R3ciprocity Podcast

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:

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.

I strongly believe that working harder reduces research quality.And I know that sounds wrong in academia.But 95% of the advice I hear is either: • “You just need to work harder,” or • Some kind of anxious humble-brag about late nights, weekends, and exhaustion.And every time I hear it, it makes people feel terrible.Behind.Like they're not doing enough.Like they're the problem.That advice is filled with anxiety and insecurity. And it's incredibly harmful.I've done the late nights. I've done the weekends. I've done the stretches where I told myself, “Just push harder.”Here's what actually happened: • I got burned out. • I spiraled in the wrong direction. • I wasted time and effort. • And eventually, I hurt myself physically. Every single time.That culture doesn't just hurt individuals.It poisons labs, departments, and entire fields.It creates fear.It creates comparison.It creates silence.And no, this isn't the same as those rare moments where a group is together, energized, and it feels fun. That's not graduate school. That's not real life. Most of the time, you're alone, it's dark outside, and you feel like everyone else is ahead.What actually works is boring and unsexy: • Small amounts of work. • Done consistently. • With feedback. • Over a long period of time.Little bits compound.Every time I've tried to sprint, I lost traction.Every time I slowed down and focused, things moved.So don't listen to the nonsense.It's not making you better.It's not making your work better.One day at a time. One step at a time.That's how real research gets done.Take care.

The longer I've been a parent, scholar, and human being, the less faith I have in the neat, clean economic logic I once believed in. Those tidy models—pick only the “best” people, copy best practices, dial up the traits that matter—work on paper, but they often fall apart when you're dealing with real people.In reality, human progress looks a lot less like optimization and a lot more like kindergarten teaching, therapy, and palliative care. It's not about maximizing widgets or chasing the biggest metrics—it's about building trust, caring without expecting a return, and being there when people need it (and when they think they don't).Mentorship isn't cheerleading or networking; it's showing up when it's messy, frustrating, and unglamorous. It's giving people the room to struggle through the hard parts themselves, knowing they'll come back for help when they're ready. The “magic bullet” everyone's searching for? It's simply this: get back up, do it again, and keep going long after you've lost the applause.You can't control your starting point, your genetics, or the cards you were dealt. But you can control whether you stand back up one more time. That's the only consistent factor I've seen in 20 years of studying why some people and organizations thrive: they just don't stop.So here's my strategy now—ignore the politics, avoid the traps, be a decent human, and quietly keep moving forward. If that costs me career points, so be it. I'd rather have the power to walk away with my integrity intact.

I swim a lot.And almost every week at the pool, I see someone in their 70s—sometimes even in their 80s—learning how to swim for the first time.They're out there, kicking slowly, trying to float, listening to the lifeguard's instructions. And every time, I think:They still believe they're in the game.That belief—staying in the game—is far more important than any technical skill you'll ever learn. Most people check out early. Some in their 20s. Many in their 30s or 40s. They decide the system is rigged, or they've missed their chance, and they quietly stop trying.But here's the truth: almost everything that matters in life comes down to stability.Stable people, stable institutions, stable relationships—they tend to do better over decades. They may not be flashy. They may not grow the fastest. But they last. And lasting is what wins.Stability is saving 10–15% of every paycheck—even when you don't make much—and putting it into index funds for decades.It's showing up to your work and relationships every day with kindness and generosity.It's cutting out people who burn you, but not letting it turn you bitter.This isn't glamorous advice. It's not “hack your way to success” or “find the magic bullet.”It's get up. Do the thing. Do it again tomorrow.And when you're in your 70s—or your 80s—maybe you're learning to swim for the first time.Not because you have to.But because you still believe there's something worth showing up for.That's the real win.

I strongly believe the way we teach fitness and athleticism is completely wrong.We start with competition. We teach that the goal is to win, to maximize, to go as hard as possible. And then we wonder why most adults stop.Once you are past 30, the number of people doing athletic activities is spectacularly low. I do not think this is about sedentary lifestyle. I think it is about how we frame fitness.If I train to win, I burn out. I get injured. I feel behind. My body slows down and I think I am losing.When I flip it, everything changes.I stop maximizing the short run. I focus on longevity. I focus on stretching this out for decades. Some days I go hard. Some days I recuperate. Some days I nurse what hurts.I am not training to beat anyone.I am training to live fully and joyfully for as long as I possibly can.

I'm probably too open about my inner life.What I'm thinking.What I'm struggling with.What I don't understand yet.I don't know many people in academia who are that public. I do it because I hope it helps someone else feel normal. But I also know it comes with a cost.Because I don't like strategic behavior.It leaves a bad taste in my mouth.And here's the thing I've learned with age:When something feels off in an interaction, it usually is.I used to ignore that feeling.I don't anymore.If I get that quiet “Spidey sense” now, I listen. Almost every time, it ends up being about inauthenticity. Filtered information. Positioning. Someone playing a game I didn't agree to play.What surprised me most as I got older is this:There are very few people in your life who are fully open, fully honest, and genuinely want you to do well.Very few.And I think business education taught us the wrong lesson. We train people to be strategic. To optimize. To get ahead.In my experience, that kind of strategy erodes trust, culture, and real relationships. It “works” in narrow ways. And quietly destroys everything else.So yes, I keep my heart open.And yes, that means I get hurt.But I'd rather live that way than turn into someone I don't recognize.If you're open and honest, don't expect short-term career rewards. Maybe long-term. Maybe not. But you will sleep at night knowing you were real.

I've always been a crusty old man. Now I just admit it in public.Here's the thing that drives me a little crazy: almost nobody has a long-term vision anymore. The internet is full of quick wins, instant credit, and absolute nonsense. Even in my own profession. Especially in my own profession.I built an internationally recognized conference from nothing. I was a nobody. A PhD student. No money. I funded it myself for years. It took 15 years. I looked like a loser for a very long time. No credit. No out-of-boy. Just grinding.The R3ciprocity project is the same thing. Ten years in. Still scary. Still embarrassing. Still no guarantees. Still doing it anyway.Most people won't do something that takes decades. They won't build without credit. They won't look foolish for years. They won't carry uncertainty in public.But that's the whole point.If you need quick feedback, don't build big things.If you need applause, don't build real things.If you need safety, don't build anything at all.I grew up in a town of 6,500 people in the middle of nowhere. No network. No money. No path. Just one more day of grinding.If I can be one annoying, crusty voice in your ear saying, “You can do this. One more day. One more step,” then that's a life well lived.

I honestly think that a lot of what we call “financial problems” are not really financial at all. I think money, most of the time, is just an indicator. A symptom. It points to something else that is deeper and far more important going on inside someone's life.And I see two sides to this all the time.On one side, people cannot save anything. No cushion. No margin. Always behind.On the other side, people save too much. They accumulate but never trust the world enough to take a risk. They choose assets that feel safe, but they stall. They freeze.Both groups look very different on the surface. But underneath, it's often the same thing.They've lost hope.What breaks my heart is that most people stop believing in the connection between tiny, painful, boring steps and what those steps become after decades. The beginning is grueling. The payoff is invisible. So people quit early. Or they numb themselves. Or they panic. Or they cling to whatever feels safe in the moment.And then they think the problem is money.It usually isn't.Here's the part that nobody likes to talk about. Most people who do “spectacularly well” financially are completely ordinary. Not lottery winners. Not celebrities. Not genetic freaks of talent. Just average people who stayed with the process longer than everyone else.Education.Reinvesting in yourself.Being frugal but generous.Treating people well.Staying when it would be easier to quit.This works. It has worked for hundreds of years. We know it works. We just hate how slow it is.Most people don't fail because they are stupid.They fail because they get tired of believing.They stop trusting the long run.When people can't save, it is often because they've already decided—quietly, inside—that the future doesn't really belong to them. So why sacrifice today?When people hoard, it is often because the world feels unsafe. So they cling to control instead of growth.Both are fear responses.What I keep learning, over and over, is that this is not really about money. It is about courage. About patience. About fighting the daily message that says, “Short term is all that matters.”The world trains you to panic.The world trains you to compare.The world trains you to chase fast wins.And the quiet work of building anything meaningful—wealth, health, love, knowledge—moves at the opposite speed.If you feel panicky about money, I don't think the right question is, “How do I optimize faster?”The better question might be, “Where did I lose hope?”Because once you lose hope, everything feels urgent. Everything feels scarce. Everything feels behind.The real work is not some fancy strategy.It is calming down.Taking one tiny step.Then taking another one tomorrow.

When you follow something like the R3ciprocity Project—or any long, hard project—you need to understand something: recognition might never come. And if it does, it won't feel the way you imagined. By the time it arrives, you'll be too tired, too changed, or too bored to care.In year one, people cheer you on. “Great idea!” they say. You're excited, they're excited. But by year five or six, the mood shifts. Friends, family, even strangers start asking, “Why are you still doing this? Isn't it time to quit?”Here's the truth: that's exactly when most people give up. Not because it's impossible—but because it's boring, embarrassing, and lonely. You're grinding away, and nobody is paying attention. You're building something, but it feels like nothing's moving.Every big thing works like this. There's no shortcut. No secret system. Just one small, awkward, often painful step every single day. And yes, some days will make you want to vomit from frustration. That's normal.If you can learn to live in that space—to keep going when nobody is watching, to stop expecting applause—you win. Not because it's glamorous, but because almost everyone else quits.One more step. Every day.

century ago, most of us wouldn't have lived past 30—especially young men, lost to war and hardship. Today, we face a new challenge: living long enough to feel the grind. That means normalizing the slow, often frustrating reality of progress. In business, even the best companies—growing at 10% a year—take seven years to double your money. The same is true for life's big goals: every day requires showing up, enduring setbacks, feeling foolish, and sometimes pushing through short bursts of intense work. The rest of the time, it's steady effort, small steps, and ignoring the people who have never been in the game. It's not glamorous, but it's the reality of building something that lasts.

I study as a business professor is how badly we infer causes from surfaces.We walk into a classroom, a gym, Walmart, a town meeting, and we instantly start telling ourselves stories.Who looks successful.Who looks competent.Who looks like they have it together.We infer all of this from watches, cars, clothes, houses, how someone talks, how confident they sound, how firm their handshake is.And those inferences are almost always wrong.What's worse is that we rarely self-correct. It actually takes real mental work to stop believing the story your brain invents in five seconds.I see this constantly with ideas about success and failure. People assume there's something magical going on. Some rare talent. Some hidden trait. Some genius level ability.But when you actually look at the evidence—decades of it—the drivers of long-run success are boring and deeply unsexy.Get a solid education in something the environment values.Accumulate experience over time.Engage in deliberate learning, not frantic overwork.Get feedback from people who are honest, not impressed by you.Repeat this for a very long time.That's it.Not 14-hour days. Not heroic suffering. Not looking the part. And definitely not signaling success before it exists.We also confuse correlation with causation constantly. People don't succeed because they wear expensive watches. Often they wear expensive watches because other people already believe they're successful—and then opportunities follow. That's reverse causation, and it fools almost everyone.The hardest part is unlearning the reflex to compare yourself to a random slice of people you see in public. Your brain will always default to the wrong story unless you actively correct it.I have to coach myself through this all the time.When I slow down and return to what is tried, boring, and proven—education, patience, repetition, feedback—I do better. Every time.

When I started this project, I had about 80 followers.On YouTube, my first follower for six months was the developer.That's the truth.At any moment, I could have said, this is impossible, I should give up. Nobody is following me. The platform doesn't have users. Everything about this feels like failure. It feels like guilt. Like I'm screwing something up.And until you actually do something like this, you don't get it.People try three times and quit. Then they give advice. But they don't have the lived experience. They don't know what it feels like to grind every day with no signal back.Most advice is biased. We only study people who made it. We ignore the enormous number who tried and disappeared. Building a platform. Raising money. Growing an audience. None of it works the way people tell you it does. There are no easy answers. Not a single one.If you need to will something into existence, be prepared:It is going to be grinding.It is going to be embarrassing.People won't believe in you.They will laugh at you.Your inferences will be wrong. Your comparisons will be wrong.The only real signal is this:You get back up.You grind again.One more day.One more try.Repeat that long enough, and something moves.

One of the most interesting things I've learned in science is this:No amount of convincing will ever change people's minds.No amount of work.No amount of data.No perfectly designed study.Strongly held beliefs don't move because you argue better.In my field, it's almost understood that ideas don't win by persuasion.They win when people move on.You can complement existing ideas.You can challenge them carefully.But if you think evidence alone will do the work, you're going to be frustrated for a long time.I've learned this the hard way.When people are skeptical, no amount of data will ever be enough.That's not a failure of science.That's a feature of being human.So you stop trying to convince.Instead, you take a step back and ask a harder question:How do I communicate this without triggering resistance?The problem is not them.The problem is you.Figure out how to change your approach, not their mind.

I don't believe in the success games of research.

The hardest part of building something meaningful isn't the outside criticism. It's the silence—or worse, the doubt—from the people closest to you.Family. Friends. Colleagues. They love you, but they didn't sign up for the risk. They're not in it. They're watching from the sidelines, eating popcorn, while you're out there doing the work.They can't see what you see. And that hurts. But it doesn't mean you're wrong. If anything, it means you're early.This message is for every academic entrepreneur, every misfit innovator, every quiet builder who's doubting themselves because someone they love questioned their vision. You don't owe them understanding. You owe yourself persistence.Keep going. You saw something they didn't. That's how all breakthroughs begin

I feel that I am the most successful person alive, and I know that sounds really presumptuous of me.But I want to explain.If I was to look at the norms or the way that we're supposed to treat my career and classify my career, I would inevitably come to the conclusion that I am a failure. By very definitive measures. I'm considered very much behind. I've heard that I was supposed to have X number of publications. I didn't get any of those.The reciprocity project doesn't make me any money. Very few people are using it. I've been working at it for ten years and I've spent so much money that I'm too embarrassed to talk about it. By that dependent measure, I would be the laughing stock.And yet, I feel wildly successful.I get to spend time with my kids and my family. My wife is pretty awesome. And one of the coolest things is that my mom listens to this. She gets to hear how I think. I could never say this to her face. I get weird and uncomfortable. But she listens.Maybe someday my great grandkids will listen and say, this is how he thought. This is how it felt.I'm never going to be the way the market wants me to be.That's the gift.I get back up and do it again every day.And I'm happy to be a big screw up.

What drives me bonkers about our culture is that we do not encourage people to struggle in a healthy way.We don't encourage people to sit with failure.We don't encourage people to dwell in negative outcomes and actually learn from them.Instead, the only message that seems to exist everywhere is that success is the only thing that matters. And not just being okay. Not just doing reasonably well. The bar has shifted so far that unless you're in the top tiny fraction of humanity, you feel like a screw-up.When I was younger, the goal felt different. It was simple.“I just want to do as well as my parents did. Maybe a little better.”Now the unspoken message is:“If you're not extraordinary, you've failed.”What does that do to people?It trains them to believe they are permanently behind.It creates a gap so large between expectation and reality that people stop believing they can move forward at all.And when that gap gets too big, people detach.I do it too.We all find ways to fill that void. Games. Screens. Work. Busyness. Distraction. Anything that lets us avoid the feeling that we're not measuring up to some impossible standard.What I want to do, very deliberately, is push back on that.I want to normalize playing in failure.I want to normalize saying, “I'm not a screw-up just because things aren't going as planned.”Instead of latching onto celebrities or billionaires or people whose success came from luck, timing, or things you can't replicate, I think we should do something much simpler and much healthier.Look around you.Find one real person in your actual life.Someone doing moderately well. Or someone struggling in a way you don't want to repeat.Match that.Not perfection.Not dominance.Not fantasy.Just one tiny step forward, every day.You are supposed to feel behind.You are supposed to feel slow.You are supposed to feel like you don't know what you're doing.That feeling isn't failure.That feeling is what growth actually feels like.If you take one small, imperfect step each day, you will outgrow your reference points. I've lived this. I've watched it happen. It takes years. Decades, even.And yes, people will think you're weird.They will laugh.They will move faster than you, loudly.Let them.If you're doing the right thing, you will feel like a loser most days.Wallow in it. Learn from it. Then take one more tiny step.That's how anything meaningful is built.Take care.

Why Doing Research in 2026 Is Objectively Better Than in 2005(Even if it still sucks) 1. Access is radically betterIn 2005, most people outside a few Western countries never had a real shot. Today, someone in rural Italy, India, Brazil, or Indonesia can actually imagine becoming a researcher. 2. The world is materially better offDespite what social media feeds you, most long-run indicators show fewer people in extreme poverty, more education, and more stable cities than when I started. 3. Research tools are unrecognizableNo artificial intelligence in 2005.No cheap transcription.No instant equations.No thinking in blocks of ideas.Everything was slow, manual, and fragile. 4. Writing no longer requires linear thinkingIf you have ADHD or dyslexia, research is no longer gated by sentence-by-sentence recall. You can think, speak, iterate, and refine. 5. Literature access is instantI had to go to libraries and hunt paper journals. Now the problem is too much access, not too little. 6. Methods are cheaper and fasterWhat once cost thousands of dollars and weeks now costs pennies and minutes. 7. Global research markets existIn 2005, “making it” meant the US, Canada, or the UK. Today, serious opportunities are emerging elsewhere—even if slowly. 8. Politics were always thereVisas, violence, instability, and fear existed then too. The difference is now you see it constantly. 9. The noise is worse, not the realitySocial media is optimized for anxiety and outrage. That does not mean the underlying world is worse. 10. You can build under uncertaintyThere are now tools, platforms, and communities that let you learn in public, iterate, and survive ambiguity.⸻The uncomfortable truthResearch still isn't safe.It still isn't stable.It still isn't financially rational for most people.But compared to 2005?There has never been a better time to learn how to think, build, and adapt under uncertainty.This is not encouragement.It's a facts.

The best feeling in the world isn't the workout.It's what happens after.You finish.You're warm, flushed, a little euphoric.Your eyes feel strange. Your body feels loud.Then you step outside on the coldest night of the year.The air hits your skin and it stings.For a second, your nervous system panics.Then everything wakes up.I swim outdoors. Even in winter. The pool is heated, but barely.If you stop moving, you start shivering. So you don't stop.And when you're done, that contrast—hot body, cold air—does something strange.It's uncomfortable and incredible at the same time.A kind of clean pain. A kind of joy.You can't fake it.You can't buy it.You can't replicate it in summer.It's the same feeling you get stepping out of a sauna into snow.Or plunging into cold water after you're already warm.Your body doesn't know what to feel—so it feels everything.I don't do it for discipline.Or optimization.Or cold-plunge bragging rights.I do it because it makes me feel alive in a way almost nothing else does.Pain and pleasure at once.Shock and calm together.Exhausted and clear.It doesn't happen often—and maybe that's why it's special.I'm not sure I could handle feeling that awake all the time.But when it happens?Yeah.That's it.Here's to hot and cold.

I just came back from one of the biggest international conferences I attend. Over 14,000 people—researchers, professors, thinkers—all incredibly talented. It's humbling. And a bit overwhelming.There's so much brilliance in one place that you can start to feel small. Everyone is trying to carve out a niche, to be known for something unique. But instead of feeling proud, many of us feel more insecure. We start to measure ourselves by the people around us. Their awards, their institutions, their citations.It makes you ask: why do we do this?Why do we turn a room full of talent into a contest?Over time, I've realized something that younger-me wouldn't have understood: you don't have to see everyone as competition.This mindset—that life is a race, that everyone is a rival—doesn't come from nowhere. It comes from how we've learned to view the world. Often through the lens of economics, or strategy, or “getting ahead.” But applying those frameworks to people can distort how we treat each other—and ourselves.Most of these frameworks weren't meant for human relationships. They were designed to explain firms, markets, countries. But when you bring them down to the level of individuals, they feel cold. Transactional. And a little bit yucky.The truth is: the things that make life rich aren't competitive. They're cooperative. A smile. A hug. A conversation that makes someone feel seen.Even in the business world—where we're told competition is everything—it's trust that keeps things moving. And trust doesn't come from outmaneuvering someone. It comes from small, simple human things: showing up. Being kind. Being reliable.So here's a question I ask myself: how do we start training for that kind of life?I don't think it's complicated. But it is hard. Because it means undoing a lot of what we've been taught. It means choosing not to play games that everyone else seems to be playing.You start by reminding yourself: your differences are your strengths. The things you feel ashamed of? The stuff you try to hide? That's the gold. That's the stuff that makes you unique. That's the stuff that other people will love about you—if you're brave enough to share it.When I think about my life in terms of competition, I never feel good. I feel drained. Burnt out. Disappointed.But when I think about it as a life—just a life—I feel different. When I think about the joy I get from encouraging someone else, or forgiving myself when I don't meet a deadline, or laughing at a dumb joke, I remember what actually matters.I try to take one small step each day. Encourage myself first. Then encourage someone else. Find a reason to smile. Or to make someone else smile. That's enough.And when I can't do everything? When I fall short? I remind myself: that's okay too. We're not here to win. We're here to live.So if you're standing at one of these big conferences, and you feel small, or scared, or not good enough—just remember: you are enough.You're pretty darn wonderful. And so is the person next to you. You're both just curious minds, wandering through the world. You're both doing your best with what you have. That's all anyone is doing.You don't have to scheme. You don't have to impress. You don't have to be the smartest. You just have to be you.And if today you're not your best you? That's okay. You can try again tomorrow. And if not tomorrow, then the day after that.Life will unfold, whether you like it or not. You can fight the current. Or you can float along and enjoy the ride.Because when we stop trying to control everything—and start participating in the flow of life—we start to see the beauty in each other. Not just in the famous names at conferences, but in your sister, your neighbor, your friend.They're smart too. Just in a different way.You're doing just fine.Take care—and have a wonderful day.

Here's the truth I've learned as both a business professor and a software builder:software development isn't elegant. It's a series of embarrassing bugs.You fix one thing, and something else breaks.Then you fix that, and another part stops working.It feels endless—because it is.People imagine progress as a straight line.But real progress looks like this:bug → fix → new bug → fix → embarrassment → repeat.Even the best systems fail (remember the Bill Gates Windows demo crash?).Even the most robust organizations—yes, including nuclear power plants—plan for things to go wrong.So why do we still expect perfection when we build?The reality is, building anything—software, research, or a career—means accepting limited information and constant iteration.The challenge isn't the bug.It's learning how to manage the emotional crash that comes after it.Embarrassment. Self-doubt. Fatigue.The key is simple:Fix it. Apologize. Learn. Move on.Then keep building anyway.Because progress isn't about being flawless.It's about surviving the next bug.

The easiest way to understand PhD life is to imagine a world built on shame.It's full of thou shalt nots.It's full of don't do this.It's full of quiet messages that say:You're kind of a mistake. You're kind of a screw-up. Here's how you should behave if you want to fit in.And for years, I listened.I tried to be good.I tried to follow the rules.I tried to help people, be kind, be generous, do the tasks nobody else wanted to do.My logic was simple:If I do right by others, something good will come back.But here is the painful truth I learned over decades:It didn't work.I complied.I did the “right” things.And the reward for doing the “right” things was… nothing.Worse — it made me more scared.More anxious.More confused about who I actually was.One day, I just stopped caring about all the thou shalts.I checked out of the game.Instead of trying to impress people, I asked myself one question:Am I building a community that feels warm, kind, generous, and real?Not perfect.Not strategic.Not status-driven.Just real.Now I look for people with warmth.People who grow with me.People who are kind in the small moments.People who don't make my Spidey sense tingle.And when something feels off?I walk away.I don't negotiate with it anymore.

After years studying business and building something real, I've learned this: there's no hack, no shortcut, no one-time breakthrough. Everything that matters—staying married, building wealth, launching a meaningful startup—requires the same thing:Repetition.Uncomfortable effort.And doing what others think is “pointless.”Every real gain in my life has come from repeating hard things when it felt like I was going nowhere. Not from “winning” but from quietly working through rejection, invisibility, and pain.If you're doing anything that matters—like building a business, doing research, or pursuing a weird dream no one gets—remember these three truths: 1. The pain isn't the problem. It's the signal you're doing something real. 2. Quiet, repeated work will always beat flashy shortcuts. 3. If it looks boring to others, you're probably on the right track.You won't get applause. But one day, you'll look around and realize you built something no one else had the guts to stick with.

My research sounds narrow: how do you learn from failure, and how does that turn into innovation.But “failure” is a misleading word. Once you look closely, it is not one event. It is a messy story. It is nuance. It is trial and error inside real life.I started in medical technology, staring at adverse event reports. On the surface, it looks simple: one report, one problem. Then you open the text and it is hospital speak, doctor speak, long narratives, and contradictions. Even one “report” can hide thousands of uses, under reporting, or over reporting. The whole thing is hard to read, hard to code, hard to trust.That mess is what pushed me toward building a way to process narrative data, before machine learning was even common. I had tens of gigabytes of raw text. I needed a way to make sense of it.The medical context mattered to me. My dad was dying. I had worked in health care. But most people did not care about health care back then. So I had to learn to zoom out, and explain it as something everyone faces: messy moments, setbacks, and how you move forward anyway.It took me 20 years to communicate that clearly. If you stay with one narrow question long enough, you realize it connects to everything.

I found old newspapers in a recycling bin while moving offices. They were from the 1940s.One article was about Bethlehem Steel. At that moment, it was the future. It made a huge share of the steel that built North America and it helped power the war effort. The plant was massive. The company was “doing everything right.” Efficient. Disciplined. Serious. Business pages love that story.And yet it died.That is the part that still messes with my head.Because it means “doing things right” is not the same as staying alive. It means the world can change under your feet while you are busy polishing the thing you already know how to do.So here is my uncomfortable takeaway.Sometimes the smartest move is to do something that looks wrong at the time. Something weird. Something playful. Something that has no clean logic yet.Not because it will all work. Most of it will not.But because we are terrible at knowing what will matter later. Even the best people, with the best data, get the future wrong.Bethlehem Steel is a graveyard reminder of that.So if you feel stuck chasing “correct,” try one small “incorrect” thing this week. Just one. Not for status. Not for praise. Just because you have a tiny love for it.You might be building your next decade by accident.

If I'm honest, most of my daily interactions are dismissive. Not because people are bad, but because they don't want to spend the effort to understand what I'm actually doing. The easiest response is always, “I'm too busy.” Polite. Distant. Uninterested. I've learned that if you're trying to move the needle in your life and do something even a little strange, this is just part of the deal.I think about Wikipedia a lot. Tens of thousands of people consume for every one person who contributes. That ratio shows up everywhere in life. Almost everyone takes. Almost no one builds. And once you see that, you stop being surprised when people don't care.I'm passionate. I get excited about ideas most people don't want to touch. And for a long time, that hurt. Now I see it as freedom. My life is a long wandering through the dark where almost nobody notices. And then, once in a rare while, I meet one person who truly sees me. They get me. I get them.And that one moment makes all the lonely miles worth it.This loneliness isn't failure.It's the cost of doing something real.

If you're in school and it feels like everything is falling apart—you're not alone. Whether you're in undergrad, doing a PhD, going back as a mature student, or taking just one course that's pushing you, the hard truth is: real learning hurts. It's supposed to. That doesn't mean there's something wrong with you.People outside the game won't get it. Some will call you dramatic. Others will treat you like you're unstable. But the truth is: you're just doing something difficult that most people never choose to do.Learning is uncomfortable. It's slow. It feels strange. It makes you look weird. And it forces you to walk a lonely path. But that doesn't mean you're on the wrong path.Here's what you'll need if you're doing anything that changes your life—or the world: 1. Quiet Confidence – You keep walking, even when nobody understands why. 2. Radical Honesty – You say the truth out loud: This is hard. And that's okay. 3. One More Step – You keep going, day by day. That's how you win.

There's something I find deeply fascinating—and honestly, troubling—about how many people are willing to cut corners when they think no one will notice. It happens in all parts of life. High school. College. Work. Startups. Even in world-class labs or engineering teams.And yet, we rarely talk about it.We praise outcomes. We reward success. But the process? The part where character gets built? That part gets ignored—until it breaks.Let me give you a small example. It's kind of funny, but it's revealing.When you come over to our house, it looks clean. Tidy. Calm. You'd probably think, “Wow, what a well-kept home!” But what you don't see is what happens about thirty minutes before guests arrive—my wife panic-cleans like a maniac. Clutter shoved in closets. Dishes stacked in the oven. Stuff under the bed. The appearance is polished, but the reality? It's barely held together.That's not a critique of her. We all do it. It's a microcosm of something much bigger.We perform for the visible. We hide the rest.And the more I've thought about this—from studying learning and failure for the past twenty years—the more I see how dangerous this habit is. Because once you start focusing only on the outcome, and not how you got there, shortcuts become acceptable. And eventually, they become expected.I remember being in engineering school, looking at massive technical projects and thinking, “How did these things actually get built?” Then I remembered how many people I saw copying homework or sneaking past accountability. Smart, kind people—still cutting corners if it meant less work.That moment sticks with me: sitting down in an exam, watching as people quietly passed around old test answers. No one said anything. But everyone knew. And I remember the tension in my chest—like, am I the only one seeing this?And let's be honest: given the same circumstances, I might've done the same. It's not just about others. I've taken shortcuts too. I've done things I'm not proud of. And I still wrestle with those moments, the decisions I wish I'd made differently.That's the hard part.It's not just the failure. It's the after—the voice that whispers, “Why did I do that?” The guilt that doesn't go away. The self-respect that erodes quietly.And that's why I think character—real, internal character—is still one of the most important things we can teach and practice. Especially now.Because the truth is, most of life is invisible to others.The real stuff happens in the spaces no one sees. The code you don't copy. The email you choose not to send. The feedback you give even when it's uncomfortable. The extra 10% you put in—not because someone will reward you, but because you'll know if you didn't.And yes, it's hard. Especially when you don't get credit. When someone who cuts corners gets ahead. When the outcome looks the same on the outside, but you know the effort wasn't equal.But over time? That's where trust is built. That's where excellence is forged.My parents—especially my dad—instilled that in me. Do a good job, even when no one's watching. It sounds simple, but it's a hard thing to live by. Especially in a world that values speed, shortcuts, and “good enough.”I know some people might roll their eyes at this. It sounds like old-school advice. But when I think about the future—about artificial intelligence, innovation, engineering, startups—what worries me most isn't just the tech. It's the human part.It's what happens when we stop practicing integrity. When we stop building the habits that hold things together when no one's looking.Because eventually, someone's life depends on that bridge. That code. That system.Eventually, you have to live with what you did when no one was watching.And maybe even harder: you have to forgive yourself for the times you didn't live up to it.

Most people believe a PhD advisor is supposed to “add value.” Or that a student is supposed to “add value.”Like there's this clean exchange.Like everybody knows what they're doing.But if you've spent even five minutes in this world, you know that's not true.What actually happens is two people trying to survive the same weird, messy system where nobody has a clue what the right answer is. Everyone is guessing. Everyone is under pressure. Everyone is trying not to look like a screw-up. And that's when all the strange behavior shows up.People defect.People ghost.People walk away just when things get uncertain.People disappear because they don't want to deal with ambiguity.And you start internalizing it—every single time—as if it must be your fault.I've done this my whole life.I assume I said something wrong.I assume I wrote something wrong.I assume I am the problem.But most of the time, you're not the problem at all.What I've learned is that value in research is not extracted. It's not sitting there waiting to be taken. It gets molded. It gets created. And that only happens when people actually stay in the room together long enough to admit, “Yeah… I don't really know what I'm doing either.”That moment—right there—is where the magic happens.But it's rare.Really rare.So if someone ghosts you, or treats you poorly, or makes you feel inferior—don't immediately jump to, “I messed up.” Often they're just running from the ambiguity. Or fighting it. Or stuck in their own head.Just remember: most of us are trying to navigate this confusing world with no answers, no map, and no guarantees. You're doing better than you think.Take care.

I'm just so glad that there are wonderful people in this world.People who are genuine. Sincere.People who care about the person—about the soul inside—rather than accomplishments.That's the thing that matters most in my life. And it's so atypical in the world I live in, where everything is about productivity, outcomes, and “what did you get done today?”When I think about the people who changed humanity—Jane Goodall, Nelson Mandela, Martin Luther King, Joan of Arc, St. Francis of Assisi—I keep coming back to one truth:Every single one of them looked like a screw-up in their own time.A person “wasting resources.”A failure.Someone ruining the world.Someone doing the wrong thing.We only admire them now because somebody wrote their stories down. Because we had the written word. Because their humanity was captured long enough for others to see it.Today, almost all of us have that same ability to store what we believe. To write. To care. To do something that looks pointless or foolish in the moment, but is actually for the betterment of humanity.If there's anything I want to be known for, it's not my accomplishments.It's that I cared about the actual human being in front of me.And I want you to think about this too:What “screw-up” would you do—what wasteful, time-consuming, energy-draining thing—if it meant being known for your humanity?Because almost every truly human act will look like failure to someone.

I hear this every single year: “This is a particularly bad year for the PhD job market.”And yes, this year is brutal if you want a tenure track job.But here is my hot take.We need to get off our high horse.Academia trains smart people to believe there is one “real” path. Get the PhD. Get the tenure track job. Anything else is a failure.That story is not just harsh. It is also out of date.Even by the numbers, most teaching jobs are now not on the tenure track. The American Association of University Professors reported that about 73 percent of instructional staff were off the tenure track (in 2016). So when you feel like you “suck” because the market is tight, I want to be blunt.You do not suck.The market is tight.I also want to say this clearly: you should still try. Apply. Swing. Do the best work you can.But do not bet your whole life on one outcome.Here is what I tell my own students and what I try to live myself: 1. Treat tenure track as one option, not your identity. 2. Build a second path on purpose. Industry research. Government. Labs. Startups. Teaching focused roles. 3. Build proof you can show. I have put out about 6,200 YouTube videos over 10 years. I still get nervous every time. But the only way I can build anything real is to show up in public. 4. Find your people. The best PhD students respond in kind. And they make ideas simpler, not more complex.If you are on the market right now and you feel behind, I get it.If this helped you breathe for 10 seconds, share it with one person who needs that.

There are two paths in research.One where you sit in a room, alone, writing ten pages a day for twenty years—no recognition, no guarantees. You don't talk to anyone. You just keep going, because that's what “success” is supposed to look like. And the guilt if you're not doing it? It's crushing.And then there's the other path.The one where you still write, but you define impact your own way. Maybe that means building something new. Maybe it means helping others. Maybe it means working a job while trying to stay in the game. Everyone tells you that's the wrong way. That you're distracted. That you'll never make it.But I'm choosing that second path anyway.Not because it's easier. It's not. It's messier, lonelier, and it doesn't come with applause. But it's mine. And honestly, I'm not trying to be a star. I'm trying to survive. I'm trying to build something that matters to me, even if no one ever calls it “success.”Because I know I'm not built for that first path. I've tried. I've failed. And I've realized—my only shot is to keep doing my thing. To build R3ciprocity. To show up with care. To be a dad. To create something weird and kind and different.So if you're out there, trying to make sense of your own strange, meandering path—maybe this is your reminder: you don't have to do it their way.

People keep telling me building my own platform is a mistake.That I look foolish.That I'm stigmatizing myself.That this is “not what serious people do.”And I hear it. It rings in my ears because it usually comes from the same people.Here's the thing though.If there were a better way to build something like R3ciprocity, I would do it.If there were a shortcut, a cleaner path, a way to pay my way around this, I would have taken it.I've been in school longer than many people have been alive.I study organizations, learning, innovation, and failure for a living.You don't need to be brilliant to see this. You just need to be honest.The only way this gets built is by showing up.Out loud.In public.One day at a time.I hear people say, “I don't care about that kind of thing.”But you do.I know you do because you never take the opportunity when it's right in front of you.We are the first humans in the history of our species with this level of digital infrastructure.Anyone. Anywhere. Zero gatekeepers.And most people freeze.Why?Because they're terrified of looking foolish.Terrified of being judged.Terrified someone will say, “Why are you doing this?”I see it every day in my classes.I ask someone to stand up and try something small.Low risk. Low stakes.And the moment arrives, it shuts down.“I can't.”“That's uncomfortable.”“That's not what I'm supposed to do.”That's the point.I've posted 6,200+ videos on YouTube over roughly 10 years.Every single time, I get nervous.Every single time, I wonder how I'll be perceived.And I still press publish.Not because I want to be famous.Not because I think this is easy.But because no one before us has ever had this opportunity to build, learn, connect, and grow like this.Why wouldn't I take it?Why wouldn't you?

I struggle with charitable giving. I always have. And I think it's because of ambiguity.When you buy a carton of eggs, you get instant feedback. You know what you paid. You know what you got. You crack the eggs the next morning and you know if it was good or bad.Charity doesn't work like that.You give money and it disappears into a system you can't see. You don't really know what it bought. Was it food? Was it training? Was it staplers? Was it overhead? And overhead matters. Every real organization is mostly overhead. Even Apple and Google are mostly overhead.But with charity, we want instant, visible good. And we almost never get it.Then there's the deeper problem. Even if the intention is good, we don't always know if the outcome helps or harms. Does giving cash help? Does it make things worse? We don't really know. Economists argue about it. Philosophers argue about it. And regular people just feel stuck.I don't have a clean answer.What I do believe is this: charitable giving is less about certainty and more about practicing a bigger heart. Doing something you don't fully understand. Acting without clear reinforcement.And that might be the whole point.

One of the strangest things about being public is the split reaction I get.Half the people say, “Are you okay being this open?”The other half say, “Oh… I thought it was just me.”And that second reaction is the whole point.I'm trying to meet people where they actually are. Not where LinkedIn tells them they should be. Not where podcasts or YouTube thumbnails pretend life exists. But where people really are at 2 a.m., Googling, “Why does this feel so hard?” and wondering if something is wrong with them.Here's the truth. Most of life is not a highlight reel. It's not constant growth or constant joy. Most days are what I call B-land. You wake up a little tired. You do your work. Some things go wrong. Some things go fine. You eat dinner. You decompress. You do it again tomorrow.That's not failure. That's life.The problem is almost nobody talks you through those middle moments. Everything online is filtered, edited, and framed as if real life is either collapsing or glorious. It's neither. It's mostly ordinary, slightly messy, and quietly meaningful.What actually moves the needle isn't intensity. It's tiny adjustments, made repeatedly. Dialing things up a little. Dialing things down a little. Not panicking. Not spiraling. Not letting one bad day define you.If you can learn to live well in the middle—while still taking one small step forward—you're doing far better than you think.That's what I'm trying to show, out loud, in real time.

There's one thing I've learned that no one really prepares you for in academia:You can do all the right things. You can follow every step perfectly. And you'll still be told you're not good enough.It doesn't matter if you publish, get your PhD, get the job. You'll hit these thresholds—tenure, full professor, whatever—and you'll realize: none of it actually guarantees you belong. It's not you. The system just doesn't know how to make sense of people like you. People like me.That's the part that messes with your head.You keep asking: “Did I earn this?”You wonder: “Do I actually deserve it?”And the truth? There's no rhyme or reason. No strategy. It just feels arbitrary.The real academic game?It's crazy-making.You walk forward. You get no clear feedback. You wonder if you're even on the path.That's why I started building R3ciprocity—to strip out some of that ambiguity. To make the progress visible. Tangible.But honestly? I still struggle.I still ask, “Should I even be doing this?”I still don't know the answer.All I know is this:I've been doing this long enough to realize it never feels right.And that's okay.Because the only thing that works is this: • Keep walking forward. Even when nothing makes sense. • Stop waiting for the system to tell you you're good enough. It won't. • Make meaning from your steps, not their signals.This is the lesson. It's brutal. But it's the only one I know that holds.

I don't talk about this much, but my grandpa was a severe alcoholic. And I mean severe. He would disappear for days on benders. As a kid, I never saw it directly, but I lived with the fallout. It shaped my family in ways that are still raw decades later.He was also a World War II veteran. He saw heavy fighting. He came home injured. And he came home to a world that told him to man up and never talk about it. Drinking became his way of surviving what he couldn't process.Here's the thing I've learned with time. I would not be who I am without that experience. Not because it was good, but because I was lucky enough to have parents who were steady, square, and deeply values-driven. They didn't hide what was happening. They talked about it. They taught me that someone else's failure is not your fault.That's why I study learning from failure. That's why I believe people can change. And that's why I believe small steps matter. If you're struggling, one less drink. One honest conversation. One boundary. One tiny step sustained over time.You are not broken. You are not evil. You are responding to pain the best way you know how. And you can choose a different path, one small step at a time.

Here's something I've learned the hard way: this is how nice people get taken advantage of.I'm a management professor. I study innovation and failure. But this pattern shows up everywhere. Academia. Hospitals. Small businesses. Big corporations.If you put a grumpy, irritable, forceful person next to a kind, laid-back, empathetic person, most people will work harder for the grumpy one. Not because they're better. Because pressure feels decisive. It creates urgency. People respond to it.The nice person feels safe. Comfortable. Human. And that's exactly the problem.Deadlines slip. Effort shifts elsewhere. And eventually, the nice person gets avoided. Not because they did anything wrong, but because guilt creeps in. And people don't like being reminded of where they fell short.If you're that nice person, you will miss out unless you build boundaries.Not anger. Not becoming grumpy. That kills your soul.Boundaries.You say: this is what I give. This is what I don't. And the world can adjust.I choose to be kind, gentle, generous, and respectful. But I protect myself. If someone doesn't respond in kind, I walk away.The goal isn't power. Or status. Or money.It's a peaceful life. With a big heart. And self-respect.Take care.

gotta say the single most important thing that gives me joy today is this puzzle of trying to make my life more fun and more exciting. That's what the whole Reciprocity Project actually is.For decades, research has never been as fun as people think it is. If you want to test this, go write a research paper on the weekend. You'll realize instantly: “oh my gosh, I hate this.”That's been my life for as long as I can remember—writing under extreme pressure.So I've been trying to solve one thing:How do you create a nearly non-rejectable research paper that is fun, interesting, your own flair—and actually exciting to do?And here's the real puzzle: absolutely nobody cares right now. Maybe a handful of people are paying attention, but most don't. And yet this puzzle gives me joy. Trying things. Building things. Playing around with ideas. Seeing what moves the needle. Even as I burn up time and resources.I'm ten years in and feel like I'm just starting.And I keep thinking about the reality so many researchers live in: chronic anxiety, stress, depression, tunnel vision. Most people never seek out anything that might make this life easier. And search engines bury anything that doesn't benefit them anyway.So the puzzle remains:How do we make research fun?How do we make it interesting?How do we democratize it—not just for elites?It's not just AI. It's about making our lives easier and more enjoyable. It's about treating research as something worth playing with, not something that destroys us.I know nobody's riding in on a white horse to fix any of this. So I'm building it myself. Slowly. Messily. Joyfully. One puzzle at a time.

When I was about seven years old, I realized I just think differently than everybody else.I didn't think like my parents.I didn't think like my friends.I didn't think like the people in my church.For decades, even now as a business professor, I've puzzled over why I see the world in such a different way.I've always felt a little strange.I don't follow conversations when there's noise.I struggle to put things together quickly.Group discussions with more than three or four people overwhelm me.Later in life I realized I have ADHD — and probably mild dyslexia — and that explained part of it.But there's another side:I can persist far longer than most people.I see patterns in research seminars that others can't see.My mind works in quirky, unusual ways that make sense to me even when they confuse other people.Many of us look at ADHD, dyslexia, or high intelligence as “problems,”but they often shape the very abilities that make us who we are.There is no normal template.There never was.We all have something unusual — and that unusual thing is often the gift.

I just get so sick of the strategic behavior that happens in science. Everybody's smart—maybe too smart. They try to outthink the system, outthink each other. It becomes this game of “how do I win?” instead of “how do I learn?”That's not how I grew up. That's not how I was taught to live.The truth is, nothing we build in research—or life—is perfect the first time. But there's this illusion that you can create something flawless from the beginning. That's why startups fail. That's why academics flame out. People give up because their plan didn't work.The reality? You just have to keep whittling away. Keep showing up. There is no recipe. No one knows what the right answer is. Not really.What makes it worse is that this behavior is taught. It's expected. You start thinking it's normal. But when you have values—when you're trying to be real—it leaves a bad taste in your mouth.There's so much strategizing, so much ego, and so little honesty. The hardest part is learning who to trust in a market like this.So here I am. Just trying to figure it out like you. Maybe I'm smart enough to see the games, but not smart enough to win at them. I don't know. What I do know is this: the only way through is to keep going. Keep building. Keep being you.

You know, one way to view academia in today's economy is to see it as a platform for creators. A lot of people don't understand this, but platforms like YouTube, Facebook, LinkedIn—they're modeled after universities. All universities are, quote unquote, platforms. They connect people who want to create things. And that content looks different in every domain.In mine, it's research papers. In yours, it might be music, art, or a new idea no one's seen before. But here's the thing most people won't tell you: being a creator is a miserable process. Ask anyone who's built something—really built it. It's mentally grueling. Socially painful. Everyone who's done it says: don't do it. Because it's hard. And no one cares. Until they do.So why do it?Because the misery means you're actually making something real. Because we've built these imperfect platforms not to remove the pain—but to share it. To give each other a shot at surviving the creative journey. And maybe even thriving.Would I choose another path? No. Even on the worst days. Because this—this struggle—is still the only thing that feels worth doing.And maybe, if we keep showing up, we'll build something that matters.

Most people will never understand what you do as a PhD researcher. Even inside your own field, you learn very fast that you are walking into the unknown. You do work no one has done before. It is easy to feel lost. It is easy to feel lonely. It is very easy to lose hope.You also learn that the comments you get are not always helpful. You learn that the path is full of confusion and mixed signals. And on top of all of that, you run into the deep social structure behind research. You find out that it is not just about working hard. It is not just about doing good work. There is a real system around you that you never saw before.Some people call it the Matthew effect. The rich get rich. The poor get poor. In research, this effect can be very strong. You do not see it at first. You think it is all skill and luck. But later you learn that the structure shapes who gets chances and who does not.But here is the truth I want you to hear. This structure is not fixed. It is not a wall you must accept. Once you understand how it works, you can move through it. You can shape it. You can even change it. You can become an entrepreneur of your own life.This is why I talk to you. I went through all of this too. I still feel it some days. But I also learned that you are not strange. You are not doing this wrong. You are on the same path every real researcher walks. And you can turn this hard path into the best chance you ever get.So ask yourself. Will you accept the world as it is? Or will you shape your own world and build something better?

It's interesting how humans can sense when something is directed to self-improvement or non-entertainment. We gravitate to entertainment and escapism — comedy, beauty, sex, drama — but if there is a learning angle with some lesson that is going to benefit you, almost all humans sense that and discount it.I was thinking about this while reading The Wealthy Barber with my 13-year-old. It was one of the most influential books of my life. I picked it up when I was 14 or 15, and it shaped how I think about financial management. It's full of simple lessons: living below your means, saving money, putting it in mutual funds for a long period of time.But very few people know the book. And even when I talk about it, people tune out. We sense these things and we don't prefer them. There are so many scammy people selling plans that we get used to tuning things out. It's hard to find somebody that is actually in your best interest.The truth is simple but not entertaining: slow, incremental choices build real wealth. But we lose our humanity when we think about things over the long haul. So we chase the quick win, even though the real answer is right in front of us.If you have the right answer for why humans do this, let me know.

I've come to a pretty strong belief over the years: if I'm struggling to make progress on something, if I'm not energized at all, if nothing is moving, then it's often a sign I should stop and find something else to do.And yes, this applies to graduate students. But it also applies to professors. Researchers. Founders. Everyone.I think we give far too much benefit of the doubt when nothing is actually happening. We tell ourselves, “Next month will be different.” And then another month passes. And another. And nobody wants to say the hard thing out loud.In my experience, dragging things out helps no one.If you're truly not working, if you're deeply stuck, if your intuition is screaming that something is wrong, then quitting is not failure. Sometimes quitting is the most honest move you can make. And I actually think people should be coached to quit more often, not shamed for it.What really hurts people is silence and tiptoeing. Nobody wants to admit a relationship, a project, or a path isn't working. So everything just meanders. Time gets burned. Trust erodes. Eventually someone leaves anyway, but now everyone is tired and resentful.I've learned to trust my “spidey sense.” When something feels off, it usually is. That weird ambiguity is almost always a sign that someone isn't being fully forthright.So now I'm much more direct. I end things faster. I don't tolerate prolonged weirdness anymore. My marriage is radically open and honest, and I try to bring that same clarity into every part of my life.Being upfront is uncomfortable. But dragging things out is far worse.Sometimes the kindest thing you can do is tell the truth early.Take care.