Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
My top video is probably the wake up machine. And that one was the first one that started going really viral. It's an alarm clock that slaps you in the face with a rubber arm.
A lot of people just write off the projects that I do as stupid, but they obviously aren't, the ideas aren't the smartest but I think there definitely is a lot of thought behind it.
I didn't know how to necessarily make good robots and I was scared of failing to make good robots, so I thought I might as well make bad robots to kind of alleviate the pressure of that.
When I started building things, obviously I was pretty bad at it. You cant be good at it from the start, and I decided to just embrace that, roll with it, and turn it into something funny.
To me, the goal of building useless and ridiculous robots is more - I mean, in some way, it's like a personal goal because I think it's really fun, and I think having fun is super important to create things.
Adding comedy into what I do is just my natural approach. It's how I approach anything that I find tricky or daunting, because it's like putting syrup in your medicine, and it just makes it easier to go down.
In some ways, it's good for company culture to build things that are intended to fail because it creates an environment where it's OK to fail. A lot of people are very scared of that, especially in the workplace.
When I build for YouTube, there isn't necessarily an end goal. I have an idea of how I want a thing to work, but if it doesn't work that way, I can always adapt the story. The story is the main driver, not the machine.
I've always avoided making being a woman my main asset and unique selling point. If it is then you'll start seeing other women as competition, and that's the last thing you need when entering a very male-dominated field.
I think it's also important to show that failure is a part of the process. It can sometimes be the end goal. People are very obsessed with building useful things and I think often that also stops people from getting started.
I think as soon as you're a woman, or any minority doing something, you automatically become a representative for it, and I think a lot of brilliant women's interviews are being wasted on talking about what it's like being a woman.
My learning process has always been very idea-oriented. I never sat down with a book being like, 'OK, now I'm going to learn about transistors.' Instead I had an idea that I really liked and learned as I was trying to figure out how to build it.
Career wise, I'm looking into different opportunities to do a TV show, but in some way that's not a goal in itself. To me, the goal is creating content and doing fun stuff that I'm proud to show. I don't want to do a TV show for the sake of doing it.
Having the brain tumor, coming out of surgery and going through all of that, you're like, I am never going to feel the same and I have this new perspective on life. So much gratitude, life just feels like this enormous treasure. Then that kind of just falls away and you're back being grumpy about having an early morning meeting.
I really wish this wasn't a thing. But this tumor is a thing. Even though it's not what I would have chosen for myself, that doesn't necessarily mean it has to be all bad. What I keep trying to remind myself is this is one of those things that looks like a really bad thing on the outside but I know too little about life to be sure.