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Under the Radar

253: Motivation Slumps

 

00:00:00   Welcome to Under the Radar, a show about independent iOS app development. I'm Mark Guarmant.

00:00:05   And I'm David Smith. Under the Radar is usually not longer than 30 minutes, so let's get started.

00:00:09   So today I want to talk about motivation, or lack thereof, or

00:00:15   the things that get in the way of motivation. And

00:00:18   I think it's a perennial topic. I think some of our earlier, earliest episodes are even talking about motivation, but

00:00:25   it's perennial, I think, because it is consistently difficult and is consistently relevant.

00:00:32   Like, it is not something that I don't think I will ever, like, solve.

00:00:35   That one day I was just like, "You know, I've nailed it. I know exactly how to stay motivated,

00:00:40   how to be motivated, how to be super productive. I don't expect that to ever be the case. I've been

00:00:45   doing this, you know, I've been a professional programmer for over 20 years now, and it's still

00:00:50   gestural with it just as much as I did in those early days. So I don't think it's going to go away.

00:00:55   But what I can do is to just try and understand it, to try and come up with strategies that allow

00:01:02   me to work around it and to be more productive as a result, or at least not be hard on myself when

00:01:08   I'm not being productive. And the specific sort of framing and thing that I wanted, the path I wanted

00:01:14   to walk us down today is coming from a fantastic episode of the Script Notes Podcast, which is a

00:01:21   weekly podcast by John August and Craig Mazin, talking about screenwriting and things that are

00:01:26   interesting to screenwriters, which in some ways you wouldn't think is like, "What, Dave,

00:01:30   why do you listen to that? You are a programmer." And I will say something about this show. And I

00:01:34   think there are many shows like it, that hearing people talk, who are sort of experts in their

00:01:40   field, talk about the way in which they go around making things, like talking about their craft,

00:01:46   is incredibly valuable and is incredibly useful. And I've been listening to Script Notes for,

00:01:51   I don't even know, I think they're in episodes, something like 500 and something, and I've been

00:01:55   listening since I think the 200s. For a very long time I've been listening to this show because

00:02:00   while I don't ever expect to write a screenplay, which is what ostensibly they're talking about,

00:02:05   I've learned a tremendous amount about being better at making things. And I imagine in some

00:02:10   ways, so like I would recommend this show to anyone, and I would imagine, especially if you're

00:02:14   someone who listens to Under the Radar for the same who, but you're not a programmer. And I know

00:02:18   you're out there because I've heard from you that there are people who listen to this show who just

00:02:21   listening to it because hearing Marco and I talk about what we do and how we do it is useful. And

00:02:27   this is another show in the same exact mold where it's people who just are being thoughtful about

00:02:33   what it is to make it. But anyway, that's an aside, but a recommendation. In this last episode,

00:02:40   John was talking about the difference between motivation and inspiration. And there was this

00:02:49   framing about separating those as sort of somewhat separate things where motivation is best in some

00:02:56   ways thought of is the sort of showing up and doing the work regardless. And inspiration is

00:03:04   in some ways, at least the way I took it, is inspiration is those things where you have a spark,

00:03:10   an idea, something that gets sort of a bee in your bonnet that you just can't get rid of,

00:03:15   and it creates motivation almost in and of itself. And those moments can be incredibly effective,

00:03:23   can be incredibly important. And if I'm honest, as I look at myself as a developer,

00:03:28   my business is built on inspiration-driven development where I do my best work and work,

00:03:40   get the most output out of myself when I'm inspired, when I have that sense of like, "Wow,

00:03:47   I have a cool idea. I want to build something," and I go and do it. When that happens, it's amazing.

00:03:53   And I think it is useful to separate that from just regular motivation in terms of the ability

00:04:00   to get work done, just regardless of the circumstances, regardless of the task,

00:04:05   because sometimes you won't be inspired. And sometimes you have things that are making you

00:04:11   work that are different than just like the glorious, wonderful, you sit down, you have an

00:04:16   idea and you're flowing and you're in Xcode and it's amazing. When that happens, that's great,

00:04:21   but that isn't most of the time. And I think what really is interesting is, sort of like

00:04:27   noodling this around in my head all week, is the sense that in motivation, we typically think of it

00:04:34   in terms of there's two kinds of motivation. There's intrinsic and extrinsic motivation.

00:04:39   So intrinsic motivation is the sort of self-directed ability of someone to

00:04:47   work towards something because of an inner drive and desire to accomplish it. That intrinsic,

00:04:54   they decide, "I want to do it," and they go and do it. Whereas extrinsic motivation is the

00:05:00   alternative side of that, whereas instead, it's something outside of you that is causing you to

00:05:07   do whatever it is that you need to do to complete this work. This can be a boss, this can be a

00:05:13   teacher, this is a deadline that you put on yourself, whatever those things like. It's

00:05:17   something outside yourself that is causing you to do whatever it is that you need to do.

00:05:23   And I think what was interesting is, the more I thought about it, inspiration works,

00:05:29   and why it's so powerful is because it is both intrinsic and extrinsic at the same time. And it

00:05:35   is like the intersection diagram of those two things, where it is internally generated and

00:05:40   internally important, but it almost creates this external push on you because it's something that

00:05:47   you don't want to lose. And it's like the inspiration of the idea itself becomes your boss,

00:05:53   your teacher, your deadline, and pushes you to work. And I think that is just an interesting way

00:05:58   to think about it. And I think an interesting kind of reality that understanding that there are

00:06:03   different modes and different things that motivate you, at least for me, is helpful where right now,

00:06:08   I feel very unmotivated at work. And this is not atypical very often this time of year,

00:06:14   I feel very unmotivated because over the summer, I have lots and lots of extrinsic motivation,

00:06:19   because there's an iOS release coming sometime in September, I have to get this work done. If

00:06:24   it's not done by then, bad things happen. I have that kind of external pressure. I get through

00:06:31   September, I get it out, and that goes away. And I'm left with only sort of in some ways,

00:06:36   my self-directed motivation of which I have very little. And then it's almost like I transition

00:06:41   instead into just like inspiration driven, where it's like the only time I'm actually excited and

00:06:46   able to really do lots of work is when it's happening as a result of an idea I have,

00:06:51   something that gets exciting. And that sort of like creates this motivation storm that I will

00:06:56   then be able to ride for a little bit until it dies away. And then I'm unmotivated again entirely.

00:07:03   This is so, so familiar to me. Oh my God, everything that you just said, it's like,

00:07:09   yep, me too. I mean, I too, I've had a terrible, I feel terrible about my work right now. I just

00:07:17   feel awful about it. I feel like I'm getting nothing done. I feel like I have gotten nothing

00:07:22   done for months. I'm extremely unmotivated, very low energy, very low confidence. And I go through

00:07:29   the cycles, as you were saying, like fall, early fall with the end of the betas and the release of

00:07:35   the new hardware, that is the busiest time for us usually. I kind of burn out after that for a

00:07:40   little while because when I am working at my best, I am capable of incredible productivity,

00:07:49   but it always is in a burst form. It's a burst of it for a little while, whatever that is. Sometimes

00:07:56   it's one day, sometimes it can be like a week or two, maybe a month if I'm lucky. But for the most

00:08:02   part, that's a burst. And then I have to basically come down and recharge and have relatively low

00:08:10   productivity for usually three or four times whatever that interval was. And that can be months

00:08:16   or at least weeks. And during those times, I really feel terrible about my work, about myself,

00:08:22   about what am I doing here. And it can be very hard to swing back out of that again, to get back

00:08:33   into doing things. And this past couple of months have been interruption after interruption,

00:08:39   distraction after distraction, failed effort after failed effort. And part of why I push for certain

00:08:48   things that I push for, things like using mature tools, keeping certain problem sets simple,

00:08:56   not tackling too many really hairy, difficult problems, is because there are certain things

00:09:02   that I think sap your productivity and your motivation faster than others. I mean, certainly

00:09:07   interruptions are a big one. And that's something that a lot of times we just can't control. I mean,

00:09:12   to some degree, we have control over our environment. But if the interruptions are

00:09:15   coming from things like events around you, your family, situational stuff that's happening around

00:09:22   you, things you have to do for yourself, maybe for other reasons like for health or whatever,

00:09:26   there's so many interruptions to our work. And that has been the summary of my last month.

00:09:34   Has just been like, "Oh, I'm getting somewhere, getting somewhere. Oh, nope,

00:09:38   you got to stop right now because something has to be taken care of." Or it's a day off of school.

00:09:45   And so you don't want to leave your kid alone in front of a screen all day long, or stuff like

00:09:50   that. Or you have to go to a wedding, go to a family event. There's been so many of those things

00:09:55   in my life for the last couple of months. None of this is, it isn't just happening to me. Some of

00:10:00   it's my fault too. I'm sharing the blame here. But there's so many of those things that I've had

00:10:07   very little work time that's made up of solid long blocks. I've had a lot of little slices. Oh,

00:10:14   you can work on stuff for two hours. Oh, stop. You can have 45 minutes here. Oh, stop. And

00:10:21   that kind of thing saps motivation like crazy. Another thing is fighting your tools. Again,

00:10:28   this is why I always think of keeping things as conservative as possible with tooling. This is

00:10:34   why I don't jump into new frameworks, new languages, new APIs on day one or on year one. Because

00:10:42   fighting your tools, fighting your languages, if you're hitting bugs in Xcode or whatever,

00:10:48   that's a motivation killer. Fighting the Apple distribution system in whatever form that takes

00:10:55   between the code signing all the way up to app store review, that's a motivation killer.

00:10:59   And so what I have found for my kind of general motivation happiness is to try to create

00:11:09   opportunities where you can work for a long span of time, maybe like a whole day. If you're lucky,

00:11:14   multiple days, but that's too optimistic for me usually. If you can get a whole day where

00:11:21   you're only doing the fun part. And this is not going to obviously be possible every day,

00:11:26   but try to cram in one of these on some kind of regular basis, whether you can do it once a week

00:11:31   or twice, whatever it is, whatever you can do. Stack all your work in such a way that you can

00:11:37   have one big block of time that you can do the part that you actually like. So for us, it's

00:11:42   probably like the actual working in Xcode, like that part. I love that part. And I am so often

00:11:48   not doing that part because something else gets in the way. And if you can coalesce your availability

00:11:55   and how you arrange administrative tasks or other BS that you don't want to deal with,

00:12:02   I have found that helps a lot. And where if you just say, all right, here's an entire day. And if

00:12:07   you start that day unmotivated or in like, you know, a low, low energy state, if you then give

00:12:13   yourself, all right, this entire day, all I have to do today is open up Xcode and try to get something

00:12:19   done. And there's nothing else on your plate that day. And you have four hours and then a quick meal

00:12:26   and then four more hours, whatever it is, whatever you can do. That is a really good way to get

00:12:33   yourself moving again, to like unfreeze yourself, to get the wheels moving, start building some

00:12:40   inertia. And even if you only have one of those a week, that's enough not only to get a decent

00:12:45   amount done, you'd be surprised, but also to help you judge yourself more positively, to help you

00:12:53   turn your own mood around and to be less judgmental about yourself being like, man, I'm pretty

00:12:59   worthless this week. I'm not getting anything done. Like if you have a day or two where you

00:13:02   can get something done in that large block, it is extremely helpful in so many ways. And

00:13:09   whenever I go like a week or two or three without having anything like that, like I am right now,

00:13:16   I feel horrible about my work. But when I've been able to do that, and I'm here, I'm talking to

00:13:23   myself here, this is the path out of this, like this is how to do it. And I've even found that it

00:13:29   matters like what I'm working on during that time. Like part of the reason why I've had a lot of,

00:13:37   well, I've felt down a lot recently about my Overcast work is that I've spent so much time

00:13:43   recently bogged down in either server work, which I'm increasingly coming to hate and increasingly

00:13:50   looking to get myself out of some capacity. And also the kind of work where I'm just dealing with

00:13:58   other people's problems or stuff in the sense that Overcast crawls a bunch of podcasts and then has

00:14:05   to serve those people. Well, recently I've been having problems with podcasts I've been crawling

00:14:10   in various ways. Like all of Cloudflare I'm having a problem with right now, which is kind of big.

00:14:16   There are different podcast hosts that mess up their GUIDs or have bad redirects or things.

00:14:23   I have to deal with this problem now. It feels like repetitive, almost janitorial work of like,

00:14:33   "I'm cleaning up someone else's mess here. I'd rather be making the app better for everybody,

00:14:38   but instead I have to do this." And part of that is, "Oh, well, bad luck, bad timing. This kind

00:14:43   of stuff happens sometimes." Part of it is, "I made an app that depends on a bunch of other

00:14:48   people's servers and content and behavior, and so I kind of signed up for this." And so if I'm trying

00:14:55   to get a nice, satisfying, large block of work done, it's probably better to either not go into

00:15:03   this kind of business to begin with, but hey, I'm here now, and/or to work on an area that doesn't

00:15:09   touch all that stuff. So rather than working on something that needs a server-side component

00:15:14   or something that needs to deal with people's broken feeds or broken hosts, work on something

00:15:21   that's totally self-contained and away from all those areas, like some kind of fun interface

00:15:26   feature or something like that. I found that kind of thing helps a lot as well.

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00:16:57   So I really appreciate you saying that. While I'm sad to hear that it's been a difficult time

00:17:04   recently for you, there is something, and this is part of why I wanted to bring this up as a topic,

00:17:08   is there is something encouraging about not feeling alone in that. That like,

00:17:14   you are someone whose work I admire, who has created wonderful things, but yet you still

00:17:19   struggle with this. And I feel like it's the same with me, where I feel like I've made things that

00:17:24   are successful and have done well, but it is still something that I struggle with. And I think being

00:17:31   forthright about that is useful. Because I think the spiral that you start to talk about of like

00:17:38   starting to think of yourself, you know, it's like, I'm a bad developer. I mean,

00:17:43   you can get into the imposter syndrome side of that or just the classic, I mean, even just like

00:17:47   self-confidence depression side of that. Just like not feeling like you're worthwhile,

00:17:51   because the thing that you do that you're supposed to be really good at is difficult.

00:17:55   Like, that is just hard. Yeah, like, I wouldn't pretend to be qualified in the area to label any

00:18:03   part of anything as depression, because I'm not a mental health expert. But I would describe myself

00:18:08   as professionally depressed most of the summer. Like in terms of like my iOS development,

00:18:13   and myself as a programmer, I have been like a programmer depressed all summer and all fall so

00:18:18   far. Oh, yeah. And I'm so sorry. I'm sorry to hear that. And it's like, it is, but it is also like,

00:18:24   I've had long swaths of this year where I think I feel exactly the same way. That, you know, it's

00:18:30   this really tenuous thing that I feel like in some ways because of what we do is so like, especially

00:18:37   being independent, where so much of our self-worth can be tied into what it is we're making.

00:18:43   It's harder to then separate the, you know, the act of creation from us as people. That, you know,

00:18:51   it's like, if my app is good, then I am good. Because I am app like, that's what I do. It's very,

00:18:57   it's very different than when I used to work. It's a long time ago that I used to do this when I used

00:19:01   to work at a big company. And it's like we had a product release. And it was like, I was one of

00:19:05   30 people who worked on it. And that has a certain sense of camaraderie, but it's a different sense

00:19:10   of ownership. And I didn't feel as personally, you know, like when there were bugs and issues in that

00:19:16   app, it's like, I didn't feel like I was personally responsible for them in the same way. And so it

00:19:20   can definitely be very different in terms of the way it sort of affects you psychologically and

00:19:28   from like a self-care mental health perspective. But I also so sort of agree and can have so much

00:19:36   experience that jives with what you're saying about. And finally, it makes me think of it,

00:19:40   you know, in the same episode of script notes where they're talking about this, they were

00:19:43   talking about how if you encounter like writer's block, one of the most important things is to just

00:19:49   start writing, that it's the sense that if you don't know what to write, that's fine. Just start

00:19:54   writing, like whatever it is, you can write anything, anything, just to start writing. I

00:19:58   don't know what to write. Writing is really hard. I find writing very difficult and just start,

00:20:02   just start. And that is so often the thing that is helpful at getting you out of, you know, sort of

00:20:11   funks or, you know, sort of dead ends or things. And it's in a weird way, it makes me think of it

00:20:16   sort of it's like creativity is a ship that can be steered with a rudder, but very slowly. And it's

00:20:24   sort of like, it's almost like you can sneak up on problems you have to solve by generating some

00:20:30   inertia and speed in a different direction by just doing something you like that's related or

00:20:36   anything really just start making something. And then you start turning your rudder and you can

00:20:40   gradually point it towards the problem that you actually need to solve. Like for me, I've been

00:20:45   recently doing a lot of work making custom Apple Watch faces, which is, I think useful in so far as

00:20:52   it's developing some design skills and things I do. But mostly I'm just doing it because I enjoy

00:20:57   doing it. And I like making it and I can, you know, it's very easy for me to motivate myself to sit

00:21:03   down for three or four hours and make it what make an Apple Watch face. And it's helpful just because

00:21:09   it builds up that little bit of speed that I can then you turn towards things that I need to solve

00:21:15   like I had to deal with, you know, some weird esoteric crashing bug in widgetsmith that like was

00:21:20   one of those just melts your brain and was not not not fun at all. But it's like the way I got there,

00:21:27   was by sort of building up momentum, going in one direction, just making Apple Apple Watch faces,

00:21:33   and then almost like as it's like cheating by then turning the turning the rudder off my creativity

00:21:38   ship and just like turning it turning it around and you're taking advantage of the inertia that

00:21:42   I had to deal with it. Otherwise, I would just look at the problem be like, I don't want to do

00:21:46   this. This is hard. Like, this is really, I don't I don't know where to start. I don't know what to

00:21:51   do. I have no sort of motivation to do this. And so I just wasn't. It's like there's this bug that's

00:21:57   affecting people that I really should be dealing with, but I wasn't dealing with it. And it's like,

00:22:01   in some ways, going off and making Apple Watch faces is like the opposite in terms of like,

00:22:06   well, it's like, how is that going to help? It's like, but in the reality is I've found

00:22:09   that it does. And that's like, you just need to start doing something and you need to,

00:22:14   you know, sort of sit rather than sitting down and being frustrated. It's like sit down at your desk

00:22:19   and do something that is in any way productive in any way, you know, encouraging you creatively

00:22:25   is tremendously helpful in terms of, you know, moving that up. And it's not like it's this magic

00:22:29   thing that'll just like solve all your problems. But it definitely, I find it, you know, it's a

00:22:34   tool that you can use, which is at the end of the day, all we have is like our strategies. It's like,

00:22:38   we have different strategies for getting us out of different holes. And that's one that I think

00:22:43   is very useful and worth trying. Yeah, I've actually I do the strategy,

00:22:48   whether intentionally or not, pretty frequently. Because, you know, if you look at the, you know,

00:22:54   whatever apps I've made over the years, some of them are apps that I have only made for myself,

00:22:58   some of them I've never even released. And I do follow this pattern a lot where like, all right,

00:23:04   if I'm if I'm kind of in a slump on my main app, whether it was Instapaper back in the day or

00:23:09   Overcast now, during those slumps, I would sometimes take a little break and go do something

00:23:15   else and make some other app that, you know, even if I would never release it, or even if it wasn't

00:23:21   even an app, maybe it's some like, you know, weird thing I'm doing like for smart home stuff or other

00:23:25   like, you know, kind of personal projects. But like, you know, recently, just in the last couple

00:23:29   days, I decided, I'm going to break my logjam here by making an app that's going to serve my local

00:23:36   community for a very weird and specialized need. This app will most likely have a user base of

00:23:42   between, you know, one and 20 people. And the maximum user base you could ever have ever is

00:23:49   about 200 people. If every single person who could use this app does use this app, it's about 200

00:23:54   people. So it's a very, very small thing. There's no commercial, you know, potential here at all.

00:23:59   It's just to make my life a little bit better. And hopefully these other people's lives better as

00:24:03   well. And I'm spending a few days doing this because it makes me feel good to do to do like,

00:24:09   you know, new project and let's do the fun part only when not deal with anyone's RSS feeds or

00:24:13   server problems. You know, deal with that. And that is frequently a way to like, kind of, you

00:24:19   know, as you said, like kind of get yourself moving again, like unclog the logjam or whatever

00:24:24   metaphors I'm mixing up here. And finally get yourself moving again. Because even though it

00:24:31   feels like you're wasting time, which can make you then judge yourself even more negatively,

00:24:36   like, Oh my God, why am I doing this when I should be doing this? You know, I'm no stranger to those

00:24:41   feelings. But yeah, that's also half my life is spent feeling those feelings. But, but ultimately,

00:24:48   if you can get yourself out of a funk that is affecting the thing you should be doing,

00:24:54   by temporarily doing something else that feels like time wasting, but it gets you out of that

00:24:59   funk, then that is actually helping the original thing. Because then, as you mentioned, you can

00:25:04   take that momentum that you have or, or the the newly freed up, you know, mental block,

00:25:09   and you can then apply your productivity to the main thing when you're ready.

00:25:12   And that is way better than just sitting in the funk yelling at yourself for two weeks.

00:25:18   Yeah, and I think something there that has been a useful way for me to frame it for myself to kind

00:25:23   of give myself permission to do what you're talking about, which I don't like need to, but

00:25:27   I find that I maybe I do need to be, I should maybe I shouldn't need to, but I do need to,

00:25:32   to give myself sort of a justification for it. It was a thought I'd had recently of that in many

00:25:39   ways, productivity is like ability times motivation. And if I if I'm having trouble on

00:25:48   the motivation side, the thing that I can press on to increase and is making just as much of a,

00:25:56   you know, meaningful impact on my productivity is to increase my ability. So in this case,

00:26:00   it's by learning by doing something, by making a new app, whatever that might be,

00:26:05   it is increasing my ability, it is definitely making me a better developer. Every time I do

00:26:11   that every time I go to file new project, and I start something and I make something,

00:26:15   the act of making that is improving my skill set is improving what I'm able to do is and maybe it's

00:26:21   in subtle ways. Maybe it's just, you know, in terms of like, it there's, there's a sense of

00:26:26   just being better at doing the basics, like that is still a useful thing. Like, it's been a long

00:26:31   time since I did martial arts. But when I was a kid, I remember doing karate, and we would do the

00:26:36   same movement over and over again, not because we were like learning something new, but because we

00:26:42   were getting better at being able to repeat that skill over and over. And so it's just something

00:26:47   that I think of now is whenever I'm doing these, like, sort of side projects, you know, it's like,

00:26:52   I'm, you know, making Apple Watch faces or building a hiking app or doing these things that aren't

00:26:56   necessarily one day going to be, you know, big parts of my main business. It's like, well,

00:27:00   what I'm doing is increasing my abilities that when I need to increase, so I can overall my like,

00:27:06   you know, my productivity, when I have the motivation to really dive at my main problems

00:27:11   that I need to, or that are most important for pushing my, you know, my business forward,

00:27:15   I have increased ability to do that. And it's like, because it's in some ways, if you know,

00:27:20   if my mental model is at all valid in the sense of it's like one times the other, you know, if I can

00:27:24   make an increase in one, it'll offset times when I'm, you know, struggling or behind on the other.

00:27:29   And so, I don't know, it's a useful tool that I found to kind of justify those sort of side

00:27:35   projects for myself. That's a good way to look at it. Yeah, because like one of the like, you know,

00:27:39   negative voices in my head whenever I do one of these is like, you know, if the thing I'm working

00:27:44   on has no relevance to overcast whatsoever in terms of like, API's or technologies used or

00:27:49   anything like, you know, like what I'm doing, what I'm doing with my dumb little local app here that

00:27:53   I'm making, it's, it's location based, it's about driving. And there is, I there's no reason for me

00:28:00   to use location stuff mapping kind of things like there's no reason for me to use any of that in

00:28:05   overcast. And so there's no overlap, like, you know, on the surface. But at the same time,

00:28:12   as I'm doing that, I'll be using things like Swift UI, and, you know, push notification services and

00:28:17   things like that, that are like, okay, actually, and maybe I can mix in cloud kicks, I'm trying to

00:28:21   get better at cloud kit and to help avoid the server stuff I'm dealing with. And so like,

00:28:26   there's other things that I can blend in, that that might be, you know, they might not have an

00:28:31   immediate value in terms of direct relevance to my main thing. But who knows, like six months from

00:28:38   now, or six years from now, they might have value. And I won't know until I until I get there, and I

00:28:44   might never get there. And that's also okay. Yeah, because the whole point is that you would, you,

00:28:49   the person, the developer would have been improved as a result, like, overcast is an important thing.

00:28:55   It's a useful part of, you know, your life and what you do. But it's also like, you know,

00:28:59   Marco is important too. And making Marco better is a worthwhile thing, just even in and of itself

00:29:05   without needing it to be something that has this spillover effect into the things that Marco makes.

00:29:10   Marco itself is important. And it's important that you're kind to yourself and take care of yourself

00:29:14   as a result. Well, thanks. This was a good therapy session. Yeah. And I guess

00:29:19   be anyone listening, be kind to yourself. Like, number one, make sure that you don't be too hard

00:29:24   on yourself. Understand that people even like Marco and I have been doing this a very long time

00:29:28   and had some success with it. This is still the struggle, like, whatever, you know, 10,

00:29:32   13 years on, it's still very difficult. Yep. And we got to just do what we can care for ourselves

00:29:39   and figure out what we need to get through it. Yeah. Thanks for listening, everybody. And we

00:29:43   will talk to you in two weeks. Bye.