Podcast
R3ciprocity.com - Prof David Maslach: Innovation; Research Life; Striving Towards Happiness
Hosted by David Maslach · EN
Professor David Maslach talks about graduate school, research, science, Innovation, and entrepreneurship. The R3ciprocity project is my way to give back as much as I possibly can. I seek to provide insights and tools to change how we understand science, and make it more democratic.
12episodes
Episodes
Newest firstAll episodes
Everything That Makes You Human Is Bad for Your Academic Career As A Professor
4d ago00:12:42Tap to summarizeIf you want to succeed in academia, stop doing most of the things you think matter.Let me say the quiet part out loud.There are only two indicators.In the sciences: grants.In most other fields: publications.Maybe citations.That’s it.Teaching? Doesn’t matter.Entrepreneurship? Doesn’t matter.Committee work? Doesn’t matter.Community service? Doesn’t matter.Being athletic? Doesn’t matter.Learning languages? Doesn’t matter.Being a good teammate? Doesn’t matter.Being kind? Doesn’t matter.If it does not translate directly into grants or papers, it does not count.In fact, it may even hurt you. It signals you are not focused.I know this sounds ruthless.But if you are tenured, you know I’m not wrong.If you are a PhD student, this is the game you signed up for.Here’s the problem.Almost everything that makes you a whole human being is bad for your career.Time with family.Going to the gym.Preparing deeply for class.Helping a student.Being part of a real community.All of it slows the machine.So you have a choice.You can optimize for grants and papers.Or you can love yourself enough to live a life.I go swimming.I spend time with my family.I prepare for class even when it “doesn’t matter.”Bad for my career.Good for my life.At some point, you have to decide:Do you want to win the metrics?Or do you want to remain whole?You are already remarkable.Don’t let the scoreboard tell you otherwise.
Transcribe →Why Is It So Hard To Admit Scientific Culture Has Problems?
1w ago00:12:26Tap to summarizeThe most controversial thing I say about scientific culture is often the most obvious:It has warts.Not because science is bad.Not because research is hopeless.But because any human system that pushes success at all costs will eventually hurt people.What still shocks me is not that scientific culture has trade-offs.It is that so many people struggle to even admit there are trade-offs.That, to me, is the real warning sign.When you cannot openly talk about the costs, the tensions, the pain, the weird incentives, or the simple fact that some parts work and some parts do not, you have already gone off the rails.I study this.I think about this all the time.And as I get more senior, the warts are easier to see.The harder part is realizing how many people cannot bear to look at them.Not because they are “stupid.”But because admitting there are problems would shake their whole worldview.And people rarely want their worldview shaken.So they defend the system.They flatten the conversation.They paint a unified picture.They act as if even mentioning the trade-offs is the problem.But the truth is the opposite.If we cannot talk openly about scientific culture, we cannot improve it.If we cannot admit there are challenges, we cannot balance them.If we cannot tolerate different perspectives, we will keep repeating the same damage while pretending everything is fine.That is why I keep talking about this.Not because I hate research.Not because I am negative.But because I care enough to say that something can be beautiful and still need repair.And if you are one of the people who sees the warts too, here is the hard truth:You probably cannot fix the people who refuse to see them.But you can fix yourself.You can become more forgiving of yourself.You can stop expecting the system to validate every hard thing you feel.You can recognize when somebody is not ready to engage honestly.You can get back up.You can keep going.You can protect your heart without giving up your mind.Scientific culture will not change soon.Not until we can admit there are problems.But you can still change how you move through it.And sometimes that is where real change begins.
Transcribe →The Greatest Privilege I Ever Had Was Parents Who Cared.
1w ago00:08:01Tap to summarizeThe Greatest Privilege I Ever Had Wasn’t Money. It Was Parents Who Cared.People often ask me whether I feel fortunate to be a professor.The truth is…The greatest privilege in my life had nothing to do with my career.It wasn’t my education.It wasn’t becoming a professor.It wasn’t publishing papers.It wasn’t even being born during one of the most peaceful and prosperous periods in history.It was something much simpler.I had parents who cared.Were they perfect?Absolutely not.We had struggles.We had disagreements.There were plenty of mistakes.But I never doubted that they were trying.As I’ve gotten older, I’ve realized what an extraordinary privilege that actually was.Not parents who had all the answers.Not parents who never made mistakes.Just parents who showed up.Parents who worried.Parents who sacrificed.Parents who cared.As a professor, I spend a surprising amount of time feeling like I’m never quite enough.Another paper.Another grant.Another rejection.Another revision.Academia has a strange way of convincing you that you’ve almost arrived……but never quite.Then I think about my parents.I don’t remember whether they always had the perfect answer.I don’t remember every mistake they made.I remember something much more important.I remember feeling cared for.That changes a child.If you’re raising children today, here’s something I’ve learned.They don’t need perfect parents.They don’t need parents who never lose their patience.They don’t need parents who have everything figured out.They need parents who keep showing up.Who care.Who love them enough to keep trying.One day, your children won’t remember every decision you made.They’ll remember how safe they felt with you.They’ll remember whether they believed someone was in their corner.Looking back, I realize that may have been the greatest gift my parents ever gave me.Not perfection.Just the certainty that someone cared.And, honestly…That’s more than many people ever receive.
Transcribe →Why Playfulness Might Save Academic Careers
2w ago00:05:36Tap to summarizeI fell in love with researching business strategy and innovation because it felt serious. It felt rational. It felt like it mattered.But when I entered the profession, I realized something uncomfortable. The conversation is almost always about how to get ahead. How to get the next publication. How to rationalize performance. How to land the mythical job.That seriousness becomes problematic. We become fixated. We lose sight of what it means to live a good life.Over the last five years, I have become convinced that we need more play. Less seriousness in a healthy way. Not less rigor, but less fixation.There are two ways to escape the cycle. You can get angry and leave. Or you can make fun of it in a healthy way. Laugh at the farcical nature of the front stage. Recognize the backstage. Add play.When I do that, research becomes sustainable. It becomes joyful. And suddenly, I see the world differently.
Transcribe →Why the People Who Study Entrepreneurship Are Terrified of It
2w ago00:10:44Tap to summarizeWhy do so many academics not do the thing they actually study?One of the most fascinating things I find about being in academia and research life is the number of people that just don’t believe in the thing they study. If you pick a topic and look at the people studying it—and then ask whether they would actually do it themselves—the odds are staggeringly low. In my field, the people most terrified of entrepreneurship are often the ones studying it. They wouldn’t do it themselves. They wouldn’t recommend it to a colleague or a friend. They’ll tell you it’s harmful for your career. I’ve heard that so many times it’s mind blowing. The same thing happens with innovation and strategy. People study it, advise it, but will never go through the process. And if you haven’t gone through it, you have no idea what it actually feels like.It’s not just one field. It’s everywhere. Organizational psychology, personal finance, even basic things like not sending emails after hours or taking breaks—we know these things are poor for your health and erode culture, and yet the number of academics that do the opposite is staggeringly high. I once had someone tell my class to take on student loans and start investing. I almost fell over. They would never do that themselves. It’s fascinating how poorly informed we often are, precisely because we don’t actually do the thing. And in social science, it’s even more baffling, because you can do it. But it’s often the most frowned upon thing—to do something practical in a field that studies practice.So what’s the point of all of this? Things always look easier from the outside in. Unless you experience it, you have a very poor understanding of what it means. And the moment you actually step into it, you realize you are just as screwed up and messed up as the person you were judging. That’s the lesson I keep coming back to. Just have a little bit of understanding. Have a little bit of empathy. It’s harder than it looks, and no one is as good at it as they think they are.
Transcribe →Why Can’t I Let People Dislike Me?
2w ago00:08:03Tap to summarizeJust stop caring.I think one of the biggest lessons I have ever learned, and I continue to learn, is how to become a better teacher and educator so that other people can do amazing things in their lives. I have thought tremendous a lot about this. I care too much. I care what people think of me. I care about their success. I care about whether the material is actually being learned. I care about the world. I care about just a lot of things. But after 20 years of experience, I have learned that the most effective thing, compared to any other thing I have tried, is just not caring. I know that sounds like the worst thing from the outside, but it is not about not caring about people. It is about not caring so deeply that it harms you.You do your thing. Provide what you provide. Try to do your best and provide support. Then it is up to the other person on the other side to do their part. Sometimes people are just not up to it. Sometimes they are not capable. Sometimes there are other things going on in their life. Sometimes this is just a bad time. Sometimes they resonate and capture what you are saying and what you are about. But you cannot predict any of those things. You cannot force people. You cannot candy your way into it. I tried that one semester. Total disaster. It felt transactional and gross. And in any given population, some people are just going to be unkind to you because of the nature of who you actually are. You cannot fix that. You will never be able to fix that.So the only thing I can do, and one of the most important lessons of my life, is to learn how not to care. Not to care so deeply that it is going to harm me. The better I have gotten is because I just do not care in that way anymore. Why? Because then I can be more of my natural self. I can not let other people push me around. I can learn how to display my inner self in a more open and free way. It is still the hardest lesson. It is deeply part of who I am. I will probably never fully escape it. But I can remind myself every day. And maybe that is enough. Maybe that is how we become better educators, better people, and help other people do amazing things in their lives.
Transcribe →Why Academia Talks About Community but Rewards Isolation
2w ago00:07:05Tap to summarizeConversations about family, about community, about looking out for each other. But often that talk is meaningless. It is impression management. It is signaling. And when you look at the rewards, they are for isolation.What I have learned is to stop listening to the cheap talk and pay attention to how I actually feel around people. Go to the moments where you feel whole and complete. Ignore the moments where you feel like a problem, like you are behind, like something is wrong with you.Real community is not something you engineer or talk about. It just happens. Often quietly. Sometimes it is just you. And that is fine.Listen to your intuition. Your Spidey sense. Be genuine. Be warm. Walk your walk and forget the rest.
Transcribe →Why Thinking I Am Exceptional Was Hurting Me
3w ago00:10:18Tap to summarizeOne of the most profound lessons I have learned as a professor after decades of studying human performance is simple: I am no better than average.When I internalize this, everything changes. When I think I am really smart, I recalibrate and remind myself I am no better than average. When I think I have some special skill, I remind myself I am no better than average.This protects me from stupid mistakes. I stop thinking I can beat the market. I stop believing I will be spectacular overnight. I assume I will suck at first. And that assumption is powerful.Most performance follows a trend line. Incremental improvement over time. Not genius. Not hacks.If I follow the average trend line and do the tried and true things consistently, I do spectacularly well.Not because I am exceptional.Because I accepted that I am ordinary.
Transcribe →You Are the Problem. I Finally Accepted That.
3w ago00:05:57Tap to summarizeYou Are the Problem. I Am Too.This took me a long time to accept.I look at the world and I see chaos.Cruelty.People hurting other people.People who don’t care.And I get angry.Frustrated.Discouraged.I want to fix it.I want to change it.I want people to be kinder, more cooperative, more decent.But here’s the hard truth I finally had to internalize:Most of this is outside my control.Some people are selfish.Some people are mean.Some people are calculated.Some people don’t care about anyone but themselves.That reality isn’t the problem.My reaction to it is.I can’t boil the ocean.I can’t fix the world.I can’t force people to be better.What I can do is accept the world as it is, not as I wish it were.There are asymptotes in life.Things you can work toward forever and never fully change.So the work becomes smaller.Harder.More humbling.Control your tiny world.Yourself first.Then one, two, maybe four people around you.Learn to go to bed calmly.Learn to sleep deeply.Even when the world is messy and unfair.If you are tearing yourself apart trying to change what you cannot control, that pain is yours to own.You are the only one who can change.And that is both the burdenand the freedom.
Transcribe →I Saw a Group of Grown Men Racing RC Cars and It Changed How I Think About PhDs
4w ago00:09:13Tap to summarizeI have not talked about PhD motivation much on this channel because I thought it was obvious that this entire channel was about that. Everything about PhD life is motivation. But for a long time, I did not like that term because it did not really capture the phenomenon.That changed when I started talking to regular people.The easiest way to explain the central issue is motivation. There are only so many people. For every ten million people that exist, only one of them is going to be intrinsically motivated to do something like this.This past weekend, we went to a park. There is a radio control club there. These are forty year olds with their families. Kids running around. Wives sitting nearby. They camp out for the entire weekend racing radio controlled cars. These cars are not inexpensive. You can spend five to ten thousand dollars a year fixing them. God awful amounts of time whittling away at them.At first I thought it was a weird world. Then I realized it was the perfect analogy for PhD life.In a city with half a million people, maybe ten love RC cars enough to do this. The rest come from across Florida. From millions of people, only a handful care enough to grind away at something that honestly kind of sucks at first.That is intrinsic motivation.You try it once, you run it around, and you realize it sucks. It is the same with becoming a chef. You play around in your kitchen, take a course, and then realize it is really hard. Most people stop.PhD life is the same. It sucks to do anything on your own. That is why people do not start businesses. That is why people do not read books. That is why we do not lose weight.For a long time, I thought this was obvious. Now I realize most people do not understand that a PhD is just an extension of life. You have to motivate yourself. And that is the part people do not see.My work has been about making what is usually implicit much more explicit. Intrinsic motivation is invisible. That creates weird dynamics. Some people are motivated by the greater good. Many are motivated by less healthy things. When motivation is hidden, bad behavior is hard to call out.When motivation is explicit, you can see it.That is why I have spent ten years building my platform. The goal is to shorten the learning cycle. You perform an action. You wait for an outcome. You get feedback. In PhD life, that cycle can take years. Sometimes decades.I have been focused on shortening that cycle. Making feedback immediate. Making motivation visible. Using bells and whistles. Gamification. Clear signals.The problem is not intelligence. The problem is motivation. If we make motivation explicit and visible, the story changes.My question is simple: how do we fundamentally transform science and research by making motivation come to the front?
Transcribe →