100: Longevity
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Welcome to Under the Radar, a show about independent iOS app development.
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I'm Mark O'Arment.
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And I'm David Smith.
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Under the Radar is never longer than 30 minutes, so let's get started.
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So this, I believe, should be episode 100.
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I'm usually not someone to go to get twos wrapped up around big round numbers.
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If anything, really, I should probably be celebrating, what would it be, 104?
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It's probably a more interesting number, just that's two years of doing it.
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But 100 is a nice, fun number, nevertheless.
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And while it's, I don't necessarily want to do an episode just celebrating that, but it
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caught me thinking as I was getting ready for this recording and saw notice that it
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had a nice big round number.
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I was thinking, can we maybe send this episode with balloons?
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Is that a thing that we can do?
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There you go.
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We can send it with 100 emoji balloons.
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Well, you know, like the message is a fix.
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Just like somehow we can, I have to make that into overcast so that when this arrives, it'll
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be shown with balloons.
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But I would allow you to use some confetti.
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Can I license your confetti?
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You could license my confetti.
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I appreciate that your instinct was to license rather than to just copy it like everyone
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Anyway, so it made me think about longevity and about things lasting a long time.
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And I think it's an interesting topic to maybe unpack a little bit, because I think one thing
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that I know for myself is it's easy to sort of desire that longevity in the sense of seeing
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someone else who has been doing something for a long time and sort of desire that for
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yourself and have that be in some ways the goal.
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But that can also be an intimidating thing.
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And so it seemed interesting to unpack.
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And the first place, before we dive into something like longevity, I think the best place to
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start is to start off talking about survivorship bias.
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There's a great XKCD comic about this that I'll have linked in the show notes.
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But survivorship bias, if you're not familiar with the concept, is sort of a logical fallacy
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where you concentrate on people or things that succeed and overlook those that don't.
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And this is typically because of a lack of visibility of the things that don't.
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But it's easy to kind of get this impression that, wow, all these things are succeeding
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and your endeavors, for example, are not.
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And so you feel bad about yourself.
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Whereas what you're really seeing is the only things that you ever get to see are the things
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that are successful.
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And you're missing and not aware of the 10 times or 100 times number of projects or endeavors
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that didn't get off the ground in the first place or weren't successful.
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And so it's just something to always, as we dive into some of a topic like this, I wanted
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to bring up just to kind of set a good frame for the discussion.
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That even just in this case, we've been able to do this podcast for almost two years now
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and 100 episodes.
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And that's great.
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But it's hard to kind of learn from that success in a interesting way, because usually there's
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probably far more interesting lessons from things that didn't make it in terms of mistakes
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to avoid or luck and chance or just lots of determination that went into it.
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So just something to keep in mind that you're aware of the things that succeed to a far
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greater extent than you are to the things that fail.
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I mean, and this is true of so many things, way beyond just the software business or the
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app business or even things like podcasts.
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This applies to pretty much everything in life.
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Another kind of similar type of thing to be aware of is, I think I'm stealing this from
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Merlin who probably stole it from somebody else who was smart, but the idea being that
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you are comparing your backstage to someone else's on stage or front stage, I guess.
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I'm probably mangling this.
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But the point is when you see other things in the world, you are seeing the polished,
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presented, edited version of them out there in the world.
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And you might be comparing your own work from your point of view, which is unpolished, unedited,
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like the raw version of it that's in your head or that you're making.
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And you might feel bad about what you're making because it doesn't stack up to what you see
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out in the world in some way.
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But the reality is you are seeing someone else's final polished, edited product.
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So you should only compare, if you're going to make such comparisons, which you don't even
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necessarily always need to, but if you're going to make such comparisons, you should
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only compare that to what you can make as an edited final polished product, not what
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comes out first.
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It reminds me in some ways of the classics of things within something like Instagram
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or Facebook or a situation where you get this view of someone's life or their world that
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is these brief moments that are perfect rather than the moments on either side, which could
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have been awful.
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- And so it's just an important thing to keep in mind that, yeah, it's a great point to
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be sure that you're being cynical in a good way about whether you're looking at something
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that is reasonable to compare yourself to or not, or make sure you're comparing apples
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to apples, because otherwise you're just going to be frustrated or annoyed or sad unnecessarily.
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So I was trying to think a little bit about how, in general, thing projects have success
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over the long term.
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And it's really not a particularly interesting conclusion, but the thing that I just ultimately,
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I thought of a product going up different directions to talk about, but the one that
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just came to mind and I think is the most true is the reality that it ultimately just
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comes down to showing up over and over and over again and getting ever so slightly better
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That in general, that process repeated over and over again is what giving a project long
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term success will look like.
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It's just continuing to show up every day or in the case of a podcast every week, just
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doing it and hopefully getting slightly better over time.
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And then the result is what you end up with.
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I was thinking too how you and I have been podcasting for a pretty long time at this
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I looked it up and I think Build and Analyze's first episode was November 11, 2010, which
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is 6.9 years ago.
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And Developing Perspective, the show that I did before this, started July 13, 2011,
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which is 6.2 years ago.
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So we've been combined doing this for a very long time.
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And if you go back and listen to those early episodes, if you want some comedy, I'll have
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a link to the show notes of the first episode of Developing Perspective that I did, whatever
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it was about six and a half years ago.
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And it is awful and terrible.
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And I recorded it with a USB Logitech headset that's like a gaming headset that was the
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best mic I had available to me.
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And I was trying to overemphasize in my mind from my public speaking training, you need
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to talk slowly and carefully, and that's the best way to communicate.
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And so it almost sounds like I'm being played at half speed because I was overly doing that.
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And it's terrible.
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In some ways, I'm glad that it still exists out on the internet because it shows it's
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taken me 6.2 years to get to the point that I am now.
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And I'm by no means necessarily a like amazing communicator on a podcast, but I am a lot
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better than I am then.
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And I'm hopefully still getting better gradually over time.
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And in order to get from here to there has been years of showing up essentially every
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week over that time and just trying to get better and learning from my mistakes and then
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trying to do it again.
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And that process, that iteration is what gets you there over the long term.
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That it isn't one of these things where, at least in my experience, it's not this
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like where you have these, it's like all of a sudden you're this massive runaway success
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or like things are just all of a sudden out of the gate.
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It's like, no, it's lots and lots of preparation and experimentation and trying things.
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But in all of it, keeping at it and not giving up instead whenever you hit problems or just
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difficulties or struggles to instead sort of turn yourself in a different direction
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and learn from that.
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But just keep at it over time and keep doing that for six or seven years.
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And maybe you can, it's like you're able to then do it better and better and better.
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And kind of a parallel to survivorship bias, which you talked about earlier, is, I don't
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know if there's an official term for this, but I would say maybe like popularity bias.
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By the time something like, something in media, whether it's like a podcast or a YouTube
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channel or even like a blog, by the time you have heard of it, you might have just found
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it and thought, wow, this came out of nowhere and this person's really good at this.
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And man, I wish I could ever be that good at anything or something like that.
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But you don't know how long that person has been building up that skill.
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Like they could have been blogging or podcasting for seven years before you found them or before
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they launched that podcast or that YouTube channel or whatever.
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They could have been doing that for a very long time.
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And so if you look at some of the, like making a YouTube video is, depending on how fancy
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you want it to look, it can take you five minutes if you just do a quick webcam or phone
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kind of thing or if you try to do like a professional MKBHD style gadget review, that could take
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a week and a giant crew and $50,000 worth of equipment.
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Like you don't know, it's easy to look at something, to look at the output of something
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and see like, wow, that looks so good.
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I could never do that.
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But also like if you did it every week or every day for seven years, I bet you could
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But you know, you have to know also that like there is that buildup stage of the skills,
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of the audience, of the budget or equipment, if that's applicable.
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Like there's a buildup that you probably aren't aware of because you probably didn't see it
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if you discovered this thing when it was already popular.
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And so don't let that discourage you either, but know that it's there.
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Like you know, I tried to make YouTube videos by making, so far I've made one like real
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YouTube video with effort into it where I tried to review last year's MacBook Pro with
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the touch bar.
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And I recently re-watched that video a couple of days ago and it's just terrible.
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There's so much about it that's just awful.
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And I was trying, I was reaching too far for my current experience and skill level.
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I was trying to make like a pro grade video as really a complete amateur.
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And I had a couple of good pieces of equipment, but I didn't have everything I needed.
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I had no experience making video really.
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I had no skill making video or being on camera really.
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And so by trying, by reaching too high as my very first one, I made something that wasn't
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very good and it was so hard to make it that I haven't made one since.
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That was almost a year ago.
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And I haven't made a single video since because it was way too much work and I looked at it
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and I got discouraged.
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I basically, it's like if you ever tried to drive a stick shift and it's like if you start
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in fifth gear and then the car just stalls and you're like, "Well, I guess driving isn't
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a thing I can do."
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It's like, no, like you miss, like you gotta start in first gear and build up, you know,
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And I did it totally wrong.
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I had the wrong expectations.
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I kind of had impossible expectations of myself given my skill level at that time.
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And I tried to do it and it didn't work and I got discouraged.
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That's a very dangerous and very common trap to fall into where the very first thing you
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try doesn't match what you're trying to emulate or the skill level that you think you need
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But that's again, if I want to do that kind of YouTube thing, I'm gonna have to start
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as a beginner and start making worse videos more frequently and then maybe over time build
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up to what I had originally envisioned.
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But that's gonna take time if I want to do it.
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- Yeah, and I think that is such a key point 'cause it's the, like the most vital thing
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is to actually start.
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The hardest thing in many ways is just that initial start.
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You did a great job of actually doing it.
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Like you actually set, you made that first video.
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But the thing that's tricky is you need to understand that that starting point is hopefully
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the worst thing you will ever make.
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In some ways because--
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- God, I hope so.
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- Like that's your starting point, right?
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You're hoping that you will gradually be progressing from there.
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And I think it's helpful, I don't know, maybe it's just to make myself feel better.
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But sometimes I find it constructive to think of projects in those terms.
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Like this first thing that I make is hopefully the worst thing I'll ever make.
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And that's okay.
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Like I don't need to start with the perfection in mind.
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Like I'm never gonna be able to start off perfectly and then like have already arrived.
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It's like no, it's like I'm gonna start off making something probably not so great and
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then make something slightly less terrible and then slightly less terrible.
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And eventually it gets, over time, that process repeated over and over again is how you ultimately
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are able to do something good at the end.
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And I think that's like, whenever I've been given some advice similar to this, I've always
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sort of hated it quietly because it's sort of the unfortunate reality of really what
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that means is like, well, you have to work hard.
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Like it's gonna take effort, it's going to be difficult and there aren't a lot of shortcuts
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Like the shortcuts are preparation in terms of if you can bring to bear skills you developed
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doing something else.
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Like that's a shortcut that you can sort of short circuit the process with.
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But otherwise you're just gonna have to do it a lot of times to be able to know what
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Like when I sit down now to start a new project in Xcode, I know I have a sense of where to
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go that is more instinctual than when I started to begin with.
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My first projects, I had no idea what I was doing and it would just sort of waddle around
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and hopefully I bumped into things that ultimately stuck.
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But now I have a better sense of that and that just takes time and patience and hopefully
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just the tenacity to not get discouraged when you're displeased with that first thing you
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Because obviously ultimately I would be kind of worried in some ways if I made something
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and the first time I tried something new it was perfect.
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That's in many ways more worrying to me that somehow I was able to do this thing that looks
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like it should be really hard or worthwhile, perfectly out the gate.
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That's just not the way life works in my experience.
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So they've been in business at least since then.
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Thank you so much to Linode for supporting this show for the long haul.
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So the other things that I think are kind of important to unpack if you want to sort
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of thinking about how you can build something that hopefully is successful over the long
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term is in a weird way, the most important thing is things that are barriers to getting
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started in the first place because if you can't start, then there's no way that you're
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going to have something that can last a long time.
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And in many ways in my experience, getting started is the hardest part.
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Getting that first episode out or shipping that first app or whatever it is, that first
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version of it is the hardest one.
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Once you've done that, now you have this basis from which you can draw from and from which
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you can improve from.
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And so thinking about things that make it hard to get started seemed a worthwhile discussion.
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And I think the first place that I wanted to unpack is something that I've -- when you're
00:18:51
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having been an independent developer for a long time now, I've had many discussions at
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conferences and meetups or things like that where I kind of talk to somebody and they
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kind of have the like, "Oh, man, you're living the dream.
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One day I'd love to be an indie too."
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And it's funny because initially I think I was just always entirely encouraging, motivating,
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like, "Yeah, you could totally do it.
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It's awesome.
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And one thing that I learned over time, though, and especially with people who I got to know
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more personally, is often I think you may actually like the idea of something rather
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than the actual pursuit of it.
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And you enjoy the fantasy of whatever this thing is rather than the actually wanting
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the reality of it.
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And that's not really a problem.
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That's totally fine.
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And if that's something that's enjoyable, great.
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But it's also important, I think, to be honest with yourself about which of those situations
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you find yourself in.
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Like, I have a good friend who, he always talks about wanting to be an independent developer,
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but the reality is I'm pretty confident he would hate it, and he just loves the idea
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And once I got to know him well enough that I understood this about him, I changed how
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I talked to him.
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And it's just like a different kind of a thing.
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Rather than getting deep and practical about when he has an idea or a project he's working
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on, how he's going to actually end up shipping it, he just enjoys making projects that never
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see the light of day.
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And that's great.
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Be honest with yourself, not just say like, "Oh, one day I'll be an independent app developer.
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One day I'll do this, one day I'll do that."
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That's not really the truth.
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It's like you may just enjoy the fantasy of that, and if you're honest with yourself,
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that's probably good.
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But if you're not, and if you actually do, if you look at yourself and you say, "This
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is something I want, and this is something that I want to pursue, and I'm looking forward
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to the difficult pursuit of getting there," the most important thing is just to start
00:21:03
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doing it, which is overly simplistic, but is incredibly powerful.
00:21:08
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I remember how I got into podcasting, and I'm not sure if I've told the story on the
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show before, but I for a long time wanted to do podcasts.
00:21:18
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At the period of time, I was just loving podcasts.
00:21:20
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I was listening to podcasts all the time, and I kept having this feeling of, "You know,
00:21:23
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I wonder if I could do that."
00:21:25
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I remember listening to an episode of Back to Work.
00:21:28
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This is with Merlin Mann and Dan Benjamin.
00:21:30
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This is probably back in the first five or six episodes of that show.
00:21:34
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I remember one of the things Merlin said was, "If you think you want to do something,"
00:21:39
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he was using it in the context of writing, but it worked just as well for podcasts.
00:21:43
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He was like, "You just need to sit down and do it every day for a month.
00:21:47
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At the end of that month, you will either love writing, or in this case, podcasting,
00:21:52
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or you'll hate it, but you'll know that.
00:21:54
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If you love it, then you'll have this experience that you can draw from and improve upon.
00:21:59
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If you hate it, then at least you can put that dream aside and not waste time with it."
00:22:05
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In my case, it's just one of those things where it clicked, and I was like, "I'm
00:22:08
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going to do that."
00:22:09
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So I recorded the first five days a week, so it would have been 20 episodes.
00:22:17
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The first 20 episodes of Developing Perspective, I recorded one each day for five episodes
00:22:23
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a week for a month.
00:22:25
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I'm sure hardly anybody listened to them, but I went through the process of doing it,
00:22:29
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and I got to the end, and I was much better than I was in the beginning, and I found that
00:22:34
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I really enjoyed it.
00:22:37
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Rather than trying to guess as to whether I would enjoy it, it's like, "Let's just
00:22:44
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It was just a month.
00:22:45
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If I tried this for a month, and Developing Perspective was 15 minutes a day, it was a
00:22:49
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very short show.
00:22:52
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By getting started, though, I learned that I enjoyed it.
00:22:55
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Now, six and a half years later, I'm still doing it, because I made that choice back
00:23:00
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then to just get started, to see if I actually enjoyed it, and rather than just leaving it
00:23:06
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as this vague, amorphous dream that's just hanging off on the side.
00:23:11
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It's important also to learn that.
00:23:15
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To be honest with yourself, when you are about to start doing something like that, are you
00:23:20
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thinking about doing this thing or wanting to do this thing because you are likely to
00:23:25
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enjoy the process of doing it and that you might want to do it for a long time, or is
00:23:31
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something else maybe biasing your opinion here?
00:23:35
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If it's a hobby that requires you to buy new gear, this is a common thing, whether
00:23:40
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it's fancy notebooks all the way up to video cameras.
00:23:44
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Are you wanting to do this because you like buying new gear or because you actually want
00:23:48
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to do the thing?
00:23:49
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I am a victim of this myself constantly.
00:23:51
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I love buying new gear, and oftentimes I buy more gear than I actually want to end up using
00:23:56
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it long term.
00:23:58
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Video was a great example of that.
00:24:02
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One of the reasons why I want to be on YouTube in some way greater than I am now is because
00:24:06
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there's a ton of people there, and I want to be able to grow my audience for my other
00:24:09
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stuff using YouTube as leverage.
00:24:11
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That's not a great reason, honestly.
00:24:14
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All that's saying is I want to succeed in my other stuff, not that I want to make videos.
00:24:19
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And so you have to be careful when you're looking at something as a new project.
00:24:25
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Are you interested in it for reasons that are likely to succeed for you, likely to work
00:24:30
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out for you?
00:24:31
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Or are you interested in it because you want to buy fancy gear or you want to make money
00:24:35
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or something like that?
00:24:36
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Yeah, and to that end, it's a good example of I suffer from the same gear and equipment
00:24:45
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distraction with new projects.
00:24:48
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It's so easy, I think, to focus on the gear or the equipment rather than the actual work
00:24:55
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I remember I had to make the choice with podcasting as an example.
00:25:00
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The reason the first episodes are recorded on that USB headset that I had sitting in
00:25:05
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my closet is because I said to myself, "If I do this five days a week for a month, then
00:25:11
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I can buy myself a nice microphone."
00:25:14
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And I pushed the gear choices and those distractions off into the future and said that it's better
00:25:22
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for that first episode to sound a little crackly and to sound not perfect.
00:25:27
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It's far better for that and for me to actually do it rather than sort of like, perciparating
00:25:31
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back and forth about which microphone should I get.
00:25:34
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It's like pushing those things off both is helpful in removing the distraction now, as
00:25:38
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well as in that case, it was a nice incentive that I gave for myself.
00:25:43
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When I got to the end of that month and I had been doing it, it's like I have this
00:25:46
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nice reward waiting for me that I feel like I earned, which was in itself then motivating
00:25:51
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and encouraging to keep at it because like, "Hey, now I've got a good microphone.
00:25:54
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I'm going to sound even better."
00:25:56
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So pushing those kinds of distractions off as much as you can can be incredibly helpful.
00:26:01
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Don't worry about, "What kind of Mac do I need to get if I want to be a developer?"
00:26:06
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Any Mac will do.
00:26:07
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It doesn't matter.
00:26:08
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Just start doing it.
00:26:11
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If and when it becomes something that needs more horsepower and you need a bigger computer,
00:26:18
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But that's going to be down the road.
00:26:19
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It doesn't have to be right now.
00:26:21
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Yeah, exactly.
00:26:23
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And yeah, gear selection not only can be a way that can bias you into choosing something
00:26:30
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►
that maybe you shouldn't or won't want to do long term, but it also can be a procrastination
00:26:36
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It's like, "Well, I can't start this podcast until I have a really great microphone
00:26:40
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and it's going to take me six months to research that or to waffle over which one
00:26:44
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to get or to get enough money to get a really good one."
00:26:47
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Whereas just starting and just trying it with whatever you have is way more likely to succeed
00:26:55
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because it jumps you over that first hurdle of getting the minimum gear you need to do
00:27:00
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►
a thing into actually doing the thing because that's the harder thing to keep up over
00:27:04
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the long term.
00:27:06
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Everybody can buy a microphone, but not everybody can show up every week and make a podcast
00:27:12
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that they enjoy making and that anyone else enjoys listening to.
00:27:17
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►
The actual making of the thing, the actual doing of the thing is going to take way more
00:27:21
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►
time long term and whether you can and enjoy doing that, it matters way more than whatever
00:27:29
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gear you picked at the beginning.
00:27:31
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So it helps to jump right over the gear selection in a fast, easy way possible just so you can
00:27:37
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then get to the actual hard part to see if you can actually keep up the content side
00:27:44
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I'm trying to think of the other things that are hard to keep me from starting.
00:27:48
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I think the last one, and it's probably a good place to wrap up, is I was thinking about
00:27:53
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the fear of failing or just fear in general.
00:27:58
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I think that is so often a thing that has held me back from doing something is that
00:28:02
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I can imagine the worst case scenario and I make that actually bigger than it actually
00:28:10
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►
Something that I have been trying, I mean, this is true in life, but works well for something
00:28:16
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►
like this discussion is to really ask myself if failing would be as bad as I fear it might
00:28:23
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►
If you start something and you put some time and effort into something and it turns out
00:28:28
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►
that, in general, most people's version of failure is obscurity.
00:28:33
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►
Your app doesn't sell, your podcast isn't listened to, no one reads your blog post.
00:28:38
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►
Obscurity is usually the worst case scenario.
00:28:42
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►
You fail alone.
00:28:44
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If anything, that's great.
00:28:45
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►
If no one knows you failed, okay.
00:28:47
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Yeah, no one sees it.
00:28:49
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You can try again.
00:28:51
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►
Maybe that gets slightly more complicated if you establish a bigger audience down the
00:28:55
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►
It gets slightly trickier.
00:28:56
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►
But even there, I've found, even once I've had a slightly bigger audience for my apps
00:29:02
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►
and when I first launched them, they get a lot more attention.
00:29:05
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►
It's like, I still launched some pretty terrible things and it's okay.
00:29:09
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►
People forget failures pretty quickly.
00:29:12
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►
They remember your successes and they tend to forget your failures for the most part.
00:29:16
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►
So don't worry about it.
00:29:17
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Just move on with it and try.
00:29:21
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That's all the time we have for this week.
00:29:22
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So good luck everybody with whatever you're going to start.
00:29:25
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And thanks for listening and we'll talk to you next week.