again…

And you do that for years…

You will build something spectacular.

You don’t need millions.

You don’t need perfect parents.

You don’t need a fancy path.

You just need to keep going when it feels pointless.

Everything is going to be difficult.

Education is difficult.

Building anything is difficult.

Changing your life is difficult.

But if you keep chipping away, you grow in ways you can’t see yet.

If, 30 years from now, someone listens to these messages and decides to take one scary step — to reach out, to try again, to change their life — then this whole project was worth it.

And if all I do is show you how not to do it — that’s fine too.

If a buffoon like me, from nowhere, can keep going… so can you.

Take care.

One of the best autobiographies I’ve read in modern history is Trevor Noah’s book Born a Crime.

It’s extraordinary.

He grew up in apartheid South Africa with a Swiss father and a South African mother.

Which meant his very existence was illegal under apartheid.

The stories are wild, heartbreaking, and often hilarious.

But what struck me most wasn’t just the adversity.

It was how he learned to navigate it.

He developed humor, awareness, and an ability to see the absurdity of the world around him.

And despite everything he experienced, he still seems like a deeply kind person.

That combination is rare.

Reading it made me think about something.

A lot of the tension we experience in modern life comes from things we simply cannot control.

Political systems.

Leadership we don’t understand.

Movements that sweep through societies.

You don’t always get to choose the world you live in.

And you can’t just move every time you disagree with the direction things are going.

So what do you do?

You can spend your life angry.

Or you can try to hold onto something else.

A light heart.

Humor.

Perspective.

Because the truth is:

Most of us don’t actually understand the world as well as we think we do.

Even in my own field—after studying it for decades—I often feel like I’m still figuring it out.

And then I see people who are incredibly confident about everything.

Which tells me something important.

Confidence is often just how people cope with uncertainty.

For me, the only strategy that seems to work is trying to live with a joyful heart.

Not perfectly.

Not successfully every day.

But consciously.

Choosing not to fall down every rabbit hole of anger.

Choosing to laugh at the absurdity sometimes.

And choosing to move forward anyway.

I wasn’t trained for greatness. Lately I’ve been thinking a lot about how strange it feels to be a professor of innovation when I grew up in a tiny town in northern Ontario where none of this was ever expected of me.

I was the kid least likely to “make it.” I was in special ed for years. I was bullied. I was the one everyone quietly assumed would end up cutting trees in the bush or working at the mill, because that’s what people did in Dryden. No one in my extended family had ever gone away to university. Traveling 24 hours to school felt like moving to another planet.

And still, somehow, here I am.

Every time I go home, the old identity crashes into the new one. People don’t quite know what to make of me, and honestly, I don’t always know either. But I do know this: I wasn’t groomed for greatness, but I learned to keep going anyway. When nobody supports you, your mind can still support you. You can use the spite. You can use the doubt. You can say “stick it” and walk forward.

It might take 20 years. But someday, the same people who doubted you will ask how you did it.

If you’re listening to this, you probably want a career in something that looks impossibly advanced from the outside — biotechnology, genomics, artificial intelligence, machine learning, fintech, pharmaceuticals, maybe even quantum computing or nanotechnology. All of these areas feel like there’s this strong barrier around them.

And it’s true… but the real barrier is psychological.

Most people never learn the language of these fields long before anyone cares about them. Most people never get comfortable being the “nerdy misfit” who studies earthquake science or virology or DNA sequencing when everyone else thinks it’s irrelevant.

That’s the puzzle.

These careers are long-term plays. Decades. And they’re filled with people who were ignored for a very long time. But the trick — the real trick — is learning to go deep when nobody is paying attention, learning the weird lingo, and being okay with not fitting in.

And once you do that, you realize all the fundamentals borrow from the same basic tools… and it stops being scary.

You have probably met a lot of people in your life that will treat you poorly.

This week, or even today, you may experience somebody who is short with you, exasperated when you are around, gives you the eye rolls, gets angry, or suddenly disappears and ghosts you.

If you are like me, you internalize this immediately.

You think: Is it me? Am I at fault?

For a long time, I did this with almost every negative interaction. I still do. I immediately assume there is some flaw in me. I replay what I said. I think I did something wrong.

What I have realized over many years is that, very often, it is not my fault.

It is somebody else struggling with something deep inside that they cannot or will not process. Their mind is already made up. They did not come into the day wanting to respond to you in a positive way.

Psychologists call this kind of inner clash cognitive dissonance. When people feel that ambiguity or tension, they rarely respond with patience and inquiry. Nine times out of ten, they get angry or run away.

Some people fight. Some people flee.

Some people ghost you.

Some people give you that emotional hit that makes you feel inferior.

And because our bodies respond much more to negative interactions than positive ones, that one angry moment can erase an entire day of beautiful moments. You will carry that one interaction around and ask: What did I do wrong?

Most of the time, you did nothing wrong.

You cannot fix them. You cannot be kind enough or generous enough to change a mind that does not want to change.

So here is what I want you to internalize:

• Your daily interactions are often not about you.

• You cannot fix everybody.

• You can walk away knowing you are a good person.

• You can keep being kind without believing you are the problem.

If you are the one who is always angry and aggressive, I hope you stop and reflect and think about how you can change.

But I also know that most people who need that message will say it is everybody else.

For you, the person who internalizes everything and thinks it is always your fault:

It is not you.

Keep going.

Take care and have a wonderful day.