Super Mario Effect: 1 Hack to Crush Failure

Master the Super Mario Effect by Mark Rober. Learn one wild hack to embrace mistakes, build resilience, and win at life today.

Super Mario Effect: 1 Hack to Crush Failure

In a world obsessed with perfection, the fear of failure immobilizes us. We hesitate to start that business, ask for that promotion, or learn that new skill because the sting of doing it wrong feels unbearable. But what if there was a simple mind shift—a “cheat code” for life—that could strip failure of its power and turn it into your greatest asset? Enter the Super Mario Effect.

This concept, popularized by former NASA engineer and YouTube sensation Mark Rober, isn’t just a catchy phrase; it is a scientifically grounded framework for examining how we learn, grow, and ultimately succeed. In a revealing interview with Mel Robbins, Rober breaks down how observing the way we play video games reveals a fundamental flaw in how we approach real-world challenges. When we play a game like Super Mario Bros., we don’t spiral into self-loathing when we fall into a pit. We respawn. We try again. We learn.

The Super Mario Effect suggests that by treating life’s obstacles like video game levels—focusing intently on the goal (saving the Princess) rather than the setbacks (the pits)—we can trick our brains into learning faster, trying harder, and achieving things we never thought possible.

In this comprehensive guide, we will deep dive into the Super Mario Effect, exploring the neuroscience of creativity, the art of “hiding the vegetables” in learning, and the life-changing power of what Rober calls “negative gratitude.” Whether you are a student, a parent, an entrepreneur, or just someone feeling stuck, this 5000-word masterclass will teach you how to gamify your life and unlock your full potential.

Who is Mark Rober? The NASA Engineer Behind the Glitter Bomb

Before we can fully appreciate the brilliance of the Super Mario Effect, we must understand the mind behind it. Mark Rober is not your typical productivity guru or self-help author. He is a mechanical engineer, a tinkerer, and a storyteller who has spent his career testing the limits of physics and human curiosity.

From Mars to YouTube

Rober’s resume reads like a science fiction novel. He spent a decade working at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), where he was part of the team that built the Curiosity Rover. Specifically, he worked on the complex hardware responsible for the “Seven Minutes of Terror”—the sky crane maneuver that lowered the rover to the Martian surface. He also designed hardware for the rover’s top deck, ensuring that the samples collected by the arm could be properly analyzed.

“If you are not failing, that’s a problem, right? Like you need to be testing the limits to understand like if you’re being so conservative on everything, you have no idea how much bigger and cooler this thing could be,” Rober told Mel Robbins. This mindset, honed in the high-stakes laboratories of NASA, is the bedrock of the Super Mario Effect. At NASA, failure wasn’t a character flaw; it was data. A failed test meant you found the limit. It meant you were one step closer to a design that would survive the harsh environment of the Red Planet.

After NASA, Rober spent five years at Apple in their special projects group, working on the secretive and now-cancelled Apple Car project. But it was his hobby—making simple, creative science videos on YouTube—that would eventually turn him into “the world’s science teacher.”

The Viral Engineer

Rober’s YouTube career began with a humble Halloween costume idea: using two iPads to create the illusion of a gaping hole in his torso. The video went viral, garnering 3 million views almost instantly. For 15 years, he has consistently uploaded just one video a month, prioritizing quality and storytelling over quantity.

Today, with over 71 million subscribers and billions of views, his channel is a testament to the power of curiosity. From engineering legendary “glitter bombs” to catch porch pirates to filling a swimming pool with 15 tons of Jell-O, Rober’s content is a masterclass in engagement. The glitter bomb series, in particular, showcases his obsession with detail. * The Problem: Someone stole a package from his porch. The police couldn’t help. * The Prototype: He engineered a bait package containing four smartphones to record the thief from every angle. * The Payload: A custom-built centrifugal motor designed to spin a cup containing a pound of the world’s finest glitter, covering the interior of the thief’s car (and the thief) in an un-cleanable mess. * The Punishment: A canister of “fart spray” that emitted a foul odor every 30 seconds, prompting the thief to discard the package so Rober could recover it via GPS. * The Iteration: Over the years, he has built multiple versions, adding distinct features like countdown timers, police chatter sounds, and even satellite tracking. Each version was a result of analyzing the failures of the previous one—maybe the battery died too fast, or the glitter didn’t spread enough. This constant tinkering is the Super Mario Effect in physical form: fail, learn, modify, respawn.

Rober’s content isn’t just entertaining; he is teaching critical thinking, the scientific method, and, most importantly, the resilience required to be an engineer.

His journey from a traditional engineering career to becoming one of the most influential educators on the planet is a living example of the Super Mario Effect. He didn’t know where his YouTube path would lead. He simply “wiggled the rocks” in front of him, stepping from one opportunity to the next, fueled by a passion for science and a complete lack of fear regarding the possibility of failure.

Mark Rober’s authority on the subject of failure is unique because he engineers failure into his life constantly. Building a dartboard that moves to catch your dart in 400 milliseconds took him three years. Three years of trial and error, of broken prototypes, of code that wouldn’t compile. Yet, he never gave up. Why? Because of the Super Mario Effect. He was focused on the win, not the experimental “deaths” along the way.

What is the Super Mario Effect?

At its core, the Super Mario Effect is a psychological framework for reframing failure. It posits that the negative emotional weight we attach to failure is not only unnecessary but actively detrimental to our success.

The Gaming Analogy

Consider the experience of playing a classic platformer game like Super Mario Bros. Your goal is to get from the left side of the screen to the right side, navigating obstacles, jumping over pits, and dodging enemies.

When you start playing a new level, you might run forward and immediately fall into a pit. Do you throw the controller down and think, “I am a worthless human being? I’ll never be good at anything”? No. You think, “Oops. There’s a pit there. Next time, I need to jump a little earlier.”

You respawn. You try again. This time, you clear the pit but get hit by a sliding green turtle shell. You die again. But again, the internal monologue isn’t one of shame. It’s strategic. “Okay, jump the pit, then wait for the turtle shell to pass.”

This cycle continues—fail, learn, adjust, retry—until you beat the level. You might die 10, 20, or even 50 times before you succeed. But when you finally grab that flag at the end of the level, you don’t look back at those 50 deaths with regret. You typically don’t even remember them. You focus entirely on the success. You accomplished the mission.

This is the Super Mario Effect. It is the phenomenon where the focus on the end goal (the Princess, the flag, the high score) creates a natural resilience to the failures encountered along the way.

Why Real Life is Different (And Why It Shouldn’t Be)

In real life, however, we tend to do the exact opposite. We treat every failure as a verdict on our identity.

• We fail a test: “I’m not smart.”
• We get rejected from a job: “I’m unemployable.”
• We fumble a social interaction: “I’m awkward and unlovable.”

Mark Rober argues that this heavy, emotional response to failure is a learned behavior, not an innate one. “No one ever picks up that controller for the first time and falls into a pit and is like, ‘I’m such a failure… I’d never want to play this again,'” Rober explains.

By adopting the Super Mario Effect, we can trick our brains into treating real-world challenges with the same playful resilience we bring to video games. It basically flips the script on anxiety. Instead of fearing the “Game Over” screen, we become obsessed with cracking the code of the level.

The Super Mario Effect in Action: The Data

The validity of the Super Mario Effect isn’t just anecdotal. Rober actually conducted a massive experiment to prove it. In a TED talk not explicitly detailed in this transcript but foundational to the concept, he described a coding challenge he issued to his followers.

He asked 50,000 people to play a simple computer programming puzzle. Half the participants were given a version where, if they failed, a message appeared saying, “That didn’t work. Please try again.” The other half got a version where, if they failed, it said, “That didn’t work. You lost 5 points. Please try again.”

The result? The group that lost “points” (creating a penalty for failure) had a success rate of around 52%. The group that had no penalty—simply a prompt to try again—had a success rate of 68%.

That is a statistically massive difference. The mere presence of a negative consequence for failure made people try less, persevere less, and ultimately succeed less. The group with no penalty tried more times. They saw failure as part of the process, not a punishment. They embodied the Super Mario Effect.

Overestimating the Negative Impact

“I think we overestimate the negative impact on failure and underestimate our ability to handle it,” Rober told Robbins. We build up failure in our heads to be this catastrophic, career-ending event. Public speaking is a prime example. Most people list public speaking as a top fear, often ranking it above death. Why? Because the fear of social failing—of looking stupid in front of the tribe—is primal.

But what actually happens if you stumble over your words during a presentation? Usually, nothing. People might feel a momentary awkwardness, and then they move on. You don’t die. You don’t lose your home. You just feel a bit silly.

The Super Mario Effect encourages us to look at that “social pit” we just fell into and say, “Okay, noted. Next time, I’ll prepare my opening notes better.” It neutralizes the shame.

Reframing Challenges as Opportunities

When you view the world through the lens of the Super Mario Effect, problems stop looking like roadblocks and start looking like puzzles. A difficult boss isn’t a curse; they are a level boss with a specific pattern you need to learn to defeat. A confusing subject in school isn’t proof of your stupidity; it’s a complex map that you haven’t fully explored yet.

“I love frameworks because it feels then like the things I need to do feel a little less arduous and it doesn’t feel like the things I screwed up are so personal,” Rober says.

This depersonalization is key. When failure is personal, it hurts. When failure is just data in a game, it’s helpful. By adopting the Super Mario Effect, you protect your self-esteem while simultaneously maximizing your rate of learning. You become an unstoppable learning machine, constantly iterating, constantly improving, and constantly moving closer to your own personal castle.

Hiding the Vegetables: The Science of Learning

If the Super Mario Effect is the strategy for overcoming failure, then “Hiding the Vegetables” is Mark Rober’s masterclass in how to teach others (and yourself) to love the struggle.

This concept comes from a simple parenting hack: if you want kids to eat their nutrition, you blend the spinach into a smoothie. They taste the fruit, but they get the vitamins. Mark Rober applies this same philosophy to education and content creation, and it offers a profound lesson for anyone trying to learn a difficult skill.

The 15-Ton Jell-O Pool

Take, for example, one of Rober’s most viral videos: the 15-ton Jell-O pool. On the surface, it looks like a classic internet stunt—a “clickbait title and thumbnail” designed to get millions of views. And it is. Who doesn’t want to see a grown man belly flop into a swimming pool of red gelatin?

But as Rober explains, “Once you click on the video… this is where I get you because pretty soon you’re learning about chemistry. You’re learning about the scientific method, you’re learning about like the variables we controlled.”

Creating a pool of Jell-O that huge isn’t just about buying a lot of powder. It requires understanding thermodynamics (how do you boil and cool that much liquid before it spoils?), structural engineering (will the pool burst?), and fluid dynamics. Rober spent a week boiling Jell-O in 55-gallon drums, using the ambient nighttime temperature of a specific location to cool it down. He lost 10 pounds from stress. It was a massive engineering challenge disguised as a pool party.

By “hiding the vegetables,” Rober tricks his audience into engaging with complex scientific principles. They aren’t there for a lecture; they are there for the spectacle. But they leave with a lesson.

How to Hide Your Own Vegetables?

You can apply this to your own life. Often, the tasks we need to do to succeed (the vegetables) are boring, difficult, or scary. We procrastinate because we don’t want to do the “work.”

The solution is to wrap the hard work in something you love.

• Hate exercise? Don’t just run on a treadmill. Join a rec league soccer team. The “game” is the fruit; the cardio is the vegetable.
• Dreading learning a new software? Don’t read the manual. Decide to build a specific, fun project for yourself that requires the software. The project is the fruit; the learning curve is the vegetable.
• Scared of networking? Host a game night or a casual meetup centered around a hobby. The social connection is the fruit; the professional networking is the vegetable.

By gamifying the process and focusing on a fun, tangible output, you make the “vegetables” palatable. You are leveraging the Super Mario Effect by creating a “level” that is fun to play, even if it’s hard to beat.

Revolutionizing Education: A Mark Rober Bombshell

During the interview, Mark Rober dropped a massive announcement that perfectly illustrates the Super Mario Effect applied to the education system itself. After 15 years of “hiding the vegetables” on YouTube, he is taking his philosophy to the classroom.

The Problem with Science Education

Rober identified a critical “pit” in the current educational landscape: many teachers are underappreciated, under-supported, and forced to pay for mediocre curriculum out of their own pockets. Science, a subject that should be about wonder and experimentation, often becomes a dry recitation of facts.

“It’s the most I think important profession and perhaps the most underappreciated… So it’s kind of like hey reinforcements are on the way. We got you,” Rober announced.

The Solution: A Free, High-Quality Curriculum

Rober revealed that his team is building a comprehensive science curriculum for 3rd to 8th grade. But this isn’t just a textbook. It is a Super Mario Effect-style overhaul of how science is taught.

• High-End Video Production: It includes videos featuring favorite YouTubers, ensuring kids are actually engaged (hiding the vegetables).
• Hands-On Demos: It provides cheap, accessible experiments that teachers can easily set up in class.
• Adherence to Standards: It meets all educational science standards, so it’s not just “fun” but academically rigorous.
• Zero Cost: The entire program will be free for all teachers.

This project, which will cost an estimated $5-10 million (or more) to produce, is Rober’s way of “giving a cheat code” to the next generation. He calls teachers “seed planters,” acknowledging that while they may not see the full tree grow, they are doing the most vital work for the future of humanity.

By creating this curriculum, Rober is scaling the Super Mario Effect. He isn’t just teaching kids to not fear failure; he is building a system where failure is safe, fun, and part of the learning process. He is creating a “game” that every student can win.

Why This Matters for You?

Even if you aren’t a teacher, there is a lesson here. Rober saw a systemic failure and didn’t complain. He engineered a solution. He applied his “first principles” thinking—what do teachers need? what do kids need?—and built a product to solve it.

When you face a systemic problem in your office or home, don’t just endure the “level.” Ask yourself: How can I redesign this level to make success easier for everyone? Can you create a template that saves your team hours? Can you build a chore chart that makes cleaning fun for your kids? That is the Super Mario Effect in leadership.

The Power of Reframing Failure

One of the most powerful takeaways from Mark Rober’s philosophy is that failure is not a destination; it is a mechanism. It is a tool for calibration.

The Chess Experiment: Goal to Fail

Mel Robbins admitted to Rober that she isn’t “excited about failing.” Most of us aren’t. We are hardwired to avoid it. But Rober shared a personal story about how he hacked his own brain to get over his fear of losing at chess.

He realized he wasn’t playing online chess because he was afraid of hurting his rating or feeling stupid. So, he set a counter-intuitive goal: “I want to lose 10 games.”

He flipped the script. Instead of the goal being to “win” (which is out of his complete control against a better opponent), the goal became to “lose.” Suddenly, every loss was a success. He ticked a box. He accomplished his objective.

“It totally worked for me cuz now I then I exposed myself to losing more and now I don’t even think about it. And I love I don’t internalize it as a negative thing,” Rober said.

Exposure Therapy for the Ego

This “goal to fail” strategy is a form of exposure therapy. By intentionally seeking out the thing you fear (failure/rejection) and realizing that you survived it, you desensitize your amygdala—the part of your brain that processes fear.

If you are terrified of sales calls, make your goal to get 50 “Nos” today. Every hang-up is a victory towards your goal. If you are scared of dating, make your goal to go on 10 bad dates.

By making failure the objective, you remove the pressure. You stop tensing up. And ironically, when you stop fearing failure, you often perform better. You play looser. You take more risks. You invoke the Super Mario Effect because you are just “playing the level” to sway the odds, not to prove your worth.

“Start small and make your goal to fail,” Rober advises. It’s a subtle but genius reframe. When failure is the goal, you are always winning, either by learning or by hitting your target.

Finding the Positivity in the Fail

“If you are not failing, that’s a problem, right? Like you need to be testing the limits,” Rober asserts.

In engineering, if a component never breaks during testing, it means you made it too heavy or too expensive. You over-engineered it. You don’t know where the edge is until you fall off it.

In life, if you never fail, it means you are playing too safe. You aren’t growing. You aren’t finding your limits. The Super Mario Effect challenges us to find the “positivity in the fail.” A failure is just a signpost that says, “Not this way.” It narrows the path to success.

Every wrong turn in a maze brings you mathematically closer to the exit, provided you remember not to take that turn again. That is the key: Learning one more way not to do it.

Creativity is a Muscle

A common myth is that people like Mark Rober are just “born creative.” They have a special gene that allows them to dream up glitter bombs and talking pianos. Rober pushes back on this hard.

“Creativity is a muscle,” he insists. “The more time you spend in that space, the more comfortable with you you are with it, the more quickly your brain goes to that spot.”

The Neuroscience of Creativity

Rober cites research by Dr. Adam Green from Georgetown, involving alpha brain waves. Studies show that creative problem-solving is correlated with specific brain activity that can be measured. More importantly, this activity can be increased with practice.

Just like lifting weights tears muscle fibers to rebuild them stronger, engaging in creative tasks builds the neural pathways required for innovation.

This connects directly back to the Super Mario Effect. When you are playing a video game, you are constantly problem-solving. “How do I beat this boss? That didn’t work. Let me try this.” You are flexing your creativity muscle in a low-stakes environment.

Curiosity: The Engine of Growth

The fuel for this creativity is curiosity. “The most the best words to hear in science aren’t like, Eureka, I discovered it. Like, the best words that lead to the most scientific breakthrough is like, huh, I wonder why that happened,” Rober notes, quoting Isaac Asimov.

Curiosity is the antidote to judgment. When you fail, judgment says, “You are bad.” Curiosity says, “That was unexpected. I wonder why that happened?”

By shifting from judgment to curiosity, you keep your brain in a learning state rather than a defensive state. You remain in the game. You keep playing Super Mario.

Start viewing the world through a lens of “Huh?”

• “Huh, I wonder why that client said no?”
• “Huh, I wonder why I feel so tired at 2 PM?”
• “Huh, I wonder why this relationship isn’t working?”

This simple question opens the door to the Super Mario Effect, turning a dead-end into a puzzle to be solved.

The Secret of Negative Gratitude

While the Super Mario Effect teaches us how to hustle and learn, Mark Rober also shared a profound strategy for happiness and perspective, which he calls “negative gratitude.”

This concept arose from a discussion about the “hedonic treadmill”—the human tendency to chase the next big thing (money, views, status) only to find that it doesn’t bring lasting happiness.

The “Take It Away” Hack

Rober proposes a mental reset button. When you find yourself obsessing over what you don’t have—a better car, a higher salary, more followers—he suggests visualizing the loss of what you do have.

“Imagine take something away, say like a partner or someone that means a lot to you. How would you feel?” he asks.

This is powerful stuff. Mel Robbins recounted how, even when she was $800,000 in debt and angry at her husband, she never once wished he was gone. Recognizing that, even in the worst financial crisis, she still had the one thing that mattered most, was a grounding force.

“Negative gratitude” isn’t about being pessimistic; it’s about seeing the abundance in your life by simulating its absence. It snaps you out of the scarcity mindset and into a state of deep appreciation.

Efficiency vs. Inefficiency in Parenting (and Relationships)

This gratitude mindset leads to a crucial shift in how we relate to others, especially our children. Rober, a former NASA engineer obsessed with optimization, realized that efficiency is the enemy of connection.

“If at work I’m in this hyper-optimization mode… when you get home you need to flip that and you need to not be efficient with your kids. The phone goes down and your goal should be flipped. I need to be as inefficient as possible,” he says.

Efficiency is for robots and rovers. Relationships require inefficiency. They require reading the same book four times. They require listening to a long-winded story that has no point. They require wasting time together.

By applying the Super Mario Effect to your relationships, the “goal” isn’t to get the kids to bed as fast as possible (efficiency). The goal is to build a bond (the Princess). And often, the most direct path to that goal is a meandering, inefficient one.

Simple Science: The Magic of Everyday Wonders

To truly adopt the mindset of a lifelong learner—a key component of the Super Mario Effect—you must cultivate a sense of wonder about the physical world. Rober demonstrated this with two incredibly simple yet mind-blowing experiments during the interview.

The Levitating Ping Pong Ball (Kanda Effect)

Rober took a standard hair dryer and a ping pong ball. By pointing the hair dryer up and turning it on, the ball levitated in the stream of air. But the magic happened when he tilted the dryer. The ball didn’t fall; it stayed “glued” to the airstream even at an angle.

This is the Coanda Effect (or Kanda Effect). The fast-moving air creates a pocket of low pressure around the curve of the ball. The higher pressure of the still air in the room pushes the ball into the stream, locking it in place. This same principle explains why airplane wings generate lift and why curveballs curve.

The Chicken Cup

Next, he took a red plastic cup with a string poked through the bottom and a wet paper towel. By pinching the wet towel over the string and pulling down, he created friction. The string vibrated, acting like a violin string. The bottom of the cup acted as a diaphragm (like an eardrum or speaker cone), amplifying the vibration into a loud, clucking sound.

Why does this matter? These aren’t just party tricks. They are reminders that the world is built on fascinating, understandable rules. When you understand why a cup clucks or why a ball floats, you feel a sense of agency. You realize that things aren’t “magic”; they are solvable puzzles.

This reinforces the Super Mario Effect. If physics is a puzzle you can solve, then so is your career. So is your fitness. So is your happiness. It’s all just cause and effect, waiting for you to figure out the variables.

Frequently Asked Questions

To wrap up this masterclass on the Super Mario Effect, here are answers to the most common questions about Mark Rober’s philosophy and career.

Conclusion: Level Up Your Life

The Super Mario Effect is more than just a clever analogy; it is a permission slip to be imperfect. It is a reminder that the “Game Over” screen is a lie. As long as you are still breathing, you have unlimited lives. You can always hit “Continue.”

Mark Rober’s journey from NASA to YouTube proves that the path to success is not a straight line. It is a series of experiments, failures, and respawns. It involves jumping over pits, dodging turtle shells, and occasionally falling into the lava.

But if you can shift your focus from the pits to the Princess—from the pain of failure to the thrill of the goal—you become unstoppable.

Your Action Plan:

1. Reframe Failure: The next time you screw up, say, “Correction noted. Respawing.” Don’t let it become your identity.
2. Hide the Vegetables: Pair the hard work you need to do with the fun activities you love to do.
3. Set a Goal to Fail: Try to get 10 rejections this week. Desensitize yourself to the sting.
4. Practice Negative Gratitude: When you feel a lack, imagine losing what you love. Then, revel in the fact that it’s still here.

Life is the ultimate open-world game. There are no instructions, and the map is huge. But with the Super Mario Effect, you have the only cheat code you need: keep playing.