The Super Mario Effect: Level Up Your Music Career with Science

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What if making it in the music industry was just like playing a video game

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wouldn't make this whole thing a little bit easier? Well, this could be the cheat

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code you're looking for, and it's scientifically proven.

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Under my career and seen paralleled in many of the people around me, is the

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amount of emphasis we put on a single opportunity. Maybe

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you've landed a big playlist or sync placement, only to be disappointed by

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the minimal amount of traction you actually gained. Or

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a common example in the production and mixing realm would be working with an already

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established artist or hot new artist thinking it would be a big boost for your

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career. We expect a lot to come from these big opportunities, and

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when things don't line up with those expectations, we can get pretty knocked

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down. Trust me, I've felt it plenty of times. So what if we could

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reframe our approach to failure? What if we could take the weight off those opportunities

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in a way that would actually encourage us to keep playing the game? Enter

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the super Mario effect. The Super Mario

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effect is an idea that was put forth by a NASA scientist named Mark Rober.

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It's based on an experiment that he ran with 50,000 participants. The premise of

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the experiment is that he invited subscribers of his YouTube channel to play a game

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that he created. The game involved trying to move a car from the start of

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a maze to the end by arranging blocks of text that were

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simplified versions of computer code. Stuff like if square is

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blue, move forward, repeat two times. Stuff like that. The participants were

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told that they were part of an experiment to prove that anyone could learn to

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code, but in reality, they were part of an experiment to test how they

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reacted to failure. Each time someone attempted the puzzle incorrectly, they were

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prompted with a message. Half the participants received a message that said, that

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didn't work, please try again. The other half got that didn't

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work. You lost five points. You now have 195

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points. Please try again. The results were as you'd expect. People who were losing

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points with each failed attempt had a success rate of 52% for solving the puzzle,

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while people who were not losing points had a success rate of 68%, a

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total of 16 points higher. But the interesting revelation of the data is

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that participants who were losing points made fewer attempts to solve the

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puzzle. The average for that group was five attempts, while the other group tried an

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average of twelve times. That's more than double the number of attempts. This says

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a lot about how our perception of failure affects our willingness to try

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again. The negative connotation of losing points for each failed

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attempt discouraged those participants from wanting to continue.

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Does that sound familiar to those overweighted expectations we discussed earlier?

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So let's pause on the science experiment for a minute and talk about video games.

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As a child of the 80s who spent more than enough time in front of

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a Nintendo, this is very relatable to me, early video games were very much

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about learning what comes next. These days, things are a bit more randomized and complex.

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But in Super Mario, everything happened just as it was coded to happen. You

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knew where the bad guys were going to be. You knew what boxes had, what

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power ups, which pipes were secret passageways, etc. But only

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after you'd made it to that level before making it to a new level with

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only one life left was always super nerve wracking, right?

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You made it the furthest you'd ever been, but you only had one chance

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left before you had to start over.

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But if you didn't make it through, you wouldn't feel like a failure. You just

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feel that next time you'd for sure beat that level, because now you knew what

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to expect, right? You knew when to jump or duck, etc. You

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were excited for the challenge. So if we bring that idea back to mark Rober's

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experiment, the participants losing points became more concerned with their

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failure because of the fear of running out of points. On the other hand,

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the participants who were not penalized had a more gamified approach to their

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efforts. They were continuing on because they wanted to. Many of us in the music

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industry have a never give up attitude, myself included. In fact, on

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this podcast, I've even said that making it in this industry is a little bit

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like being the last person standing, right? Eventually you'll make it

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because other people will quit. Mark Rober offers an alternate

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perspective to that. He suggests that having a never give up

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attitude implies that we're actually working against our own desire

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to quit. Think about that for a second. Being focused on not quitting

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implies that you're actually doing something that you don't want to do. And that's

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not what we're doing. We're making music. We want to make music. So we should

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reframe our perception of failure to match that. So then what's the Super Mario

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effect look like for your career? It's just like those early video games. There are

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no crystal balls for a career. Nobody knows the outcome of their own

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journey. We can set our targets and plan our strategy, but ultimately, it's the

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experience of doing that we learn from, just like Super Mario. Until we

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reach the next level we won't know what to expect. You won't know if the

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TikTok strategy for your next single will work until you try it. You won't know

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if the lyrics of a song resonate with people until you play it, and you

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won't know if your new production or mixing technique will work until you put

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it into a track. I could go on, but I think you get the point.

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Every day we are learning something new about our journey and we should be

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using those insights to fuel our excitement to reach the next level. Like I mentioned,

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in the beginning, we have a tendency to focus on the negative aspects of the

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way that things are going. The act of failing often outweighs the experience

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gained by facing a challenge. Mark said that if we focus on the cool

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end goal, then the fear of failure is taken off the table and

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instead failure becomes an opportunity to gain the experience to make it to the

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next level.