R3ciprocity Podcast

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 It is also out of date.Even by the numbers, most teaching jobs are now not on the tenure track.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.

There's one thing that's a real detriment in your career—and almost broadly in your life. Humans are programmed to desire success extraordinarily quickly. That's just how reinforcement learning works. It's the same mechanism behind artificial intelligence, and it's why we chase the hit.The tighter the feedback loop, the faster the response, the stronger the hit we get. That's what happens with drugs. But it also happens with side jobs, careers, little wins. And the more intermittent that hit is—when you can't figure out what's causing it but still get that pleasure—you'll chase it even harder. It pushes out everything else that matters.That's what I worry about with my own family. And honestly, with myself. I think about this all the time with the R3ciprocity Project. I work and push and sometimes get a hit—but most days, I can't figure it out. Still, I keep going.The scary part? Artificial intelligence doesn't need the hit. It doesn't have to feel good to keep going. It doesn't quit when things get hard. We do.And that's the difference.So the real question is: how do we keep doing the things that matter—even when they suck in the moment? How do we stop letting our pleasure sensors trick us into quitting?Because almost everything that matters—from making money to building relationships—hurts.You just have to keep at it. Every day. Even when you don't get the hit.

If you ever do a PhD, there is one feeling that almost never leaves you.“I am behind.”“I am slow.”“I'm not that good.”And the entire infrastructure seems to reinforce it.The program.The tenure system.Sometimes even your colleagues.There is this quiet story that you are a mistake. That you shouldn't be here.So here is my ask.Be the broken link in that chain.The old logic says pressure will fix people. That if you tell them they are behind, they will get motivated. That fear will sharpen them.That is not how humans work.When people are told they are a problem, they crack.They shut down.Or they run.The fastest way to change that is simple.Tell someone they are doing okay.Tell them they are on track.Tell them they are not a screw-up.Tell them you believe in the big, strange thing in their head.Almost everyone already thinks they are failing.Be the person who says, “You are an incredible human being. And you are exactly where you should be.”You will be shocked how much changes.In them.And in you.

I think a lot of the unrest we've seen in the last 10 years is because data is exposing more of who we actually are.I read a working paper on conflict of interest in academic markets, and honestly—it was unnerving. The researchers analyzed public data, did some matching, and showed how personal relationships strongly shaped outcomes. I won't name names—but what they found was shocking.We're told that as researchers, we're “the noble bunch.” But the reality? Conflict of interest isn't rare. It's baked into the system. It's not some evil conspiracy—it evolved slowly, and most of us benefit from it without even realizing.Now that the data is available, we can't unsee what's going on. And it's creating two reactions: • Fight: Deny, defend, discredit the data • Flight: Avoid, deflect, go silentBut maybe there's a third path: Sit in the discomfort. Be open. Ask: Have I benefited? What does this mean for the future of science?The reality is: We've built a profession where fairness is assumed—but rarely verified. And the more data we get, the more it shows just how much of this game has always been about who you know.

Some people move through life telling you they are always busy.They never have enough time.Everything is urgent.Everything is falling apart.And then there are others who somehow… make time.Even when life is chaotic.I live in this strange duality myself.Part of me feels the constant pressure:“I need to get this done. I need to do that. I'm behind.”And the other part of me knows:Things unfold at their own pace.Very little truly changes with panic.Building the R3ciprocity Project has made this even clearer.I never feel like I have enough time.Between research, teaching, service, family, health, and trying to build something new — the whole thing feels messy.Yet I carve out fifteen or twenty minutes every day to keep moving forward.Not because it's efficient.But because one small step a day is the only real way anything gets built.Most people misunderstand this.Busyness is a feeling.Progress is a practice.The world will always try to make you frantic.People will project their anxiety onto you.You will feel scattered, behind, inadequate… until you realize:The only thing you can ever do is take the next small step.No multitasking.No rushing.No magic.Just a calm, stubborn commitment to something that matters to you.Whatever you are working on:Stop letting “busy” control your life.Pick one small thing.Do it today.Everything else unfolds on its own.

Why Original Thinkers Rarely ‘Make It'

Doing a PhD means you are in your head a lot. You live inside your own thoughts, and it becomes very difficult not to go into great depths of negativity. You start to ruminate, to fixate, to compare yourself to others, and it becomes this spiral where you feel horrible about yourself.Loneliness becomes an industrial hazard of the profession. You are rated against others constantly, and you start to think you are not as good as you should be. It is a very strange, internal negotiation—just you and your own mind. Some days you get it miserably wrong and have a miserable day. Other days you get it just so, and you have a good day.Over time, you begin to realize that managing your head is the real work. You learn to find good people around you, to step back, to wander, to rest, and to give that poor soul in your head a break. The outlets that are healthy will feel like a waste of time, but they are not.This is the hardest part of doing research: managing your mind, learning how to live with your own thoughts, and finding peace in the fact that you will never fully control them—but you can keep coming back, again and again.

We don't talk about this enough:Teams don't fail because of bad strategy. They fail when someone starts rationalizing their effort.“I've already put in too much time.”“This isn't going anywhere.”“There's no ROI.”“I'm not feeling it anymore.”If you've ever heard those words—you know it's over.Because what breaks a team isn't misalignment.It's when one person emotionally checks out… and justifies it with logic.And here's the harsh truth: you can't logic someone back in.You can't force them to fall in love with a mission again.Just like marriage—when someone decides the struggle isn't worth it anymore, it's already dead.I've seen it happen. I've lived it.As a professor. As a founder. As someone who's tried to build things that mattered.And I can tell you this:The best teams aren't built on convenience.They're built on irrational grit.The kind that says: “This is hard. We'll keep going anyway.”Not because it's efficient.Not because the spreadsheet says so.But because something deeper drives them—something unmeasurable.Call it love. Call it stubbornness.Call it refusing to quit when you know what you're doing still matters.It's not about psychological safety.It's about the act of getting back up, again and again, when things break.So here's what I look for now:Are they going to get back up—no matter what?Are they responsive when it's ugly, not just when it's exciting?Are they okay with starting over and still pushing forward?Because if they aren't, the team's already broken.And no ROI calculation will fix that.

You know what makes me most excited about artificial intelligence?It's when I see viral posts on Facebook, LinkedIn, whatever platform—people outing others for using AI. Someone includes the wrong kind of prompt in a research paper, and suddenly… it's a scandal. It's a rejection. People get really, really upset.And honestly? That's the moment I start paying attention.It's uncomfortable. It's weird. But these uncomfortable, weird moments?They're almost always signs of a massive shift.It's the same feeling people had with Galileo and the telescope. That thing only magnified by 3 to 10 times, and still—he looked at the sky, and people freaked out. He didn't benefit from it. But the world changed.I remember when people had to switch from typewriters to WordPerfect.It made everyone furious. Teachers didn't want to learn a new system.It felt like everything was falling apart.Same thing with Uber and taxis.With Airbnb and the hotel industry.With Napster and the entire music business.People were outraged—until they weren't.People got upset about electricity.They got upset about disposable diapers.They got upset about the horseless carriage.They got upset about Spotify, about Google Docs, about Grammarly.Heck, even the microwave was controversial when it showed up.We don't like transition. We like control.And so here we are again—freaking out over artificial intelligence.But if you do realize it, you can stop blaming the wrong thing.You can stop calling AI “cheating” and start asking:What is this discomfort trying to tell me?Because this shift we're going through—it's bigger than research.It's going to hit physicians.Architects.Manual laborers.Construction workers.Teachers.Therapists.Probably even dog groomers.I'm not saying it's perfect.I'm not saying it won't replace some things.But here's what I am saying:The laws won't lead us.They'll follow.Just like they always do.And no—we're not going back.We never do.You don't un-invent the car.You don't un-send the email.You don't stop the music once it's streaming.So maybe—just maybe—it's time we stop being afraid.Maybe we stop calling it cheating and start asking:What would happen if we embraced this shift?If we leveraged it?If we used AI to build things we actually want?To make our lives a little easier?To multiply what we already do well?These moments—the ones that make you uncomfortable, make you hide, make you fight—they're just growing pains.We've had them before.We'll have them again.You don't have to love it.But you might want to pay attention.Because we're not going back.

If you are building some form of software or doing new product development, you will never feel like you have enough time. Lots of people out there have a little startup or they are trying to build something, and that is a big part of what this channel is about. I just want to explain what has happened and why I am talking about this. I try to document all of the things I am going through.I am a real life professor. My job is normally to do research most of the time, 80 percent of the time, and 20 percent is to teach, plus all the emails and administrative stuff. I am always doing research, and I am building the R3ciprocity Project in between all of these moments. It is foolish to jump into something without a safety net, so you do it on your part-time until you get the damn thing working. But you never have enough time at any given moment.We started on a project back in May. It is now late October. I was really excited about this feature because I think it is quite revolutionary. You can call it the TikTok of science. It went live today. I planned for so long to be excited about it, but when it went live I realized I cannot tell anybody because I have to get to work. My wife is at home. She is a doctor, a veterinarian, and she gets one day off a week. I cannot stay at home to talk about it, so I have to do it from my car. It feels like this endless sense of not having enough time.I need to publish a book. I need to put it together. I never have enough time. My work is my priority, my family is my other priority, my health. I am trying to do it in all these moments. When something spectacular happens, people say “just do this,” and you think: I have no time. You have to forgive yourself and realize it is a long journey. It is always going to feel like it is not working out. That is the name of the game. That is what it means to do something entrepreneurial. At any moment you feel like it is falling apart. You feel like you are falling apart. You keep trying to put this thing together until you get the damn thing to actually work.Everything always feels broken. You always feel broken, but you get back up and do it again and again. If you do not have unlimited funds, it is very different than a job. It is about being embarrassed. The whole thing is feeling like you do not know what you are doing.There is a difference between grad school and entrepreneurship. In grad school you do not know what you are doing, but entrepreneurship adds the element of doing it in public. People think you should not do things in public, but it will never work unless you do it in public. It is a combination of being nervous and uncertain, but doing it in the public eye at any given moment. You feel embarrassed and wish you could have things put together, but you do not have the right answer.If you are doing this, just know it is a 30-year commitment of being embarrassed and feeling stupid until you get the damn thing to work. If it works and it takes off, maybe it cuts down to five years. But until then, it is a long commitment where you do not know what you are doing and you keep trying every day. If you have it in you, you realize it is just a journey. The whole thing is fun, exciting, and interesting at any given moment.All right, take care, and have a wonderful day.

I love building something raw — and letting everyone see the mess.That's the point of the R3ciprocity Project.There's uncertainty.There's embarrassment.There's a lot of “I have no idea what I'm doing.”But I keep going.Because what I've realized — in startups and in academia — is that we have a strong culture of hiding.Hiding failure.Hiding doubt.Hiding how much of this is just making it up as you go.Here's the wild part:I've read thousands of articles. I've studied innovation for two decades.I have an engineering degree.I'm a professor.And still, I don't always know what I'm doing.And that's the truth no one says out loud.Instead, we tell people they're wrong for feeling lost.Or we pretend it's easy — that everyone has it figured out.And that makes it worse.We don't talk about how much comes down to connections.To having a parent who can fund your startup.To being in the right room at the right time.To having the “right” people give you a chance.And when people like us try to do it legitimately, transparently, and slowly…We feel like failures.But we're not.We're just playing the game differently.Building R3ciprocity has been messy.I've spent way too much money.I feel guilty I can't pay my team more.I wish it had worked faster.But I keep showing up.Because I know this is what real work looks like.If you're struggling —If you feel like you're the only one who hasn't figured it out —You're not alone.You're just doing the hard thing, honestly.And that's the part we don't talk about enough.

People think being a professor is easy.You sit around, read a few books, teach a few classes, and write the occasional paper.But that's not the reality. Not even close.I've talked to Olympic athletes, bankers, folks from construction—and many of them say the same thing after stepping into this profession:“I had no idea it would be this hard.”Because here's what nobody tells you:Being a professor means spending years creating ideas that no one believes in.You wake up every day and try to convince some of the smartest, most skeptical people on the planet that your idea is worth hearing.And you do it alone. Quietly.For years.It's not just intellectually demanding—it's emotionally brutal.And every single day, I ask myself:Should I quit?The writing.The reading.The isolation.The rejection.You're always behind. Always not doing enough.Ten pages a day? Still not enough.Hundreds of pages of reading? Still not enough.And the reward? Often a silent desk and another anonymous review that dismantles your work in a paragraph.The truth is, this job messes with your head.The data proves it: doctoral students and faculty have some of the highest rates of depression of any professional group.Because we are wrestling—not just with ideas—but with ourselves.And you can't fake it.If you care about truth, if you work with real data, the job gets even lonelier.Because you see the mess. You see the complexity.And you know that what's “publishable” isn't always what's true.So why do I stay?I'm still figuring that out.But I think it has something to do with making peace with the grind.Trying—somehow—to turn the isolation into something quiet and sacred.And finding ways to detach from the metrics, from the pressure, from the impossible standards we set for ourselves.Because if I don't…This job will eat me alive.If you're in it too—if you're trying to do good work, trying to hold onto some joy, trying to stay kind in a career that often doesn't reward it—then this one's for you.You're not alone.And yes, it's this hard for all of us.

I've hit every milestone I was supposed to hit.I got the degrees.I earned tenure.I published the research.I'm raising a family.I even built a platform to help other researchers.And still—most days, I feel like I'm failing.Not because I've failed.But because perfection culture has trained people like us to believe we're never enough.In academia, in parenting, in life—we are constantly being measured, ranked, judged, and compared.We're told that if we just optimize one more thing, maybe then we'll finally feel successful.But it never works.In this video, I'm sharing what it feels like to finally admit that I'm not perfect—and why that may be the only thing keeping me sane.If you're exhausted from pretending you're okay…If you feel like you're doing everything “right” and still feeling empty…This one's for you.This isn't about giving up.It's about letting go of the illusion that success means you have to be flawless.Let's talk about what really matters.

I think about mental health a lot—especially mental health at work.Most of us were never taught how to manage the invisible stuff. Not in school. Not in research. Not even in our families. It's only in the last 20–30 years that people even started talking about mental health outside of medical journals. And even now, most of what we see is snapshots. Clean. Marketable. Sanitized.But life doesn't feel like a snapshot.It feels like managing thoughts late at night.Trying to nudge yourself from the bottom quartile to feeling just okay.Wrestling with who you are when everything looks fine on paper.Doing all the tricks—music, walking, not oversharing, trying not to fall apart.I talk about this stuff not because I have answers. But because I've lived it.Because I think we need more real, human-generated data—not just survey stats.Because this is what research life actually feels like.Take care. And if you're struggling, you're not broken.You're just alive.

Not the pitch decks. Not the TED Talks. Not the LinkedIn wins.But the quiet moments of anxiety. The constant doubt. The deep embarrassment of putting something out into the world before it's ready—and maybe before you are.In this podcast, Professor David Maslach (creator of R3ciprocity) shares a brutally honest take on what it actually feels like to build something real—when you have no funding, no roadmap, and no clue if it will work.This is for the people in the middle of the mess, trying to build anyway.

simple: 1. Generate knowledge 2. Turn it into real-world solutions 3. Repeat—with joyBut instead of pretending that this happens in a perfectly rational system, I want to remind people: it's allowed to be fun.Serious progress can come from play.Deep insight can come from silliness.The point is to keep going, and keep trying—even when it feels pointless.

Most days, I feel like I'm failing at everything.I'm trying to be a good dad.A good husband.A good son.A good professor.A good person.And most days—I feel like I'm not doing enough in any of those roles.Like I'm stretched so thin, I barely exist in any of them.But I still show up.Not because I have it figured out. Not because I'm successful.But because I believe there are people out there who feel the exact same way—and think they're the only ones.You're not.I talk about what it's really like to live in that space where you're trying hard, giving what you can, and still wondering if it matters.I also talk about what it's like to build something—like the Reciprocity Project—when you're not confident, not famous, and not sure anyone's listening.This isn't a success story. It's a survival story.And if you're in that place right now, this is for you.

I'm going to say something that might sound extreme:If we got rid of higher education as we know it—college, university, all of it—maybe we'd be better off.Why?Because most people don't actually want to learn.They don't care. They're checked out. And no message—no matter how true or kind—seems to land unless it's already preaching to the choir.And yet… I keep going.Because I know this: real education moves the needle.But only when people take it seriously.Only when they do the hard work.Only when they show up—again and again—even when it's miserable, boring, thankless, and lonely.I've lived it.I've seen what this kind of work does to a life.You don't see it in the moment. You don't feel it in your bank account.But give it 10 or 20 years, and it changes everything—your class, your identity, your capacity to survive.This episode is for the person who's being laughed at right now.For the person who's grinding and feels invisible.For the one who wants to quit because the gains feel too far away.Keep going.It's supposed to be hard.And yes, it feels stupid while you're doing it.But one day, someone will come up to you and say: “I wish I had done what you did.”And that moment will be worth it.

We're taught in school to look for a single best answer. One multiple-choice question. One correct option. Select A and move on.But the real world never works like that.Most of the time, the answer is never given to you.Most of the time, you don't even know what the question actually is.In real life, the “answers” are never independent. They're highly connected in weird ways. If you select A in the first question, the response in the second question might be B. Or D. Or something you didn't expect at all.And when you actually interact with the world, you realize you just don't know. There isn't a straight answer. There isn't even a clear question. You have to piece together artifacts of this very complicated world and make sense of it yourself.The central problem is this: people wait to be told the right answer.But it's not going to present itself that way.You have to figure out what you're even asking.Then decide what you will call the correct choice based on what you see.And the only way to build that skill is by pushing against the world. Saying “screw you” to the idea of a single right way. Doing something. Seeing what happens.It's always going to be a complicated interactive mess.But you learn by doing. Not by waiting.

It's not lost on me how wrong management theories often are.I read a lot. And I know this sounds pretentious, but I'm confident enough now to say I'm one of the few people who actually studies platforms and builds one. The only reason I got here is because I'm building the Reciprocity platform with my own money, my own time, and all the embarrassment that goes with it.And that's why I see how disconnected management theory often is from the real world. We rarely capture what it feels like to actually build something — the shame, the failure, the stress, the weird looks, the feeling of being an outsider, and doing the “wrong thing” for years before anything works.Nobody writes about how hard it is to get attention.Nobody writes about being stuck in the middle — too practical for academia, too theoretical for builders.Nobody writes about waking up, wasting money, screwing up, and getting back up again.Students talk about innovation.Big companies talk about innovation.But almost nobody actually does it — because it's humiliating, slow, lonely work.The only reason I understand this now is because I was foolish enough to build something real. And once you do that, you realize how little our theories explain and how much of innovation is simply:get up, feel the shame, try again.Take care and have a wonderful day.

I built the most powerful research tool I have ever used — more impactful than AI. It lets you compare ideas, generate abstracts, and get instant feedback. I don't know why researchers keep scrolling past it.

I keep hearing that academia is dying.That we're in an existential crisis.That peer review is broken. That the system is collapsing.And I get it.I've been deeply concerned about parts of it, too—especially peer review. When it's bad, it's almost useless. But when it works, it's beautiful. And hard.Still, I don't buy the narrative that we're watching the death of the academic system.Because one thing organizational theory teaches us—if we're really paying attention—is that you can look at the same system in multiple ways. And when I step back and squint, academia starts to look like something much simpler:A distributed network of smart people paid to think.That's it. That's the whole thing.Strip away the institutional formalities, the politics, the performative routines—and what we're left with is still valuable. Because even if universities crumble or AI replaces traditional processes, there will still be demand for smart people solving hard problems.And if the public systems fall apart? Private ones will emerge.Will they be better? Maybe. Worse? Maybe.But they'll exist—because thinking has value.In this episode, I explore why I'm not afraid of the supposed collapse of academia.I'm actually kind of excited.Because the system was never perfect.And maybe what comes next could be even more alive.

Sometimes I'll see a new bill passed or read a shocking headline—and my first reaction is the same as yours: “What the hell is happening to the world?”I'll get grumpy. I'll vent to my wife. I'll think, “This is dumb.”But then I stop.Because I've learned that we, as human beings, are terrible at making sense of complicated systems.Even if something seems obviously harmful—or genuinely is harmful—it's often impossible to know what the actual long-term effects will be. The systems we live in are too complex. You move one piece, and another shifts in a direction you never saw coming.We teach this in business schools all the time. But we forget it when the world feels uncertain.In this episode, I talk about why we get suckered into overreacting to things we barely understand. Why even smart people with lots of data still get it wrong. And why real change—like with climate tech—often comes from places we least expect.I talk about China, capitalism, solar panels, and storms. But really, I'm talking about how hope still survives in complexity. And why stepping back doesn't mean giving up—it just means seeing the system for what it is.If you've felt overwhelmed by the news, this episode is for you.Not because I'll tell you what to think.But because I'll remind you that it's okay not to know right away.

There is absolutely far too much hype around innovation.I say that as someone who teaches innovation for a living and then tried to build something myself.I have spent unbelievable amounts of time, effort, and money on the Reciprocity platform. And the great irony is that it was meant to help researchers in a field that talks nonstop about innovation. Yet when you look around, almost no one actually innovates. Not really.At the beginning, I fell for the hype. I read all the good stories. I believed the models. But once you try to build something in the real world, you see how big the selection bias is. We only hear from the winners. Nobody counts the people who tried for a week or two and quit because they were crushed by the psychology of it.The truth is this: most innovation is not technical. It is emotional.You have to sit with your own failures. You have to feel like an outsider.You have to speak into the darkness and hope someone even cares.And you have to keep going when it feels like nobody does.I misunderstood how hard that would be.And I am still trying.

There is a lot of mystery and ambiguity around the career of a researcher or scientist, and the general public often gets it wrong. Reporters and commenters talk about science in a certain way, but when you are in it, you know it does not work that way at all. Different domains are very different in how they operate in the scientific way, and there is a lot of nuance that people never see.What the public thinks we actually do is striking, and these misperceptions pass to policymakers and government analysts. Even popular science shows report things like the number of citations, but that is one of the most meaningless things in terms of what good science really is. More citations does not mean better science.Good work needs depth, nuance, and looking at the world in a different way. There are big differences in scientific effort across fields. Some work is very good, and some is easy to see as not very good at all. You see it fast when you look at abstracts, even my 13-year-old could spot it.People also think science is full of facts, but real facts are very hard to come by in a world with so much uncertainty. Science is probabilistic, complex, and never as clear as it looks. Better understanding of probability, science, and even financial literacy would help people understand it all a lot more.We need more clarity about how science actually gets done, why ideas repeat, why norms develop, and why science is not the simple story most people imagine.

Is Business Strategy Just Luck, Privilege, and Repetition?Over time, I have become increasingly cautious about what strategy truly means. I have spent much of my career studying it, teaching it, and trying to apply it. Yet the longer I engage with the topic, the more I have come to wonder whether we sometimes overstate what we can actually achieve.Respecting the TraditionIt is important to acknowledge that the study of strategy has given us remarkable insights. The field has taught generations of scholars to think about positioning, competitive advantage, and the careful use of scarce resources. These ideas have shaped me deeply.The narrative assumes that we can diagnose a situation, marshal our resources, and execute a well-chosen plan. Yet when one examines real world examples as it actually unfolds—in markets, in careers, in scientific discovery—the connection between deliberate planning and eventual success appears less direct to me.The Invisible Forces: Luck and Social PositionMuch of what we observe as performance may be better explained by forces that are rarely incorporated into our models of organizational life: luck and social position. Luck determines when and where one is born, who crosses one's path, and which events unfold unexpectedly in one's favor. Social position shapes access to information, status, and networks that magnify opportunity.None of this invalidates the importance of strategy. It simply means that strategy often operates within constraints that are difficult to see and even harder to measure.If luck and position matter so much, what remains within our control? The answer lies in gumption and humility, rather than perfect decision-making. The causes of success and failure are often intertwined.In such a world, the most strategic capability may not be the ability to choose perfectly, but the ability to continue acting (gumption) when the outcomes are unclear. It is not brilliance, but endurance, or… stupidity.The Engine of Performance: Gumption and FaithI have grown to see persistence as the quiet foundation beneath every form of performance. Those who continue to show up, to be curious, and to believe that improvement is possible—despite repeated setbacks—often discover forms of success that were invisible.To me, this does not diminish the value of strategy; it deepens it. It reminds us that deliberate planning must coexist with faith. Something we have known for all of humanity.⸻The Humility to See ComplexityThe traditional tools of strategy remain valuable, but they describe only one slice of a vast, open, and adaptive system. Recognizing this should not make us cynical—it should make us humble.True strategic insight may not come from trying to control the world, but from patience, grace, and joy. Strategy, at its core, is not about mastery. It is about learning to move forward through muddy messes—again and again—while still believing that tomorrow can be brighter than today.

There is a lot of discussion about the validity of science right now.Researchers talk endlessly about how to make results “more valid,” how to fix problems, and how to improve the system.But here is what I actually think.It is not about “bad apples.”It is almost never about that.The real issue is culture.And culture often comes down to one or two people inside a community who stress performance above all else. Those one or two people create tension. They make others feel lesser than. They make you feel like you are the problem. And then everything starts to bend around that pressure.This is true everywhere.Every organization. Every department. Every field.You can feel it when the conversation becomes only about outcomes:number of citations, number of papers, number of grants.All lagging indicators. All terrible predictors.My field in strategy does this constantly.It is completely wrong.And it has been wrong for a long time.A lot of this came from the old Jack-Welch-style management thinking of the 1980s. That mindset seeped everywhere. It made people believe outcomes were all that mattered. Just hit the number. Hit the target. Hit the metric.But if you look at the research coming out of the systems-dynamics world at MIT — the Sterman group especially — the story is always the same:When you focus on outcomes, everything erodes.Eventually it all falls apart.Because outcomes are not the thing that matters.What matters is whether people feel safe.What matters is whether people feel supported.What matters is whether there is unconditional kindness in the room instead of fear.You fix culture, you fix science.And none of that starts with performance.

Everyone says to optimize. To fit in. To specialize.But what if playing it safe is exactly what's holding you back?In this raw and honest episode, David Maslach shares what most people won't say out loud:Being weird might be the only reason your career survives.Drawing from experience as a tenured professor and researcher, he explains: • Why the best ideas start as misunderstood • How “goofy” projects become strategic breakthroughs • Why great firms like Google protect weirdos—and so should you • What it feels like when even your friends think you're wasting your timeThis isn't hustle advice. It's a survival guide for researchers, PhDs, and anyone trying to build something real when nobody else sees the vision yet.If you've ever wondered, “Am I off-track or just early?”This episode will help you keep going.

Hey assistant professors that are just starting out. I just wanna remind you to live with as much joy as you possibly can. It is very easy to focus on what you need to get to and be very strategic in terms of who you are going to work with, but the key thing to always focus on is joy. Make sure that you are smiling every day. Make sure you have some laughter every single day. Look for those moments that make you feel warm inside. This is what I call the Spidey sense — the warmness you feel once you start engaging and you start doing things in life.Take a step back from the things that make you feel uptight. Engage with the moments that give you the warm fuzzies. It is not about being impractical and it is not about living life with rose-colored glasses. It is about figuring out how to survive in a world that often pushes all of that joy away. The more you focus on feeling warm inside, being light on your feet, and living your life with joy, the better off you are going to be.You might be listening to this and saying that joy will not make you productive. You have already lost as soon as you start thinking about productivity. That is a dead-end journey. As soon as I say the word productivity, I get uptight in my belly. But if I focus on how I can feel warm, how I can live my life with joy, how I can be a more joyful researcher where every moment I am laughing and every moment I have a sense of lightness, I feel better.For me, joy comes from people who want to laugh, who smile, who shrug off the seriousness of life. It comes from going for walks, hearing the birds, talking to you, and getting to engage in these moments where I feel good. None of this has the word productivity in it. None of this is about accomplishing things. Push that language away.If you think this will not help you get tenure, you have already lost. Your life will be dominated by trying to get tenure, and by the time you get there you will ask why you were so focused on it. Live with joy. Live with an open heart. See people smiling. Laugh. It is OK to get a cup of coffee or grab a lunch. It is not about productivity.My life used to be dominated by the logic of productivity, and every time I heard about working all the time, I felt awful because I could never compare. So I disengaged with that and focused on what makes me excited and joyful. When I could not get things done, when I was grocery shopping or spending time with my kids, I disengaged from the pressure. The joy comes from these moments, and it will change who you are inside.It may not always work out for you, but at least you lived a life worth living. You will take more risks. You will engage more. People will want to be around you. There will be a fundamental shift in who you are. Ironically, by not focusing on productivity — by focusing on joy — you actually become more productive. The less you care, the better off you are.You might not listen to this now, but one day, 20 years from now, you will hear this again and say: now I get it. Learn how to engage in the warmth and the joy of the process of discovery. Disengage from everything that pushes you toward “getting things done.” In the end, what matters is that you lived a good, healthy, lovely life where you laughed, had fun, and every moment was a joy.If you have small kids, I know it is difficult. I live that life. But remember they are a blessing. They are not taking away from your work. They are adding to it. Live a life of inspiration for others. Do not live a life about productivity. Live a life where you want to be joyful at any given moment — where you laugh and you smile. Something changes when you do that.All right, take care and have a wonderful day.

My dad used to sit in the backyard and just watch his garden.No phone. No emails. Just stillness.It never made sense to me when I was younger—how he could be happy with just that.But now I understand.He wasn't chasing anything.He had arrived.In academia—and in so many elite careers—we're trained to chase.Chase status.Chase metrics.Chase recognition from people we don't even know.I feel that pull every day.This deep, unshakable urge to be part of the most prestigious schools.To be recognized as “one of the best.”To earn a seat at the imagined table.Even when my life is full—A partner I love.Kids who make me laugh.Colleagues I care about.Freedom to think, write, and build.Still, the voice whispers:“Shouldn't you want more?”Here's what I think is happening.We construct this amalgamated ideal—a stitched-together fantasy of all the “best” traits we see in others.The top publication record.The perfect teaching scores.The charming personality.The viral following.The elite institution.The MacArthur. The Nobel. The NYT op-ed.But this ideal?It's a monster.It doesn't exist.And comparing ourselves to it only makes us feel broken.We forget: the entire picture matters.That so-called “flaw” you carry might actually be the source of your integrity.That “slowness” might be the root of your originality.That local, quiet life might hold more wisdom than any global award.The pressure to perform isn't just exhausting.It's distorting.It makes us forget that this—right now—might already be enough.Maybe we don't need to outrun the system.Maybe we just need to stop sprinting toward someone else's fantasy.And remember how to sit still.And notice the garden.

This is one of those moments I promised I'd be real with you. Nothing polished. Nothing fancy. Just the truth. Right now, I'm grumpy and tired after work—and honestly, that's all I wanted to share. Not as a rant, but as a reminder. Because we're surrounded by advice telling us to love every second of our careers, to feel passion at every turn. And if you're not feeling it, then maybe something's wrong with you. That's the lie.Here's my experience: after a full day of real work—whether that's writing papers, mentoring students, or even just managing life—I'm drained. I feel grumpy. And that's not failure. That's what it feels like to do something. Any kind of work, even the cool, creative kind, still wears you down. Whether you're a professor, a parent, a podcaster, or a so-called “influencer”—at the end of the day, you're still just a tired human trying to do your best.I see a lot of research, a lot of career advice, and a lot of “hacks” about how to be happy at work. But I'm going to tell you what I know for sure:A) I never fully know what I'm doing.B) I often feel like I'm doing the wrong thing.C) After doing the work, I usually feel completely wiped out.And honestly? I think that's completely normal.It's also normal to disengage now and again. To feel like you need to hit pause. Sometimes, switching up what you're doing—even just a little—can bring you back. That doesn't mean you're lazy or dispassionate. It means you're human. Not everything has to feel exciting. Sometimes, the best work feels like a slog.So no, you don't have to feel good all the time. You don't have to be lit up with purpose 24/7. Life isn't constant joy. It's cycles. There are days when you feel unstoppable and days when you feel like you want to curl up and disappear. That's not a flaw. That's just how it works. Take care, and keep going.

Most people ask: “Why do universities produce so little innovation per dollar spent?” or “Why don't university labs focus on real-world innovation?” The problem is that we keep using metrics that don't capture what's actually happening.Universities are playing a very different game than companies. They don't just chase performance. They teach. They serve public missions. They take on harder problems—ones others walk away from. And most of their innovation efforts? They aren't failures. They're options—investments in ideas we can't yet predict.So when you hear someone say “university patents don't make money” or “companies do it better,” they're forgetting the whole point: we're terrible at predicting success. In fact, most business leaders fail at this too—they just get to pick from projects that already look successful.If we want real innovation, we need to stop asking why universities aren't more efficient. The real question is: how do we make life good enough for the people who can see around corners—so they actually want to show up and build?

I've spent the last 10 years building a platform to make research better.To make it less lonely.To make it more joyful.To make rejection less painful.At first, I thought people would jump in.I assumed: “If I build something good—something that helps—people will just show up.”They didn't.I kept building anyway.And along the way, I learned the hardest part of innovation isn't the tech.It's not funding.It's not even the science.It's belief.Getting people to believe something new is possible…That's the game.And most of us are too tired, too overworked, too skeptical, or too burned by the system to believe.So we tell ourselves: • “I don't have time.” • “I haven't heard of it.” • “I'm already overwhelmed.”And those are real. I get it.But here's what I've learned:If I want to build something that changes anything at all, it's my job to figure out how to break through that.Not yours.You don't need to believe in my platform.But maybe this:If something feels hard to share or grow, it's not because people are wrong.It's because people are tired. Burned. Stuck.That's not an obstacle.That's the reason to keep building.Because maybe—just maybe—someone else is quietly trying too.And they need to know they're not alone.

The research career is hard in a way that's not often talked about. It's not just intellectually difficult — it's personally difficult. It functions a lot like entrepreneurship. You are left entirely to your own demise. You have near-total autonomy, and what that does is amplify whatever your default tendencies are.If you are a high-anxiety person — which describes a large number of successful researchers — you will likely internalize everything. You'll obsess, push harder, and feel like the world will fall apart if you don't accomplish something today. That's often why people succeed. But it also means you can burn yourself out or break down completely. The anxiety becomes the thing that eats you alive.On the flip side, if you are naturally more relaxed or chill, it's easy to default to avoidance. You just won't get much done. You tell yourself it'll be fine — and nothing happens. And nobody is really there to push you, because there's nobody watching.The whole system reinforces whatever your crutch is. If you're prone to loneliness, you'll feel it more. If you're prone to overwork, you'll overwork. If you need structure, there isn't any. And over time, it becomes clear that the hardest part isn't the research — it's regulating your own head.Most of the damage comes from being left to your own psychology. And that's what makes the research profession so much like building a startup. It's rarely about your ideas. It's whether you can survive being left to yourself.

I've become increasingly skeptical of the peer review system—not because the intention behind it is bad, but because of the complicated world in which it's embedded. On paper, the process sounds idealistic: submit your research, get anonymous feedback, revise, and resubmit. But in practice, it's a messy system shaped by invisible games, ambiguous standards, and enormous variability in what counts as “good” science.In this episode, I reflect on what it feels like to send work off into a black box—where editorial decisions are shaped by uncertainty, disagreement, and sometimes just luck. We talk about how reviewers often don't agree, how “A-level” work depends on who's judging it, and how real people's careers and livelihoods are affected by invisible rules no one fully understands.I still believe in the value of careful research. But I also think we need to get honest about the cost—emotional, intellectual, and financial—of playing the current game. And maybe, just maybe, we need to imagine a better system.

Why do we choose this strange, difficult career of research—and what makes it worth it?David Maslach sits down with Olav Sorenson, Professor of Strategy at UCLA Anderson and one of the most influential voices in organizational theory and entrepreneurship.“We're professional problem solvers.”In this powerful conversation, Sorenson shares how curiosity—not credentials—built his career. From almost launching a startup to shaping the field of entrepreneurship, he reminds us why the real reward in science is the process, not the prize.We talk about: • Why choosing “weird” ideas matters. • How to build real, lasting relationships. • Why intrinsic motivation is more powerful than prestige.This is a reminder that being a good scientist means staying brave, sometimes irrelevant, and always learning to love the climb.

Most people give up.They try a few times. It gets hard. It gets quiet. No one notices.So they stop.And that's why the game is winnable.That's why you never see professors building open platforms.Why researchers tell you not to start something new.Why smart people will laugh at your idea and say,“That's not how it's done.”They're not wrong.They're just done.But I'm not.Every day, I show up. Even when no one cares.Even when I feel ridiculous.Even when I want to quit.Because I know the truth:Consistency outlasts brilliance.One more day of effort stacks higher than one perfect performance.And I've seen this across research, careers, and life:The people who win aren't always smarter.They're the ones who refuse to stop when it stops being fun.They do the boring thing.The scary thing.The invisible thing.Until something cracks.And then people say:“Wow, you're lucky.”“Must be nice.”But the truth is simple:You didn't quit.And that's always been the difference.