I’ll be the first to say it: academic awards are political.

Best paper, rising scholar, senior scholar… endowments, honors, “recognition.” None of it is as objective as it looks.

It’s not about the best ideas. It’s about pedigree, politics, and inference.

Here’s the hard truth:

• Most of these systems are just people making guesses about your value.

• Those guesses are often wrong.

• And if you don’t have the right background, you’ll likely never be “seen.”

So what do you do?

You stop waiting for recognition. You stop replaying the “what ifs.” You accept that the world is messy and political — and you practice showing up anyway.

This isn’t about cynicism. It’s about stoicism. It’s about refusing to let flawed recognition systems decide your worth.

Because in the end:

Success isn’t the award you didn’t get.

It’s how you choose to keep walking forward when nobody is clapping.

There are two kinds of people in this world:

• the ones who create barriers, say “you can’t do this,” and keep you stuck in the norms…

• and the ones who say, “sure, go for it—let’s see what you can do.”

I want to be the second kind.

Because sometimes all it takes is hearing, “you can do this.” Maybe only one in a million will carry it with them, but for that one person—it changes everything.

I still remember sitting cross-legged in a tiny gym at seven years old when a speaker said, “you can do this.” Almost 40 years later, I still hear it.

Here’s the truth: moving the needle is always hard. It feels ugly. It feels like nothing improves. But if you just keep getting back up—again and again—it compounds. Slowly. Imperceptibly. Until one day it changes your life.

So if you hear this today, remember: you can do this.

One of the hardest lessons I’ve learned is this:

feeling good about yourself and the world has very little to do with “feeling” at all.

Happiness is not something that arrives one day and stays. It’s something you have to manage—every single day.

For me, the hardest trigger is social comparison. I look at others racing ahead with publications or chasing prestige. They look like hummingbirds—always buzzing, always visible, but rarely doing the deep work. Meanwhile, I do the work, I mentor, I care… but that doesn’t get rewarded the same way.

That’s when I have to reframe. I remind myself of the human traits that truly matter:

• Determination (getting back up every single day)

• Caring for others (helping my family, my students, my colleagues)

• Making the world slightly better just because I’m here.

These things don’t show up in metrics. But they matter more than any citation count.

So, I practice mental work:

• Reminding myself that I’m alive, breathing, and still here.

• Looking at what I have—family, health, love—that others may quietly wish for.

• Choosing to measure success not by prestige, but by the lives I help.

Most people don’t think like this. They chase the next shiny thing. And that’s fine. But I’ve realized the real measure of a life well-lived isn’t the résumé line—it’s whether the people who know you best want you around.

That’s what I come back to, every single day.

This is something I’ve wrestled with for years:

How do you tell if someone is actually serious?

I’ve spent decades in research. Every idea takes years—sometimes a decade—of grinding, failure, rejection, and getting back up. And yet most people don’t understand what that commitment really means.

The problem is cheap talk.

Most people say they’re passionate. They say they’ll do the work. But when the reality sets in—the loneliness, the rejection, the endless iterations—they vanish.

And here’s what breaks my heart: the few who stay, the few who actually care, are almost impossible to find. Everyone else is too busy chasing prestige, status, or the next shiny thing.

What I want—what so many of us want—is not cheap talk. Not another person “playing researcher.” But someone who will actually show up, again and again, when it’s brutal and nobody cares.

So here’s my open question to you:

👉 How do you identify those rare people who are truly serious?

My wife and I are both professionals. I am a business professor and she is a veterinarian. We have two teens. The hard part is not planning. It is that life gets interrupted, nonstop, by sick kids, appointments, and surprises. Two career parents means you must learn to roll with it. Modern parenting adds pressure to be “on” all the time, and social judgment makes it worse. We try to share the load, but norms still push more onto moms. The key is to accept mess, break a few rules when needed, and practice self forgiveness.

We’re sold a story every day—by schools, employers, businesses, and even “in-crowds.” They all want us to buy in completely. But here’s the hard truth: if you drink the Kool-Aid and lose yourself in the hype, you risk getting hurt.

Organizations—no matter how noble they look—are just groups of people with motives. Education says it will change your life. Employers say you’re “family.” Businesses say their product will fix everything. None of that is true. They are selling you something.

If you buy in too deeply, you stop questioning. You lose your boundaries. And that’s when harm happens. I’ve learned to trust my skepticism—to listen to those spidey senses when something feels off. Because the real safeguard in life isn’t blind trust. It’s protecting your sense of self.

So whatever you do: don’t drink the Kool-Aid. Stay skeptical. Keep your risk meter alive.

I know how easy it is to get distracted by the newest idea, the latest tip, or what others say you should be doing. I fall into that trap too. But after years of trying different “hacks,” I’ve learned something painfully simple:

The only thing that works is showing up, every single day.

Not in big leaps. Not in flashy breakthroughs. Just one small step—again and again.

It doesn’t matter how tiny the step is. Write one sentence. Read one page. Do one small thing that moves the needle, however slightly. If you do that today, and tomorrow, and the day after that—you’ll create progress that feels impossible in the moment.

I’m not saying it’s easy. Most days, it feels unbearably hard. I get discouraged. I want to quit. But I’ve realized that consistency—this stubbornness to keep getting back up—is the only real “secret.”

One step. One day. Over and over again. That’s it.

Almost every problem in life comes down to ego. People genuinely believe they’re better than you—deep down, to their core. It’s not a guess, not an impression—they actually believe it. And when someone thinks they’re better, they stop listening. They stop learning. They make your life harder.

The only way to cut through the cheap talk? Get them to do something. Action exposes the truth—most people can’t do what they preach. They suck just as much as you do. In fact, we all do.

Psychology has shown for decades: humans are limited. We can’t gather all the information. We can’t see the full picture. We’re not gods—we’re flawed. And the sooner you accept that you suck too, the more you’ll stop worrying about being “better” and start focusing on doing the work.

Life’s too short to sit on the sidelines giving advice. Get in the game. Do the hard thing. And watch the egos go quiet.

I used to wake up excited to do research.

I chased goals. I loved the climb.

I believed in the system.

But years of rejection change you.

You start to see the game for what it is.

If you’re at the right school, with the right team, and the right editor, you can make it work.

If not—you’re on your own.

I’ve been on my own for a long time.

The mentors I had during my PhD—brilliant, supportive, challenging—were a rare gift. I’ve never been able to recreate that environment. And I’ve tried.

Finding competent, motivated people who care more about the work than about status?

Extraordinarily difficult.

So you push on alone. You get rejected again. And again. And again.

Until one day, you stop caring about the game entirely.

That’s where I am now.

I still work. I still produce. But the spark is gone.

And here’s the hard truth—many people in academia feel exactly the same.

The only difference is, we don’t talk about it.

That’s why I’ve been building the R3ciprocity platform.

Not for the few who already “make it” in the system.

But for the rest of us—who want to keep going, but need something better:

More feedback.

More positivity.

Small, steady steps toward papers and grants that can’t be easily rejected.

Because some days, the hardest part isn’t the work—it’s finding a reason to start.

Most people think buying property is automatically a good investment.

As a business professor, I’m going to say something unpopular: most of the time, it probably isn’t.

When I think about investing, I always come back to one basic question:

What is the best return for the risk I’m actually bearing?

We know this pretty well by now. The best long-run returns usually come from owning the best companies in the world. Why? Because those companies combine the best people, the best knowledge, the best assets, and the best opportunities. Labor, capital, and knowledge all bundled together and managed by people who do this for a living.

That’s why broad index investing works. You’re not betting on one idea. You’re spreading your money across thousands of smart decisions you don’t have to personally make.

Property is different.

When you buy a house or rental property as an investment, you’re really only betting on location. You’re concentrating risk into one asset, one city, one market, often one street. You’re also taking on management, maintenance, stress, and a pile of behavioral biases that make you believe you’re smarter than you probably are. I know this because I feel those biases too.

Owning your own home makes sense. It locks in housing costs, gives stability, and has real personal value. We own our home. I’m not against that.

But buying multiple properties as an “investment strategy”? For most people, it’s a lot of hassle for returns that usually lag behind boring, invisible investments like index funds.

We just don’t see those returns, so we don’t talk about them.

Every once in a while, someone gets lucky in real estate. We hear those stories. We don’t hear about the quiet majority where it didn’t pan out.

That’s not failure. That’s statistics.