Developing Perspective

00:00:00 ◼   ► Hello and welcome to Developing Perspective.

00:00:01 ◼   ► Developing Perspective is a show about independent iOS app development.

00:00:04 ◼   ► I'm

00:00:06 ◼   ► this week I'm going to talk about a bit more of a feelings topic.

00:00:09 ◼   ► Sometimes these topics are a bit more in the feelings, sometimes they're a bit

00:00:12 ◼   ► more deep in the weeds, technically.

00:00:13 ◼   ► This one's very much in the feels.

00:00:15 ◼   ► Um and it sort of just relates to a feeling I've been having in

00:00:18 ◼   ► kind of the reality of it being the end of a development cycle, the

00:00:22 ◼   ► end of a summer, a summer that felt like it was honestly just like

00:00:26 ◼   ► never gonna end, which is essentially what I'm gonna be talking about.

00:00:29 ◼   ► Um but to s start and kind of lay the groundwork for my discussion,

00:00:32 ◼   ► I was gonna start with something that you'll probably notice is a bit of

00:00:35 ◼   ► a theme uh with the show, with a hiking anecdote, or in this case,

00:00:39 ◼   ► a particular mountain that I uh like hiking on.

00:00:42 ◼   ► And it's one of the things about this mountain.

00:00:45 ◼   ► So if you are an a a video listener to the show, welcome.

00:00:48 ◼   ► It's great.

00:00:49 ◼   ► Nice to see you.

00:00:50 ◼   ► Um you will s notice that the background behind me is slightly different to

00:00:54 ◼   ► what it has been in the previous previous episodes, and that's because the view

00:00:58 ◼   ► behind me is the view from a mountain called Lufrig in the U the

00:01:02 ◼   ► UK Lake District.

00:01:03 ◼   ► It is one of my favorite views.

00:01:05 ◼   ► It's a fabulous mountain.

00:01:06 ◼   ► Um and I shifted my whole office around so that you could see it

00:01:09 ◼   ► because usually it's not behind me it's front of me because I love seeing

00:01:12 ◼   ► this view so much.

00:01:12 ◼   ► So I wanna look up for my computer and see it on a regular

00:01:15 ◼   ► basis.

00:01:16 ◼   ► Um and one of the reasons I love this view so much is because

00:01:19 ◼   ► it's a place that I've had some really wonderful memories sp um places that

00:01:24 ◼   ► a place that I've gone on some really awesome hikes.

00:01:27 ◼   ► And the reason this view in particular, um in addition just it's a lovely

00:01:31 ◼   ► view, especially looking down south and west, you know, towards Coniston and uh Windermere,

00:01:36 ◼   ► it's amazing.

00:01:37 ◼   ► Or the Langdales off to the far west.

00:01:38 ◼   ► Like it's a gr it's a great view, don't get me wrong.

00:01:40 ◼   ► But it's also a place that I've taken several people as their first hike

00:01:45 ◼   ► in the Lake District.

00:01:46 ◼   ► Um it's a place that I is very near and dear to my heart.

00:01:48 ◼   ► And I love taking people who haven't been to the Lake District for the

00:01:52 ◼   ► first time.

00:01:53 ◼   ► And when I do, um, I tend to take them for a hike up

00:01:56 ◼   ► lift rig, because it is this perfect kind of balance between difficulty and challenge,

00:02:01 ◼   ► and you know, the reward at the end with this gorgeous view that you

00:02:05 ◼   ► get is wonderful.

00:02:05 ◼   ► It's close to this town of Grasmere, so this would you know you can

00:02:09 ◼   ► go go to a coffee shop before or after, get a good lunch.

00:02:11 ◼   ► It's perfect.

00:02:12 ◼   ► And like it's the thing that I found after years and years of going

00:02:15 ◼   ► to the Lake District is the best.

00:02:16 ◼   ► And but the reason I bring it up In this context, um not just

00:02:20 ◼   ► rambling about a place I love, um, is because it's a thing where

00:02:26 ◼   ► as you go up it, just the shape of Lafrague, the shape of this

00:02:30 ◼   ► mountain, is such that you are constantly encountering false summits.

00:02:36 ◼   ► And so a false summit, if you aren't into hiking, is essentially a phenomenon

00:02:41 ◼   ► where because of the perspective you have going up and the shape of the

00:02:45 ◼   ► mountain, there will be points ahead of you, or sort of along the path

00:02:49 ◼   ► you're taking, where it looks like you're about to get to the top, where

00:02:53 ◼   ► you're about to reach the actual summit of this mountain.

00:02:56 ◼   ► And it looks like that, and there's nothing visually that you could tell that

00:02:59 ◼   ► would mean that there was something higher behind it.

00:03:02 ◼   ► Um, but in fact, you get to this what looks like the summit, and

00:03:06 ◼   ► as soon as you crest that l this the you know, that little rise

00:03:08 ◼   ► on the h on the mountainside, you immediately see another one.

00:03:13 ◼   ► And Luff Rig is kind of famous for having like four of these.

00:03:17 ◼   ► There's subs just the nature of the shape of it is such that you

00:03:21 ◼   ► keep feeling like you're getting to the top of the mountain, you're about to

00:03:25 ◼   ► you know, be rewarded with a view, you're about to get there, and you

00:03:28 ◼   ► get there only to discover that there's more work to be done, that there's

00:03:32 ◼   ► more that you need to do, there's more climbing that you have to do.

00:03:36 ◼   ► Um, and that's in some ways one of the things I like about taking

00:03:39 ◼   ► people up this mountain, particularly for people who haven't done a lot of hiking.

00:03:42 ◼   ► If it's like the first mountain they've climbed, they can have this experience because

00:03:45 ◼   ► it's kind of intrinsic to both hiking and like the reality is a bit

00:03:49 ◼   ► life.

00:03:49 ◼   ► Um and that's the feeling that I've been having a lot recently.

00:03:52 ◼   ► Um so this summer in particular was just felt kind of a never ending

00:03:56 ◼   ► series of false summits.

00:03:58 ◼   ► Like we kept having to do things.

00:04:00 ◼   ► It's now November and I think on November first or second I shipped my

00:04:04 ◼   ► final sort of summer release, which November is not summer by it by any

00:04:09 ◼   ► stretch of the imagination, but that's how long it took this year.

00:04:13 ◼   ► Because things kept happening.

00:04:14 ◼   ► And we had the announcements in June of what was gonna happen with iOS

00:04:17 ◼   ► twenty seven.

00:04:18 ◼   ► We did all those updates in September and then hey here's the duo.

00:04:21 ◼   ► Exciting, fun, interesting, like I've enjoyed work developing for the duo.

00:04:24 ◼   ► And we talked of you know spent an hour last week talking about how

00:04:27 ◼   ► Roth and I did that work and it's I'm glad we did it, but

00:04:30 ◼   ► my goodness.

00:04:31 ◼   ► It just means that we keep having to go.

00:04:34 ◼   ► And we launched Check the Weather um about a week and a half ago

00:04:37 ◼   ► now, which was this brand new app that I've launched.

00:04:39 ◼   ► And like launching a new app is a place where it is just enough

00:04:43 ◼   ► feels even more of this feeling of like the sense of false summit because

00:04:46 ◼   ► you spend all this time working towards this goal that you're gonna get your

00:04:50 ◼   ► release, you're gonna m put it out into the world, and you you then

00:04:53 ◼   ► you do it.

00:04:54 ◼   ► And then you discover that that's only like you've only just reached the starting

00:05:00 ◼   ► line.

00:05:00 ◼   ► You know, y it is not that you have finished the race, you've not

00:05:03 ◼   ► come to the end, you know, you've reached the end of something, but realistically

00:05:06 ◼   ► what has happened is you have just now reached the starting line and you

00:05:10 ◼   ► have a whole other summit that you now need to work on.

00:05:13 ◼   ► And that def definitely happened with Check the Weather for me.

00:05:15 ◼   ► Like it was a weird feeling.

00:05:17 ◼   ► Because I haven't new apps in a while.

00:05:19 ◼   ► Like Check the Weather is one of the the few times I've launched a

00:05:22 ◼   ► new app recently.

00:05:23 ◼   ► It was just this weird feeling of like right, yeah.

00:05:28 ◼   ► Like in my mind I think I'd sort of put to the side that

00:05:32 ◼   ► that was just getting to this starting point.

00:05:35 ◼   ► That was not actually getting to the end of anything.

00:05:38 ◼   ► That was just getting to the start.

00:05:39 ◼   ► And so I'm not gonna lie, it was a little complicated that that that

00:05:43 ◼   ► next day where it's like, whew.

00:05:45 ◼   ► Like you take in that deep breath and you have that feeling of like,

00:05:48 ◼   ► wow, okay, yeah, this is gonna be a lot of work.

00:05:51 ◼   ► Right?

00:05:51 ◼   ► Like this is gonna keep going and be a lot of things that I

00:05:54 ◼   ► need to do and in some ways that's just the job.

00:05:57 ◼   ► Like that's just doing this work is that never ending sense of there's always

00:06:03 ◼   ► more to be done, there's always something more to do.

00:06:07 ◼   ► Um and that's fine.

00:06:08 ◼   ► Like that's good in some ways.

00:06:09 ◼   ► Like it would be kinda sad if I released, you know, the first version

00:06:13 ◼   ► of Check the Weather's relaunch and that was it.

00:06:16 ◼   ► You know, it's exciting.

00:06:17 ◼   ► It's fun.

00:06:18 ◼   ► It's it's interesting.

00:06:18 ◼   ► There's ideas and things that I didn't have or that I wasn't able to

00:06:22 ◼   ► squeeze into this launch that now I'll have the opportunity to work on.

00:06:26 ◼   ► There's lots of inevitable things that are gonna come up that I'm gonna have

00:06:29 ◼   ► to work on with other apps.

00:06:30 ◼   ► You know, it's like I thought I'd finally finished getting rid of all my

00:06:33 ◼   ► things and then Apple announces that now Siri AI is available in a bunch

00:06:38 ◼   ► of new contexts and for different.

00:06:40 ◼   ► It's like, oh, okay, well that was a false summit, you know, sort of

00:06:43 ◼   ► thinking that I'd finally gotten to the end of this um this fall's Apple-driven

00:06:47 ◼   ► releases.

00:06:49 ◼   ► Um Yeah, and that can be a bit discouraging.

00:06:51 ◼   ► It can be a bit tricky.

00:06:53 ◼   ► And yeah, so I just wanted to have a sort of a discussion about

00:06:56 ◼   ► that.

00:06:56 ◼   ► Because I think it is very easy to focus on on these incremental summits

00:07:02 ◼   ► and you know, sort of it's good to celebrate them, it's good to recognize

00:07:06 ◼   ► them and I think that's one of the most important things.

00:07:08 ◼   ► I mean similarly in hiking, like when you get to the false summit is

00:07:11 ◼   ► a great time to pull some chocolate out of your backpack and, you know,

00:07:14 ◼   ► have it yourself share it with the person who was just sort of disappointed

00:07:17 ◼   ► by fe realizing that they weren't at the the top of the mountain.

00:07:21 ◼   ► But in in work, in in practice, it's there are these moments where you're

00:07:25 ◼   ► like, you know, uh you on the one hand you can it can be

00:07:27 ◼   ► exciting.

00:07:27 ◼   ► It can be interesting, you can think about what's next, but it can also

00:07:31 ◼   ► just as much sometimes be a bit discouraging and feel a bit of a

00:07:35 ◼   ► letdown that um I mean, especially if if the release you're doing or the

00:07:39 ◼   ► reception to it isn't what you had in mind.

00:07:42 ◼   ► And I think this is something that I've also gotten very aware of the

00:07:45 ◼   ► more I've been doing this job, is that it is very easy doing this

00:07:51 ◼   ► work to want to have things

00:07:56 ◼   ► like

00:07:58 ◼   ► feel like you've really accomplished something that things are gonna go amazingly.

00:08:03 ◼   ► Um this is totally new, it is novel, everyone's gonna love it.

00:08:07 ◼   ► How can you know like you are bringing forth into the world this most

00:08:10 ◼   ► incredible thing?

00:08:12 ◼   ► And in some ways you have to have that kind of like almost like

00:08:16 ◼   ► unfounded optimism about your work.

00:08:19 ◼   ► Because in order to get from one false summit to the next, you need

00:08:23 ◼   ► a drive, you need a motivation, you need a sense of like impetus behind

00:08:28 ◼   ► you to get you there.

00:08:29 ◼   ► And a lot of times in my experience, that becomes very like it's just

00:08:32 ◼   ► sort of this optimism you have.

00:08:33 ◼   ► You get excited, you get giddy, you're like yeah, this is so cool.

00:08:35 ◼   ► I can't wait to show everybody.

00:08:37 ◼   ► This is gonna be incredible.

00:08:38 ◼   ► Um and the reality, unfortunately, as someone who's launched a tremendous number of things

00:08:42 ◼   ► over the years, that is very rarely the case.

00:08:45 ◼   ► Sometimes you can be very fortunate and you can have a situation where it

00:08:49 ◼   ► truly is like it lives up to the expectation, the optimism, the sense of

00:08:54 ◼   ► des sort of desire you have for what it will be.

00:08:57 ◼   ► Majority of the time it isn't.

00:08:59 ◼   ► But that that unfounded optimism though is essential.

00:09:02 ◼   ► Like you couldn't do this work, especially as an indie, especially as someone who

00:09:07 ◼   ► isn't doing it as a job where you have to do it, that I

00:09:11 ◼   ► sense.

00:09:12 ◼   ► Like you you in some ways, if it was your job well, you're opt

00:09:15 ◼   ► you don't need optimism to drive you into work every day.

00:09:18 ◼   ► You can just you go to work because it's your job.

00:09:20 ◼   ► But if you're the one kind of making these decisions and deciding that you

00:09:23 ◼   ► want to do this work, it's something you have to kind of keep convincing

00:09:26 ◼   ► yourself uh to do.

00:09:28 ◼   ► And I think that does require a lot of kind of this op unfounded

00:09:31 ◼   ► optimism.

00:09:32 ◼   ► And so it can be kind of a weird letdown when you get to

00:09:36 ◼   ► the place that you've kind of the our optimism has brought you to a

00:09:39 ◼   ► place and then now you're there.

00:09:41 ◼   ► And so yeah so it's it's tough.

00:09:43 ◼   ► But I think maybe it's sort of like just thinking about a bit like

00:09:46 ◼   ► what does that actually mean?

00:09:47 ◼   ► Like what can we do if we start to view our work in the

00:09:51 ◼   ► sense of a series of false summits that you never actually are reaching somewhere

00:09:55 ◼   ► because in some ways that sounds very forlorn and sad.

00:09:59 ◼   ► That like you're just sort of on this endless treadmill that's never going anywhere.

00:10:03 ◼   ► And what you know, what's the point of any of this?

00:10:05 ◼   ► If that's what's really happening?

00:10:06 ◼   ► You know, you're climbing a mountain that you can never see the top of.

00:10:08 ◼   ► You can never reach the amazing view um looking out from this you know

00:10:13 ◼   ► at the summit.

00:10:14 ◼   ► Um and s I don't have a great answer to that.

00:10:16 ◼   ► I don't think there is to some degree an answer.

00:10:18 ◼   ► It's one of those sort of just like realities of life rather than something

00:10:21 ◼   ► that some, you know, sort of trite saying would be able to to turn

00:10:25 ◼   ► around.

00:10:26 ◼   ► But I think some things I have learned is one is that it's very

00:10:30 ◼   ► important to celebrate when you get to these false summits, to view them as

00:10:34 ◼   ► milestones and checkpoints and opportunities to celebrate with the people you've worked on something

00:10:40 ◼   ► with, or just with your family, loved ones, whatever it is, like take that

00:10:44 ◼   ► time to s take a step back and be like, yeah, we accomplished something.

00:10:47 ◼   ► Yeah, that was really cool.

00:10:49 ◼   ► We did it.

00:10:49 ◼   ► Um, and celebrate that in a tangible and real way.

00:10:52 ◼   ► I mean if if I'm gonna torture the metaphor a bit, this is the

00:10:55 ◼   ► like turning around when you're climbing a mountain and seeing whatever the view is

00:10:59 ◼   ► you've reached at this point.

00:11:01 ◼   ► Because typically the views get better the farther you go um the higher you

00:11:05 ◼   ► go.

00:11:06 ◼   ► And so that is something that you can celebrate along the way.

00:11:09 ◼   ► It isn't about just the summit.

00:11:11 ◼   ► It is about these incremental checkpoints uh and moments and times that you can

00:11:16 ◼   ► take a step back.

00:11:17 ◼   ► And I think the other thing that it makes me think about is it's

00:11:20 ◼   ► just if you know the summit ahead of you.

00:11:23 ◼   ► So when I go and climb Lifrig, I know all of those summits are

00:11:27 ◼   ► false.

00:11:28 ◼   ► I know that when I get there, it's not the top.

00:11:31 ◼   ► I know what the top actually looks like in that case.

00:11:33 ◼   ► I do think it makes it easier to do the climb.

00:11:36 ◼   ► I think there is something about being clear-eyed and honest about what you're accomplishing

00:11:43 ◼   ► that is useful and important in this context.

00:11:46 ◼   ► So in my work, it is useful that I have the experience that says,

00:11:50 ◼   ► You're never going to arrive.

00:11:52 ◼   ► You are only ever going to be on this process where you are incrementally

00:11:57 ◼   ► making steps and reaching checkpoints along the way.

00:12:00 ◼   ► That is weirdly encouraging because if I decide to move forward, to do the

00:12:05 ◼   ► work, to start the project, knowing that it's not going to be the end,

00:12:10 ◼   ► there's never going to be a point where you've actually finished and accomplished something.

00:12:15 ◼   ► That's weirdly encouraging because I'm making that choice in full knowledge of it, right?

00:12:20 ◼   ► There's not as much disappointment when you get to the checkpoint if you knew

00:12:24 ◼   ► it was just a checkpoint.

00:12:25 ◼   ► Um, and so that's why I wanted to record this episode while I have

00:12:28 ◼   ► these feelings a bit fresh.

00:12:30 ◼   ► Because while I still have that kind of like, oh boy, do I wish

00:12:33 ◼   ► it was a bit more of a summit than a checkpoint, knowing that it

00:12:36 ◼   ► is a checkpoint, knowing that this is just the natural part of the process,

00:12:40 ◼   ► and I'm gonna start another thing, and I'm working the next update for Check

00:12:43 ◼   ► the Weather, and I'm working on the next update for Widgetsmith, and I'm thinking

00:12:46 ◼   ► about Siri AI integration in my apps now that Apple's announced that.

00:12:50 ◼   ► Like those are just the inevitable and natural pro part of this.

00:12:55 ◼   ► And that is weirdly s like reassuring that yeah, I I'm doing this because

00:12:59 ◼   ► I want to do the work, not because I want to reach the destination.

00:13:01 ◼   ► Right.

00:13:01 ◼   ► Like I go it's like the I go hiking to go on to take

00:13:06 ◼   ► the steps not just to reach the top of the summit.

00:13:08 ◼   ► You know, if I got in a helicopter and it dropped me off at

00:13:11 ◼   ► the summit, I would not have as good of a day as I would

00:13:14 ◼   ► have starting, you know, starting down at the lake and walking my all the

00:13:18 ◼   ► way up to the summit uh myself.

00:13:20 ◼   ► And I think that is, yeah, just an encouragement that I tell myself when

00:13:24 ◼   ► these days where my feelings are a bit more mixed up and I am

00:13:28 ◼   ► both sort of sad and encouraged at the same time and things are a

00:13:32 ◼   ► bit mi bit messy.

00:13:33 ◼   ► It's like I enjoy the feeling that I can look up at that next

00:13:36 ◼   ► summit and say, boy, I wonder what the view is gonna be like up

00:13:39 ◼   ► there.

00:13:40 ◼   ► And so hopefully that's helpful for you.

00:13:42 ◼   ► Anyway, thanks