[swighton]

I used to be a full time dev / R&D engineer. Now I basically do the same thing on YouTube (youtube.com/stuffmadehere). The difference now is my R&D-ing is directed at early stage prototypes that I think are interesting / instructive, rather than what is best for an actual business, useful, or profitable.

Youtube is interesting because theres a constant source of numeric feedback on how you are doing (views / subscribers / watch time). Seeing these numbers change based on what you do can be incredibly addicting and it's very easy to accidentally connect your personal happiness to those numbers. This is great if they are going up, but if they aren't.... yeah. It's also easy to get into a situation where you lean into "what works" over and over until you find yourself doing stuff that you don't enjoy.

My advice would be to find a way to keep the numbers at arms length and focus on doing stuff that you enjoy. You definitely need the feedback of stats / comments / etc to get better, but you don't wan to check it 10 times a day. Personally when I launch a video I will check a few times to ensure I didn't screw up anything major, see if there is any useful feedback in comments, then I will check maybe the stats every week or two.

[kayson]

Your channel is among the best content on youtube, and I am very jealous you get to do this for a living. Do you have any sort of contingency plan for what happens if youtube/patreon is no longer sustainable as an income source?

[wahahah]

Your content is extremely prolific, good work! I think your thumbnails specifically do a great job of selling the content.

Having a focus on numbers can definitely be caustic; at the end of the day it's about the whims of hundreds, thousands, or millions(!) of people, and even the algorithms in charge of leading them about.

If you make good content, you'll be appreciated for that content regardless of what the numbers reflect.

[iudqnolq]

His content is incredible. But prolific? He's posted three videos on his main channel in the past year.

[roland35]

Quality over quantity! Also three is greater than the number of game of thrones books released in the past 20 years...

[iudqnolq]

I wasn't criticizing. It's not not what prolific means.

[Tabular-Iceberg]

Judging from the sheer amount of R&D that goes into each one of those I'd say that's pretty prolific.

Hell, that kind of output would even be pretty prolific for a whole team of engineers working on commercial projects for customers.

[dangoodmanUT]

> Seeing these numbers change based on what you do can be incredibly addicting and it's very easy to accidentally connect your personal happiness to those numbers

As someone who doesn't post as often as other YouTubers, do you find it's harder to be mindful of this because of the "stakes" of a single video, or easier because there's more time to disconnect between uploads? (big fan btw)

[swighton]

I definitely have a sense of only having one shot so I want to make the best video that I can. Though it’s not so much related to the numbers as it is to:

1) I spend a ton of time on the engineering so I don’t want to make a crappy video that doesn’t do it justice

2) the amount of time spent watching these videos is staggering. Like multiple lifetimes of time is spent watching an average video. If I make a junk video, I’ve just wasted an enormous amount of time. Being a good steward of this weighs heavily on me.

[RulerOf]

> 2) the amount of time spent watching these videos is staggering. Like multiple lifetimes of time is spent watching an average video. If I make a junk video, I’ve just wasted an enormous amount of time. Being a good steward of this weighs heavily on me.

I wish anyone at google cared about this as much as you do.

[goldemerald]

I love your content, the only channel I've turned the bell on for. I am curious about your approach to explaining coding and machine learning, do you think it's possible to make "coded for 5 days" engaging in the same way physically building the objects is engaging?

Also, have you considered publishing your work in robotics conferences? I feel like grad students might be hesitant to cite a YouTube video whereas there's clearly enough technical contribution for a full publication.

[y-curious]

I am a huge fan of you and your wife! How did you handle the transition from working for work and working on your channel? Did you just spend weekends doing personal projects?

[benjaminwootton]

That’s some of the best produced independent content I’ve ever seen on YouTube. Great work!

The subscriber numbers demonstrate the effect of quality over quantity.

[prawn]

Joined 2020. 4m+ subscribers. Seriously impressive.

[mr_o47]

Woah that’s impressive

[joeconway]

I think you could post something intentionally self indulgent, self serving and knowingly terrible to your numbers and we’d all lap it up. You’re one of the few folks I would describe as brilliant.