5 Rules That Will Change Your Life Immediately

KEYPOINTS

• 01

  Treat your life like an experiment: setbacks are data.

  Former NASA engineer Mark Rober, who has about 71 million YouTube subscribers and around 20 billion views on science videos, says the thread through his work is thinking like an engineer even if you aren't one. Experiments are supposed to fail along the way, and each failure tells you one more way not to do it. Seen that way, a setback becomes information rather than a verdict on you.

• 02

  The Super Mario Effect: focus on the princess, not the pits.

  Nobody falls into the first pit in a video game and decides, 'I'm such a failure, I'll never play again.' You think, 'There's a pit there; next time I'll jump earlier.' Because your attention is on the goal, the failures become lessons. Rober is clear it isn't a 'Pollyanna' attitude: dying on a hard level 'stings,' and the sad sound still hurts, but you pick the controller back up.

• 03

  If you're scared to start, make failing the goal.

  His advice to anyone afraid of looking cringy or worried what friends will think: start small and set a target number of failures. Hitting that number counts as winning, which takes the pressure off and stops you avoiding the thing. Mel calls this subtle reframe genius, because it goes beyond 'failure is okay' to making failure the box you check.

• 04

  You shouldn't expect to be good right away.

  You don't expect to beat a video game on your first try, so Rober asks why you'd expect that in life. He says you often learn more from failing than succeeding, especially kids. Mel links this to resilience: each time you fail and keep going is evidence you can figure things out.

• 05

  Hide the vegetables.

  His north star is to reach as many brains as possible with critical thinking, curiosity and embracing failure. He hooks people with a spectacle that evokes a visceral response, such as laughter, excitement or suspense, and slips the science lesson inside the story.

• 06

  Keep your eyes on the rock in front of you.

  Rober says he doesn't think of himself as 'the world's science teacher'. He's focused on the current project, and when a video comes out he's already on the next one. Mel calls that the secret to success: work tied to something you care about, aimed at its impact on others. The moment you obsess over view counts, you're 'looking at the wrong data.'

• 07

  Creativity is a muscle.

  Rober cites work with Dr. Adam Green of Georgetown measuring alpha brain waves, which he says are highly correlated with creative problem solving. The finding, as he tells it, is that the more time you spend in that creative state, the more easily your brain returns to it. The best words in science aren't 'Eureka' but 'Huh, I wonder why that happened.'

• 08

  Build happiness from first principles.

  Engineers planning a Mars mission start from basics such as how much energy you need. Rober's basics for happiness are relationships, living by his values and knowing what impact he wants to have, and being motivated by those from the inside. He says many people buy the fancy things before realizing they don't bring happiness, and he has turned down choices that would have brought more reach or money to avoid a 'flash in the pan.'

• 09

  Gratitude is the antidote to chasing the next hit.

  When he feels he should be doing better or have more, he resets by noticing what he already has, because abundance and scarcity both exist at any moment and it depends which you focus on. He mentions the common practice of writing down three things you're grateful for before bed. His backup hack is to imagine something precious, like your partner, being taken away.

• 10

  With kids, be as inefficient as possible.

  At work Rober optimizes everything, but at home he flips it: the phone goes down, you read the book four times without skipping pages and you play the game. Mel calls it the best parenting advice she's heard in a long time. Kids don't need you to cram 50,000 things into 15 minutes; when they tell a long-winded story, the point isn't the punchline but your undivided attention.